Honor killing in Pakistan

[SatansMaleVoiceChoir]

I pointed out that there are reasons, I did not say what they were.

Saying you have reasons is not the same as giving them.

That should have been enough for you to realise that I know there are various reasons, the main one being if eating our young was the norm we would die out.

Sorry - wasn't aware that mind-reading was a pre-requisite for talking to you.

The moving goalposts comes about because you keep assuming I have not considered other matters other than the one under immediate discussion. So, of course I have considered a middle ground and if you really had read my posts you would know that.

So you don't understand what "moving the goalposts" means, but you're going to keep maintaining I did it. Got it, thanks.

 

[Nessie]

Please just read my posts, don't start reading other things into them I have not said and stop taking what I said about something previously and transposing it onto a new question.

 

[westprog]

Ah, but look at the circumstances where young are eaten. It is not the norm or else that animal would die out.

It's the norm when the circumstances dictate that it is the norm. The behaviour of all species is dependent on circumstances.

 

[westprog]

I pointed out that there are reasons, I did not say what they were. That should have been enough for you to realise that I know there are various reasons, the main one being if eating our young was the norm we would die out.

It's also the case that any species that regarded the existence of all other species as being of equal value - the far end of the empathy scale - would almost certainly die out.

The "moral" behaviour that we now accept as the norm would be highly counter-productive under more straitened circumstances.

Of course, this has nothing to do with what we ought to do. Most people consider that we should not behave like Comanche in the early nineteenth century. However, given the same circumstances, we probably would.

 

[SatansMaleVoiceChoir]

Please just read my posts, don't start reading other things into them I have not said and stop taking what I said about something previously and transposing it onto a new question.

Yeah, the problem with that is that sometimes, in a debate, questions arise from questions, and discussion raises more questions. I know this can be confusing, but I'll demonstrate:

Me: All living things are not necessarily born to be kind to their young - or rats wouldn't eat their pups.

You: Well, clearly that's not the norm or there'd be no more rats!

Me: It might not be the 'norm', but it is far from being an unusual occurrence. But maybe -

(Now stay with me - this is where it gets tricky, and I think I lost you last time...)

- you should have a look at how many pups a female rat can produce in a year, that might provide you with an idea as to why rats don't appear to have a problem eating their young!

You: Waaaah! Stop moving the goalposts and asking me about rats!

Now, I know I was paraphrasing somewhat, but you see where I was going there?

 

[SatansMaleVoiceChoir]

This sort of thing is pretty well covered in phases of development. At first a baby has no concept of other entities being things like itself. Empathy doesn't show up until after they've gained a little more sophistication.

Gained? By learning from parents and older siblings?

 

[Nessie]

Yeah, the problem with that is that sometimes, in a debate, questions arise from questions, and discussion raises more questions. I know this can be confusing, but I'll demonstrate:

Me: All living things are not necessarily born to be kind to their young - or rats wouldn't eat their pups.

You: Well, clearly that's not the norm or there'd be no more rats!

Me: It might not be the 'norm', but it is far from being an unusual occurrence. But maybe -

(Now stay with me - this is where it gets tricky, and I think I lost you last time...)

- you should have a look at how many pups a female rat can produce in a year, that might provide you with an idea as to why rats don't appear to have a problem eating their young!

You: Waaaah! Stop moving the goalposts and asking me about rats!

Now, I know I was paraphrasing somewhat, but you see where I was going there?

Yes I see where you are going, but what you have described is not how it was. I would say something about a point raised earlier and you then say what about? So I answer that and then you say what about? You are attacking my point about a previously raised issue with a new one, hence moving the goal posts. That is why I have been regularly pointing out that we are pretty much in agreement and this constant moving of the goal posts is just argumentative.

 

[Kaylee]

I have direct knowledge of the negotiations & discussions specifically around the Aynak & Hajigak projects (copper & iron). While these are highly lucrative (potentially) the costs of doing business in Afghanistan, combined with the overall security & stability questions are significant barriers to major investments. Suffice to say there are major issues with regards to transparency & the success of these and other mining initiatives. I would say broadly that the mineral wealth of Afghanistan is indeed its only hope for economic development, but it is a chicken & egg situation. You can't really do much with the minerals until the place settles down. The place won't settle down until you have economic development. And plus ca change.



The revenues from mining activities are indeed a priority for the international community and the Afghan government, and is something that I worked on, personally. Lets just say that interests on projects/revenues of this scale quickly get muddled/blurred with exterior/ulterior motivations. Do some googling around the central banking scandal / banking supervision scandal, and stories of how much of Dubai is owned by Afghan elites, if your stomach can handle it.



Telecomms & internet infrastructure is a qualified success story in Afghanistan, as communcation was seen (correctly) as a way to combat the ability of 'the bad guys' to isolate & infiltrate. Domestic mobile phones are widely in use, and are priced competitively, within the reach of the average Afghan. Internet access, however, is VERY expensive & runs on mostly VSAT links. The Afghan government has not hesitated to attempt to impose Machiavellian censorship when it has suited their political or 'moral/ethical' wishes. That said, the capacity of the ISPs to perform the requested censorship is very limited.

I really wish I had a better grasp of the history, geography, economics and sociology of the Middle East.

I realize that we have gone way beyond the OP and I wouldn't even begin to know how to find out the answer to this question anyway -- but I think it would be interesting to be able to compare the difficulties of getting access to Afghanistan's rare earth elements to what was involved in getting access to Saudi Arabia's oil in the past.

I also wonder how much of the Afghanistan's political problems are due to outsiders. AFAICT, this country has almost always under the control of others and dealing with the effects of war since the days of Alexander the Great. And some more off topic random musings -- in an alternative history where Great Britain, France and others had made an attempt to turn over over the remnants of the Ottoman Empire to republics instead of the wealthier war lords of the day, what would the Middle East be like today? Establishing borders that took into account existing ethnic groups and cultures would probably have also made current day politics much more peaceful. As an example, the US decided to rebuild Japan from an empire to a republic. I'm sure the expense was enormous but no doubt the Far East is a much more peaceful area since the 1940s than it would have been otherwise.

I also wonder about the long-lasting effects of this tidbit of history:

During the Cold War, the US frequently used the CIA for covert operations against left-wing movements around the world, starting under President Dwight Eisenhower. In 1953, the CIA helped Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran remove the democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh (although supporters of US policy claimed that Mossadegh had ended democracy through a rigged referendum).[22]

(As many of the posters in this thread probably know, Iran is one of the countries bordering Afghanistan.)

I have no way of knowing, but when I do think about what is currently going on in Afghanistan, I'm skeptical about how much that is happening really reflects most Afghans' wishes. Outsiders have probably almost always put people into power that would carry out their wishes. Why should this decade be any different? All that I know for certain is that the Taliban gets most of their money from outside funding. With money comes power.

Free internet/computers/fax machines' - utopian pipe dreams, those. The private sector is driving the push, and they aren't doing anything for free.

Granted. But apparently the US govt and NATO are being pulled into this area because of the private sector interest in TAPI and Afghanistan's natural resources. Funding internet, computers and fax machines would probably be much less expensive than funding even some of the war machines and military pay in the long run. I'll concede that the politics of implementing this would probably be difficult.

Nice ideas, but I don't see it working. The women themselves simply wouldn't use such a resource - its not culturally sensible/acceptable to them. There are a few NGOs that offer 'safehouse' protection to abused women already. The women are so beaten down/battered, that their mentality isn't that they believe they are being abused. It is almost as though they see it as their lot in life to be treated this way. Building a 'safe zone' for women as you propose - I don't think you'd get a single woman to go there voluntarily. And the broader Afghan populace would just snicker at this structure being some wacky infidel/Western driven entity.

I did some googling and I saw that at least back in 2011 there were 14 safehouses for women in Afghanistan. Apparently they were having enough of an impact that the Afghan government was aware of them and were making an attempt to have them come under their control. I was not able to find out what happened after 2011 or what the status of the safehouses are now.

FWIW, while I have never been in Afghanistan I have met women born in Afghan or bordering countries. They were just like many other people I have met in that they had self-respect, did not want to be abused or to abuse others.

14 safe houses in country with 35 million people isn't a lot, but something is better than nothing. I think it's an important option to have.

If you spent time in one of those places, I don't think you would ever wish that on anyone. Do a little googling on how Dubai treats its Pakistani migrant workers. Or how the USAID community treats its 'third country nationals' working on construction contracts in Afghanistan....

What I had in mind was the type of zones established for educated workers from western countries. I gather that they have been able to hold onto their passports and to be able to leave the country at will. But I'll concede that it would be difficult to establish zones that would give the same degree of safety for Afghan women.

I have read very disturbing articles on how Saudi Arabia has treated its workers from Central Asia and the Phillipines. I was not able to find articles about how the USAID agency treats its third world workers on their Afghan construction contracts. But I can deduce that you think that they are part of the problem and not the solution.

 

[Antiquehunter]

I have read very disturbing articles on how Saudi Arabia has treated its workers from Central Asia and the Phillipines. I was not able to find articles about how the USAID agency treats its third world workers on their Afghan construction contracts. But I can deduce that you think that they are part of the problem and not the solution.

I'm not being DIRECTLY critical of USAID. However, the contracts that they award (often, but not always to US businesses) for construction, generally in remote parts of Afghanistan, involve the recruitment of lots of 'Third Country Nationals' - often Thai, Filipino, Turkish, or other labourers. These are the people who bear the brunt of poor living conditions, having their passports held 'for their safety' while on contract, and almost assuredly, without the same level of care and security cover offered the project managers & supervisors - generally US nationals, living in gilded cages in Kabul.

Look - its the way of the world, and that is the way business works. Companies will mistreat staff when they can get away with it. USAID pays enough lip service that if you questioned a USAID program administrator, they would of course be shocked that someone suggests this needs to be examined.

But it does.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I might start a new topic; "We're all born with morals built-in" - does this mean babies are aware it is considered morally wrong to have other sexual partners when you're married?

Babies can't walk at birth, does that mean the ability to walk is not built in?

Studies have been done on very young children demonstrating moral thinking occurs despite what they've been taught. One study I linked to in the other threads and I'm not going to hunt it down was an experiment done on 5 yr olds. They had no trouble changing an arbitrary rule like no eating in the classroom. It the teacher told them, now it is OK to eat in class they were fine with it. But if the same kids were told, now it is OK to hit a puppy, they did not accept that rule change.


The problem here is the literature is full of studies that started with the assumption that morality was almost all learned behavior. But that's not what current science is revealing.

Neuroscience of Morality

In the last decade, neuroscientists and psychologists have produced a substantial body of empirical evidence which challenges established views of morality and rationality. This evidence may be incompatible with the central methodology in practical ethics which involves putting weight on intuitions in ethical reflection (Rawls 1951, 1972; Daniels 1996).

Employing neuroimaging and psychological experiments, Haidt (2001), Hauser (2006) and others have documented unconscious influences on moral judgement with little input from consciousness. In one influential study, Greene et al. (2001) used fMRI to study the neural correlates of responses to moral dilemmas, showing that subjects who responded in a non-utilitarian manner exhibited strong activation in brain areas associated with emotion. These claims have been supported by studies of patients with frontal damage (Koeings et al. 2007; but see Kahane & Shackel 2008). Others studies show that the reasons people adduce to justify moral judgements are often merely post-hoc rationalizations (Haidt 2007). Finally, surveys of the intuitions of lay persons have shown moral judgements vary across cultures and classes (Haidt 2001). Such research has been claimed to support far-reaching conclusions such as the denial of the viability of virtue ethics (Harman, 1999; Doris 2002) and of common views about killing (Greene 2003), risk, punishment, and reproduction (Sunstein 2005). Utilitarians such as Peter Singer (2005) claim that it shows that opposition to utilitarianism is due to irrational emotions. However, there remain serious philosophical questions about the methodology and interpretation of this empirical research, its bearing on normative claims, and its implications for ethical practice (Levy 2006, 2007).

Unfortunately these links only have the intro free: Neuroscience and Morality

Humans are social animals who use specialized brain mechanisms to assess the actions of others. This system for social cognition can be studied by imaging techniques, and its damage can lead to inappropriate social and moral behavior. Neuroscience can thus enrich our understanding of behaviors traditionally thought to be outside the province of science.

