Sunday, September 26, 2010

Let's Make a (formal debate) Deal (about free will and foreknowledge)

I've recently been trying to coax "dbes02," a YouTube identity who finds omniscience and free will irreconcilable, into a formal debate.

It's not easy.

It's not enough to have the debate at a skeptical forum (my suggestion from the outset).

Dbes02 has all manner of reservations about the debate, such as asking what's the point if there is no arbiter.  So I tell him he can choose the arbiter, even suggesting that his mother could fill the role if available.  I was assuming she would be well disposed toward her son.  He doesn't care to look like the one reluctant to debate, so he tries to make the arbitration thing look like a holdup from my end:
Just to (publicly) remind you: My formal debate challenge (from Sept. 23) remains open. The Freethought and Rationalism Discussion Board remains my recommendation as the forum. You can pick the arbiter if you insist on one--that's not a concern of mine.
("I challenge you to a formal debate in that forum where you support the proposition that foreknowledge and/or predictability is fatal to libertarian free will.")
To publicly remind you - if YOU find a FRDB person to adjudicate.
If he's eager to debate then why put it on me to find the adjudicator?  I don't care who adjudicates it, so how hard can it be for me to find somebody to judge it and declare a winner?  His comment referred to a series of private messages we exchanged about the debate idea.  I challenged him to the debate and told him I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for his reply.  He counter-challenged (I guess, in a way) saying he wouldn't hold his breath waiting for me accept an adjudicated debate challenge.  Yes, his response was a bit incoherent (the debate challenge is mine to him; he had yet to make any debate challenge unless we count this one from his reply).  And why phrase it as a counter-challenge in the first place?  What's so hard about "I'll accept your challenge if the formal debate will be adjudicated" other than the commitment?

I'll offer two compatible guesses:  First and already mentioned, he doesn't want to look craven.  Second, he's a tad smitten with the idea of turning the arguments of others against them.

Turnabout can be a good technique when it is well executed.

The remainder of his above reply:
We've been 'debating' here - in a public forum. This type of debate (and even the formal ones with the likes of Craig, Hitchens, Dawkins, Lennox, etc.) is pointless - people disagree with each other. You say Swartz is right, I put a position down he's wrong. You disagree. Where's it get us?
If the world's best can't agree... what's the point. (But it's good to see you've dropped the schoolyard loutishness.)

Again, it seems tough for dbes02 to appear eager for debate when he thinks debate is pointless. It makes him look like he's readying his next excuse. So I made that clear to him:
This forum allows you too much leeway in playing games. You'll behave yourself better in a formal debate or suffer the consequences. Are you saying that you will accept the debate if *I* find somebody to arbitrate? After I gave *you* the opportunity to choose the arbiter?  If that's all that's stopping you then go register now. Or is "This type of debate ... is pointless" waiting in the wings as your next excuse?
You should know a lot about game playing. Yes, this type of debate is pointless - everything is already in writing on the internet.
His reply allows me to segue smoothly into counting his reply as a reason to engage in the debate:   He can stop my game playing in the formal venue, or at least expose it through his persuasive rhetoric to the detriment of my side of the argument.

He can't be thinking I'll be so reluctant to debate him that I will decline to find an arbiter.  Can he?

No comments: