Appeal: fallacy spotted
From Jay Dyer vs Pedro from Crucible Debate: Sola Scriptura and Protestantism.
- #14851:03:42upheld Jay Dyer epainos: fallacy spotted (+2)
The council upheld the call: Jay Dyer earned 2 points.
“The question I'm asking you is prior to the text. So you can't cite the text to prove the question that I'm asking you.”
Diogenes: Unlike his earlier compressed charge, this one is exact: asked how he knows God's infallible list exists, Pedro appealed to scripture, whose contents are the very thing in question, and Jay identifies the circle precisely where it occurs.- Aristotle uphold: On the record: Jay has held since the opening that the canon question is logically prior to any appeal to the text and that only continuity/tradition supplies a non-circular answer; this callout is a direct application of that standing framework, not a departure. Jay's framework from the outset holds that the canon list must be established prior to and independent of appeal to the text's own authority, and he supplies a mechanism (councils, continuity, liturgy) for how his side checks its circle. Here Pedro, having admitted the infallible list is inaccessible to him, is asked how he knows it exists at all and answers "from scripture" — an actual circular appeal, not a circle-with-mechanism, so Jay's naming of the fallacy is accurate to what was said, not a misrepresentation.
- Socrates uphold: Read blind, found "fallacy spotted". Pedro had just answered the question 'how do you know the infallible canon list exists/what it is' by citing a scripture passage (Daniel 4:34) and admitting, when pressed, that this warrant itself comes from scripture; Jay correctly names this as begging the question, since the epistemic status and contents of the canon are exactly what is in dispute, so appealing to the text cannot settle a question that is logically prior to knowing which texts count as scripture at all.
- Plato uphold: On the record: Jay has held since the opening that the canon question is prior to and cannot be answered by appeal to scripture's own content; this callout is a precise application of that same standing framework objection to Pedro's specific answer, not a new or shifted claim. Jay's framework objection since the opening has been that the canon's content/list is logically prior to and cannot be settled by appeal to the text whose contents are in question. Here he applies that framework precisely: Pedro, asked how he knows the infallible list exists, answers "from the sovereign purposes and will of God," and when asked if that is known from scripture, answers "Yes" — which is exactly the circularity Jay's objection predicts, correctly identified in what Pedro actually said rather than in a caricature of it.
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.