Pat Bouvry

Ref: podcast 3547 question 3 28Dec2016. I usually don't leave feedbacks but I feel Stefan's show would benefit from considering the following observation and suggestion. I'm very much interested in questions pertaining to the theories of morality and ethics, for the simple reason that this is where most moral arguments originate. I'm happy to pay 50$ per month to Stefan to gather a better understanding of moral philosophy. However, I have noticed that a majority of times when a caller questions moral theories, the call is much shorter than most others (e.g. 30 min instead of 60 min) and there's a high likelihood that the call will end up in a catastrophic situation where Stefan will feel insulted, lose patience and even end the call before the question can be answered clearly to all the listeners. This happened again in the recent podcast 3547 on 28Dec2016 Q3. If I'm going to spend a significant amount of my time highly interested in callers' questions focussed on the fundamentals of moral theories, and even pay reasonable money for it, I would very much appreciate those questions being dealt in a patient, non inflammatory or "you've insulted me" manner, as is already done with most people calling for their personal problems. There's obviously nothing wrong with terminating a call when someone is being rude and clearly disrespectful (e.g. 3543 Q3), but in this particular case (3547 Q3), I was invested in caller's question and genuinely interested in hearing Stefan's explanation. Unfortunately, I felt again disappointed and left hanging out without a clear rebuttal to clarify why the caller was incorrect or even why Stefan felt insulted. To act this way in your own free show is fine, but to accept money in exchange of delivering a 'service' should have implications of a minimum level of professionalism in interviews with callers (not only with known personalities), which I felt fell short in this particular case. In general, I feel Stefan' show is great. I would however enjoy hearing more information to explain basic theories on morality and more patience in treating those subjects. Yes, I have read UPB, but there are still a number of areas where ethics can be better explained (e.g. abortion, ethics with animals, etc) and Stefan's great abilities can help clarify those concepts. I hope this feedback will be taken constructively to improve the great work everyone at FDR is already doing. Best regards. Pat

I’m writing the following with the permission from Hector for anyone in this forum to give their ideas and possibly contribute to answer his questions and maybe alleviate his desperate thoughts about his current situation. I recently posted on FDR about being available to meet people in Hong Kong who want to talk about philosophy. So last week, a guy named Hector contacted me saying he was a teacher in Beijing and wanted to meet me for a coffee. He tells me it would be nice if I had a place for him to stay the night (!), but I decide to still meet him nevertheless, by curiosity. Hector, a young guy with long hair, walks quickly (slightly late) in the coffee shop looking for me. After our introduction, he explains that he is passing through Hong Kong for paper issues related to him “trying” to get an English teaching job in Beijing through a crappy agency. Hector was born in Spain, is 26 years old, and seems apparently in a hurry. Without really explaining more, he start with the question: “Please tell me who your are?”. Wow, I thought. That’s really quick to business. After 5 minutes sitting down, Hector wants to know my childhood, my parents, my studies, my work, my family, and everything else there is to know about me. Being 16 years older than him, I play along and explain a little bit about my background and highlight some of my current interests. But to my surprise, Hector tells me that I’m not answering his question. He needs to know “who” I am, deep down. After this apparent brutal beginning, I decide to ask more about him. Hector is a very intelligent guy. He talks or understands more than 6 languages (Spanish, English, French, Arabic, Swedish, German, …) and is now interested in also learning Chinese. He says he’s had a terrible childhood with significant beatings from his mother (I don’t recall exactly, but his father seemed also absent). In brief, Hector had a crappy childhood, and has now just come out of a 7-years relationship with his girlfriend. So not surprisingly, he seems depressed, and says he’s looking for someone to connect with as he’s now got no friend or family to talk to. His method of communicating is very direct, wanting to know the deepness of my thoughts right away. His theory seems to be that people who don’t immediately completely open to others are “not worth knowing”, and he is wasting his time if he can’t get to people’s cores of thoughts right away. On the other hand, he repeats that he’s got no friends, and doesn’t seem to connect or realise the link between the two. Until then in the conversation, Hector seems like a normal depressed guy who is going through a rough transition phase in his life, and is looking for someone to reflect his thoughts with. I ask him about his plans, and he tells me that teaching in China was his latest plan, but that it didn’t work (as opposed to “he is a teacher” introduction). He’s now supposed to fly back to Spain and “will certainly find something else…”, and then adds “if not, then it will be the gun and the bullet…”. To be certain, I make him repeat what he just said. OK. Now this is no longer a conversation about philosophy. To my eyes, Hector has just transformed into a deeply traumatised young adults who has not yet found a way to explain or accept the terrible rejection and injustice he suffered as a child and is still in a desperate mode to hang on to anything, or die. We ended the discussion after 90 minutes, and he insisted to pay for the coffee. I felt I was leaving a vulnerable guy with some significant issues in a needy situation with his lack of any plan to eat, for a place to stay or to return home. I asked him if he had enough money to do all that, to which he replied that “all was ok”. The nature of our meeting having significantly changed, I didn’t feel any obligation in further helping him, feeling a bit betrayed that he staged this meeting in hopes of acquiring a deep connection appearing magically out of nowhere with a stranger, an immature expectation from someone with an obvious lack of self-confidence and serious issues regarding social connections with other. I have no doubt Hector’s cry for help is legitimate and healthy for him to find a way to get out of his apparent dead-ends. I told Hector would post my thoughts on the forum, and that they would be blunt. He rejoiced at the idea and wrote that this is exactly what he wants: for people to be true and blunt. So I invite anyone on this forum to tell Hector (FDR ID: Withanametocome) his thoughts and ask him questions, in order to help him go through this currently difficult phase of life. Don't give up Hector.

