Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 beta 3/9/83; site frog.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!think!mit-eddie!cybvax0!frog!tdh From: tdh@frog.UUCP (T. Dave Hudson) Newsgroups: net.philosophy,net.politics.theory Subject: Sorry, Todd Moody. Message-ID: <263@frog.UUCP> Date: Sat, 10-Aug-85 15:42:33 EDT Article-I.D.: frog.263 Posted: Sat Aug 10 15:42:33 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 13-Aug-85 02:58:57 EDT Reply-To: frog!tdh Organization: Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA Lines: 24 Xref: linus net.philosophy:1989 net.politics.theory:984 My dictionaries do list two different meanings of the noun "libertarian": 1) an advocate of liberty 2) an advocate of free will (as opposed to necessity) Random House and Webster's differ on which is primary. In the decade or so that I have been interested in free will, I have never seen the word "libertarian" used in the above metaphysical sense. In the meantime, I have become aware of continual ludicrous distortions of "libertarian" in the political sense. But the responsibility for checking out whether there could have been a correct conventional meaning, requiring neither qualification nor explanation, of "libertarian" was mine. Sorry, Todd Moody. I might point out that the terms of the contest between metaphysical libertarians and necessitarians make the metaphysical libertarian nothing more than a fetish-worshipper. Free will could never come from the absence of perfect physical causality. David Hudson