Appeal: dodge
From Jay Dyer vs Ryan Dawson Debate: Theism vs Anti-Theism, Christianity vs Nihilism, Relativism, Atheism.
- #162636:44overturned Ryan Dawson psogos: dodge (+2)
The council overturned the call, so no points were given away.
“Like, you know why slavery is wrong? You know why you can't own a person? Don't play dumb. Like, you know that's wrong.”
Diogenes: Asked twice to give his justification for calling slavery immoral — "why do you think this is wrong" and "I would like to know why you think it's immoral" — Ryan supplies no ground at all and substitutes an appeal to self-evidence plus a jab.- Aristotle overturn: On the record: Ryan declared at the opening that ethics are goal-relative/subjective and has held since (repeatedly stating his morals rest on "empathy, sympathy, reason"); the quoted line is his substantive answer in that framework — an appeal to shared moral intuition and reciprocity ("you like to be a slave?") — not silence or refusal. A dodge requires the question to go unanswered; here Ryan answers within his own stated subjectivist/empathy-based framework (an intuition/golden-rule argument), even though Jay finds it insufficient to meet his demand for non-subjective justification — that is a disagreement about what counts as an adequate answer, not an absence of one, and the "don't play dumb" jab rides alongside that answer rather than substituting for it.
- Socrates overturn: Read blind, found nothing worth calling. Just before this line Ryan makes a substantive point: that appealing to a deity's command adds no justificatory power over his own empathy-based reasoning, since "it's the same reasoning... except I added a god creature." "Don't play dumb, you know that's wrong" is rhetorical emphasis attached to that already-stated point about parity between divine-command and intuition-based ethics, not a substitute standing in for a missing answer, so it fails the substitution test for ad hominem and scores nothing.
- Plato overturn: On the record: Ryan's opening and consistently held position is that ethics is subjective, grounded in his own reason/empathy/sympathy rather than any further "objective" foundation ("I have value sets... I base them on my own empathy, sympathy, reason... I don't need supernatural explanations"); this line restates and applies that standing view rather than evading a question left unanswered twice. The transcript shows only one explicit prior ask for justification ("I would like to know why you think it's immoral") before this line, not two, and Ryan's response is not empty: he offers a comparative point (that theistic "justification" is equally assertion-based, "the same reasoning... except I added a god creature") plus an appeal to shared intuition, consistent with the subjectivist/empathy-based account of ethics he gave earlier in the debate. This is a restatement of his declared framework, not a dodge of a twice-asked question left bare.
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