If anyone in Hong Kong would like to meet and discuss philosophy, send me a message.

Thanks for your replies Guys. I believe the arguments I'm putting forward are related to assigning morality to life. Clearly defining "killing a newborn" (from your statement) would be key here, as a foetus is not born, or for the early stage, cannot survive being "born". So there's no "killing a newborn" in this case. I understand the line is fuzzy, but that's exactly my point: where is the line and which logic is used to draw it? I believe many don't have moral issues with abortions because they consider unborn foetuses as cells, not babies. A "baby" seems to have a wide range of definitions, and I'm not sure how much cell division having started within an egg constitutes an iron-clad definition of where morality starts. As to my second point, it had to do with Stefan's linking the State as the cause of so many abortions. I still cannot see how "demand" for abortions would be significantly affected without a State, hence questioning the effect of the State on the issue of abortion. Cheers. Pat

I listened to Stefan talking about abortion on the Peter Schiff show dated 12 May 2014. He mentions that millions of babies have been killed in causality of the action of the state. I follow Stefan's work diligently and have been actively supporting him for a long time now, but I still have some significant trouble with his position on this subject. In a free-market society, it is clear to me that mothers or couples wanting an abortion would get an abortion, with or without the consent/knowledge of their community. This tragic act would probably occur less often, but the decision has intrinsically nothing to do with the state, in my opinion. The action of consenting adults without the active presence of an obvious plaintiff doesn’t appears to be violating the non-aggression principle (as is the case for selling “bad” vegetation). To a mother and/or couple not wanting the life-shattering implications of an unwanted early pregnancy, this choice can therefore seem legitimate and without any immoral content, as the 1-2 months old potential plaintiff is nowhere to be heard and without any capacity to exist without their consent. QUESTION 1: For an action to be immoral, shouldn't there be at least one concerned party who potentially possesses the ability to complain (as a premature or 1 hours-old baby, or a patient in a comma would have)? As a foetus below ~5 months old cannot possibly survive without the assistance of a carrying mother (as of yet), it doesn't seem logical to presume and it doesn't appear to have been demonstrated yet, that it has the capacity of thought or instinct linked with the ability to complain. So to follow the moral logic I learned by listening to Stefan, if there is no complaining party, there is no immorality. If we assign to a collection of growing cells the quality of potential consciousness and therefore potential ability to complain, then where would this logic end? Would an egg and a sperm cell be assigned the same moral quality because they “could” form an independently-living organism together, maybe, one day? Eggs and sperms cells are live organisms themselves, but no one cries when they are destroyed trillions of times every day. Finally, the link raised by Stefan between the presence or coercion of the state and the practice of abortions escapes me. In an evolved free-market society with no central ruler, abortions would probably be less common due to better education and lower trauma of the general population. However, unwanted pregnancies would still happen, and the same morality dilemma would still exit, state or not. In our current society, the state seems to be protecting women and couples from being aggressed by others who would like to oblige them (yes, at gun point) to live the disastrous consequences of an unwanted pregnancy. Therefore: QUESTION 2: How is the state affecting abortions in any way now, other than by indirectly excusing consequences of irresponsible behaviour? Mistakes and rape happen, and will continue to do so, but on this subject, Stefan appears to advocate the opposite of his usual position: i.e. someone should force people against their will without the obvious presence of a concerned complaining party. Thanks to all for your constructive participation to this topic. I would love to hear more from Stefan, as he seems to be a passionate about this subject, and I’m not following his logic.

I've been an avid listener to audio podcasts and FDR contributor for a while now. I'd like to contribute towards Stefan improving his call-in shows. Please let me know if it's not the right place to share this feedback, or if it's only me who feels this. Almost every time Stefan ends a conversation with a caller, he'll says something like: "Mike, who do we have next?". There's nothing's wrong with saying that, except that maybe it should be preceded by a conventional "thank you" and/or "bye bye" exchange. I feel that ending of a seemingly ongoing phone discussion (audio only) without an appreciative verbal hand-off can leave an impression of disrespect, which I know is not the case with Stefan, but still that's my perception every time. I know Stefan thanks everyone a lot in a general way, but since perception is reality and for new listeners out there, I thought that maybe some sort of polite { "Thank you for calling" - wait for the reply - "bye bye" - wait for the reply } process at the end of each conversation would be beneficial to not leave the impression of cutting them off and being rude. It may be tricky if some callers hang on to the discussion, but in most cases, it would leave a positive impression. I may be wrong, maybe there's no other way than to dry-cut it. ____________________"Mike, who do we have next?"_______________________ :-) Or maybe not... Just food for thoughts. Regards, Pat

I was somewhat disappointed in how the debate turned out, being a fan of both Stefan and Peter. I thought this would have been a great opportunity to have a more constructive discussion instead of the traditional "I state my view, you state your view" speeches. I have to give some credit to Stefan for having held his cool and not return a good number of condescending remarks from Peter. It is disappointing that two great minds did not find how to add to each other, instead of clash out in a seemingly wasteful way. At the end, I have to give this one to Stefan who kept a constructive and positive attitude to genuinely try to understand Peter's overly articulated arguments. Who looses his temper usually looses the debate as frustration seems to shows some inability to cope with arguments conflicting our beliefs. I thought Stefan would have picked up on the apparent fact that Structural Violence is a concept without any real actors behind it, unlike Government. Peter's insistence that this concept (derived from the free market according to him) is to blame for the ills of the world, and not people was surprising to me. If this is true, then structural violence is not a cause, but a consequence of some decision or behavior from the real cause: some people, somewhere. So the positions ended as they started: less rulers against more but better rulers. The first seems to advocate for some instability but true liberty and efficiency, and the second, for a central planning "non-1984 trust-me" style with questionable liberty or efficiency. Peter raised one point on which I would be interested in hearing Stefan's point of view: most socialized countries show more equality and less violence then say, the USA. Many will prefer a less free and less productive environment to gain on security and equality - i.e. why live in a free jungle where I can die at any time when I can choose to "live" in a peaceful prison? Peter seems to have a point that this is human nature and won't go away. Pat