Appeal: dodge
From Jay Dyer vs Styx Debate Abortion – Pro-Life vs Government Overreach.
- #144829:20overturned Styxhexenhammer666 psogos: dodge (+2)
The council overturned the call, so no points were given away.
“And and likewise, people should resist authoritarian government if the government's trying to tell them what medical procedures they can and cannot have.”
Diogenes: Asked three times what grounds the non-aggression principle and the good of separated powers, he answers each time by restating the ought he was asked to justify.- Aristotle overturn: On the record: Styx has held since the opening a pragmatic non-moral-realist framework where norms like the NAP and separation of powers are practical necessities, not grounded goods, a tension Jay has pressed him on throughout. This line continues that same answer. Jay's challenge is a direct question only once. Styx does answer each time, just not with metaphysical grounding: he says no one should in a moral-realist sense but you need counterbalances of power, then bites the bullet on Jay's reductio. That is a substantive answer in his own framework, not a mere repeated ought.
- Socrates overturn: Read blind, found nothing worth calling. Read charitably, this is simply the practical extension of Styx's counterbalancing thesis he has held since minute 2 (no single pole of power, public or private, should go unchecked) into the political domain: just as a corporation is free to try to dominate, other actors are free to resist a government trying to dominate, and it is exactly this mutual pushback that keeps power in check on his framework. It is a bare restatement of his standing position rather than a fresh premise-conclusion argument, and it does not contradict his earlier bullet-biting ("that's what you should attempt to do") once "should" is read consistently in both places as the same practical/prudential sense rather than a moral-realist one, so there is nothing here worth flagging on either ledger.
- Plato overturn: On the record: Styx declared and held throughout a pragmatic-consequentialist first principle (no single pole of power trustworthy; counterbalancing checks as practical necessity, not moral grounding), and the called line restates that very framework under pressure rather than evading a question he hasn't addressed. Styx's opening framework is explicitly recorded as pragmatic/consequentialist with "no stated moral realism: normative claims...asserted as practical necessities rather than grounded" — a gap Jay is noted as pressing throughout. When Jay asks what grounds the NAP/separation of powers, Styx answers with exactly that practical-necessity logic (self-interested actors will seek power, hence counterbalancing checks are needed, not a moral "good"); "yes, you should [pursue power], and likewise people should resist authoritarian government" is a restatement of that Hobbesian/instrumental account, not silence on the question. He gives an answer Jay finds metaphysically thin, but thinness of grounding already on the record is not the same as refusing to answer.
Appeal this callout
Appeals come only from the debaters themselves. Sign in with Google to start; you'll then prove which debater you are, once.