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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
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Posted: Sat Aug 10 15:42:33 1985
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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