Appeal: evidence
From Debate MELTDOWN: Worst Opponent Yet: Austin Peterson Libertarian Debate Vs Jay Dyer.
- #7731:17:05upheld Austin Peterson epainos: evidence (+2)
The council upheld the call: Austin Peterson earned 2 points.
“I absolutely could be wrong. ... I can only show you what I have read in regards to the natural law, in regards to, you know, the [Two] treatises of government, John Locke. Right? Life, liberty, and property.” quote corrected
Diogenes: Pressed on how he arrived at rights, he names the tradition and text he draws on and states plainly that he holds it defeasibly, which is a real answer rather than an evasion.- Aristotle uphold: On the record: Austin has held since early in the debate that he believes in objective truth but claims limited personal knowledge and openness to correction ("I could be wrong... I only know very little"), and this line is consistent with, not a departure from, that stated epistemic humility. Pressed on where his concept of rights comes from, Austin names a specific, checkable textual tradition (Locke's Two Treatises, natural law) rather than merely gesturing at vague authority, which satisfies distinguishing the claim (rights exist) from a citable source for it, and this exchange on grounding rights was central to the debate's core metaethical dispute.
- Socrates uphold: Read blind, found "direct answer", on the same ledger as the callout. Pressed repeatedly by Jim Bob on what grounds his belief that rights exist, Austin moves past his earlier vague "litany of literature" and names a specific, checkable source — Locke's natural-law tradition and the Second Treatise's life/liberty/property formulation — while explicitly allowing he could be wrong. This is a genuine attempt to answer the sourcing question actually asked, not a dodge.
- Plato uphold: On the record: Austin's opening and sustained position is that he holds real but fallibly-known moral/rights commitments derived from natural-law literature (he cites Nicomachean ethics and Marcus Aurelius earlier in the same vein); naming Locke here is consistent with, not a departure from, that standing appeal to a natural-law tradition as his epistemic basis. Pressed repeatedly on where his belief in rights comes from, Austin names a specific, checkable source (Locke's Two Treatises of Government and the "life, liberty, property" formulation) rather than simply asserting rights exist or retreating into vague appeals; he also explicitly marks it as his own derivation which he holds defeasibly, distinguishing the claim (rights exist) from the evidence he offers for it (a specific text/tradition).
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