Appeal: misrepresentation
From Jay Dyer vs Ryan Dawson Debate: Theism vs Anti-Theism, Christianity vs Nihilism, Relativism, Atheism.
- #165956:39upheld Jay Dyer psogos: misrepresentation (+1)
The council upheld the call: Jay Dyer gave away 1 point.
“You have a degree of confidence in something that's not justified, which by your own definition is superstitious religious dogmatism.”
Diogenes: Read blind, without being shown any call on this passage. Dyer claims Dawson's unjustified confidence is "by your own definition... superstitious religious dogmatism," but Dawson's stated definition of dogmatism just moments earlier explicitly excluded that qualifier: "You can have dogmatism without superstition and supernatural." Dyer is attributing to Dawson a self-refuting definition the transcript shows he did not give, to force a gotcha rather than engage the substance.- Aristotle uphold: On the record: Jay has held throughout that Ryan's fallibilist confidence lacks justification and amounts to dogmatism in the sense of unrevisable certainty; but Ryan's own working notion of dogmatism (stated just before and confirmed explicitly just after this line, "you can have dogmatism without superstition and supernatural") never equates it with "superstitious religious" belief, so attributing that specific definition to Ryan "by your own definition" is not something the record shows Ryan said. Ryan's stated critique of dogmatism throughout is about unrevisable certainty as such, and he explicitly denies moments later that dogmatism requires superstition or the supernatural; Jay's "by your own definition is superstitious religious dogmatism" imputes to Ryan a narrower, self-refuting definition he did not give and promptly disowns, which fits the transcript-checked misrepresentation the referee found reading blind.
- Socrates uphold: Read blind, found "equivocation", on the same ledger as the callout. Moments earlier Ryan had explicitly defined dogmatism behaviorally, as treating a belief as unrevisable ("there's no room to change that... God said so"), and contrasted it with his own stance of holding beliefs open to revision as new data comes in. Jay's line trades on a different sense of the word, unjustified belief, and then claims this is dogmatism "by your own definition," sliding between the two senses to charge Ryan with the very fault Ryan had just defined himself out of.
- Plato overturn: On the record: Jay's line reads Ryan's own earlier equation of dogmatism with unchangeable, divinely-authorized certainty ("this is the right answer... God said so, and there's no room to change that," ~55:41) as the operative definition; Ryan's broader clarification that "you can have dogmatism without superstition and supernatural" comes chronologically after this line, not before it. The referee's chronology is reversed: at the point Jay makes this claim, the only definition of dogmatism Ryan had given on the record tied it explicitly to religious "God said so" absolutism, so Jay's "by your own definition" has a textual basis; Ryan's broadening of the definition to include secular dogmatism (many-worlds, simulation theory) comes afterward, as a refinement made under pressure, not a prior statement Jay is contradicting.
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