Appeal: concession
From Debate! Pagan vs. Orthodox: Logos, Language & Metaphysics - Jay Dyer Vs CB Robertson.
- #10671:45:34overturned CB Robertson epainos: concession (+1)
The council overturned the call, so no points were earned.
“And I just can I I meant to say skepticism not not solipsism in in the defensibility category?”
Diogenes: Rather than defend the stronger claim he had blundered into, he corrects his own term and gives up the solipsism formulation once its self-refutation is shown.- Aristotle uphold: On the record: S1's opening committed him to defending fallible intuition-based moral/epistemic claims against Jay's transcendental argument; here, after Jay's reductio against solipsism, CB backs off the solipsism formulation by claiming he "meant" skepticism instead. The record shows CB had paired "skepticism and solipsism" together as "the most defensible position" just before Jay's refutation, and after the refutation he abandons the solipsism term entirely; this is a defensible reading as a minor concession, though it could equally be read as a motte-and-bailey retreat since he frames it as a misstatement rather than an error.
- Socrates overturn: Read blind, found "moving the goalposts". S1 had claimed "extreme skepticism and solipsism" together as "the most defensible position" epistemologically; once S0 demolished solipsism as self-refuting, S1 quietly swaps the disputed term to "skepticism" instead of conceding the point about solipsism, shifting what he was defending rather than owning the refutation.
- Plato uphold: On the record: CB had, moments before, floated solipsism as epistemically defensible; this line departs from that specific claim by conceding the term was wrong once Jay's reductio was put to him, consistent with the debate's recurring pattern of CB softening claims under pressure. After Jay demonstrated that solipsism is self-refuting, CB does not defend the claim that solipsism is "the most defensible position" but instead retracts the term and substitutes a weaker one; abandoning a specific formulation right after it is shown incoherent is a genuine minor concession on that narrow point.
- Thesmothetes overturn: By the rule: do not complete the argument for the speaker. CB's line only swaps the word "solipsism" for "skepticism"; he never says the reductio against solipsism succeeded or that his "most defensible position" claim was wrong, and the very next exchange shows him still defending epistemic humility against Jay's continued attack ("there's no such thing as a purely skeptical position"). Reading this as a concession requires supplying the admission he never made, which the rule against completing a speaker's argument for him forbids; the disagreement among judges over "concession" versus "goalpost move" both assume an acknowledgment of error that the transcript does not contain.
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