Appeal: argument from ignorance
From Jay Dyer vs Ryan Dawson Debate: Theism vs Anti-Theism, Christianity vs Nihilism, Relativism, Atheism.
- #16481:11:43upheld Ryan Dawson psogos: argument from ignorance (+1)
The council upheld the call: Ryan Dawson gave away 1 point.
“If you have no data saying otherwise, you have no data saying it wasn't this way in the…”
Diogenes: Pressed for positive justification that nature has always been uniform, Ryan falls back on the absence of contrary evidence, which is not a ground for the claim but only the lack of a defeater.Herodotus (no): Public records show effectively one Dyer–Dawson encounter: a Sept. 2022 "Theism vs Anti-Theism" debate (uploaded to Bitchute/YouTube under slightly varying titles), which appears to be this same match — consistent with the site's own tally showing Ryan Dawson with only 1 debate recorded here. There is no trail of prior Dawson-Dyer clashes, and no independent record of Ryan Dawson committing argument-from-ignorance in other debates elsewhere (he has no other public debate history found). The "problem of induction/uniformity of nature" line is a recurring set-piece Jay Dyer runs against many empiricist opponents (Dillahunty, Trent Horn, MakeLyingWrong, "White Pill Prole," etc.), so the exchange reflects Dyer's standard TAG script meeting a first-time interlocutor rather than Dawson exhibiting an established personal pattern of this fallacy. The callout should be judged as a single in-debate lapse, not evidence of a track record. Sources: https://www.bitchute.com/video/GJyB6l5lKm4/ https://www.rooshvforum.com/threads/jay-dyer-vs-ryan-dawson-debate-09-2022.42201/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biWBuz3ZRSQ https://jaydyer.substack.com/p/debate-empiricism-logic-scientism-802
- Aristotle uphold: On the record: Ryan has held throughout that confidence in physical uniformity rests on the weight of positive accumulated experimental data, with openness to revision; this particular line briefly substitutes mere absence of counter-evidence for that positive-evidence standard, a minor and arguable slip within an otherwise consistent framework rather than a repeated or central tactic. Read as an isolated clause responding to Jay's specific pointed question about whether laws held before their discovery, the quoted line does exhibit the argument-from-ignorance structure exactly as stated: absence of contrary data is offered as though it were itself evidence for the affirmative claim, rather than merely a lack of a defeater. While Ryan elsewhere and consistently grounds his confidence in positive accumulated experimental data (a defensible inductive-evidentialist position I have credited throughout this session), this particular formulation explicitly substitutes "no data saying otherwise" for a positive ground at the exact moment Jay pressed for one, so the fallacy is fairly located in what was actually said here, not merely in a hostile summary of it.
- Socrates uphold: Read blind, found "argument from ignorance". Pressed for what positive justification he has for believing physical laws held before they were discovered, Ryan answers that since there is no data showing the laws were otherwise, that absence of contrary evidence is treated as grounds for the belief. But lack of evidence against a claim is not evidence for it, which is exactly why Jay's very next line rejects the move as not settling anything ("It doesn't matter").
- Plato uphold: On the record: Ryan's declared and repeated justification method is confidence built from accumulated positive empirical data, but this particular line substitutes a bare absence-of-counterevidence claim for that positive case, which is the narrower fault named rather than a restatement of his standing position. This line marks a shift from Ryan's usual framing elsewhere in the debate ("there's a lot more evidence to believe that is the case than that it isn't," a positive-evidence framing) to a purely negative one: absence of contrary data is here treated as itself sufficient warrant ("you have no data saying it wasn't this way"). That is the textbook argument-from-ignorance move, distinct from his standing preponderance-of-positive-evidence justification, and it comes as a direct answer to Jay's repeated challenge that Ryan cannot establish the principle was always the case.
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.