Neuroscience and Morality

n 2009 I participated in a symposium, “Toward a Common Morality,” held at the United Nations Building in New York, that reflected the growing interest among scientists and philosophers in showing that science—particularly neuroscience—provides a foundation, not only for understanding morality, but also for improving it. In this essay I shall examine three books that are part of this trend: Experiments in Ethics, by Kwame Anthony Appiah; The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, by Sam Harris; and Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality, by Patricia S. Churchland. These three books put forward quite different perspectives about the relationship between science and morality, which suggests that neuroscience has nothing to add to our understanding of morality as a code of conduct that everyone should follow. However, neuroscience may help explain why some people behave as they do in situations that call for moral decisions or judgments.

This link is a partial book preview:
Hardwired Behavior, What Neuroscience Reveals about Morality It's cut/paste protected so let me direct you to the first chapter, Neuroscience and Morality.

 

[Lithrael]

Gained? By learning from parents and older siblings?

By stimulus in general; babies' brains are still cooking quite vigorously in those early years. Look, I really don't know that this is a productive line of thinking. If you take a baby and raise it with no interaction there are a whole lot of traits it will never develop on its own which are nevertheless typical human traits. I think the comparison of morals to language is relatively apt.

But there's a lot of child psychology you could look at to see if there's anything interesting to shake out of it. For instance, I have repeatedly heard that most children develop some sense of empathy that just seems to come naturally to them, by whatever benchmark of development. But some children who aren't interacted with enough to learn to care what others think by a certain benchmark in brain development, will remain incapable of and disinterested in empathy for the rest of their lives. This is where you get these horror stories of foster kids that want to murder people just because they feel like it. ETA: ISTR this was a problem with kids with some types of autism, who just don't pick up many interpersonal cues and so don't learn from them.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The problem is not the assumption that when people behave morally, it's due to their hardwired brains behaving normally. It's the assumption that when people behave in an immoral way, that it's due to their brains behaving abnormally.

If we simply define everything that human beings normally do as being moral, then obviously morality has a biological basis. However, morality then disappears as a useful concept. Whatever we do is moral, so there's no guidance necessary.

If the claim is that some behaviour is moral, and some immoral, then a biological theory of morality needs to establish that in some way, immoral behaviour is disfunctional and faulty. There has been no attempt to establish this, beyond the circular reasoning that the behaviour is atypical, and therefore must indicate a less effective organism.

The evidence of human history is strongly in favour of violence, cruelty and selfishness being entirely normal and expected.

You are getting into a semantics argument about what is normal and what is not. Even psychiatrists can't always agree, and look at the history of calling masturbating and homosexuality mental illnesses. That's well beyond the scope of any discussion I want to have.

And you keep wanting to add in all number of circumstances and variables. Just take the normal person under normal circumstances.

Normal people do not kill in anger. If you have such a severe problem that your anger leads you to kill, that's abnormal.

Normal people have an innate aversion to killing both people and some animals like pets. That doesn't mean there aren't circumstances where a normal brain makes an unusual decision. Typically one would still feel bad if one had to kill someone and I think it is abnormal to kill without any pain of guilt.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

If you confine "humanity" to mean "Westerners living in the late twentieth/early twenty-first centuries" then you may well be right. However, that is not the human norm.

The Comanche of Northern Texas had a society where it was considered normal to kill, rape and torture members of opposing tribes, Mexicans and Texans. Their entire society participated in this, and it was not felt to be in any way abnormal. Within their own people, they were kind and loving.

The white society that encountered the Comanche were horrified by these practices. They considered themselves better and more moral. Nevertheless, they managed, by various means, to repress, exterminate and imprison the Comanche until they were no longer a threat.

I suppose one could come up with a bizarre theory by which some strange Texan virus caused such atypical behaviour, but this can be countermanded by the obvious observation that every human society exists because someone else was removed. We all live on an Indian graveyard.

In conditions of plenty, human beings can be as empathetic as they want. Come the bad times, morality adjusts.

Killing 'others' requires people to first believe the 'others' are not human. I posted a link discussing dehumanizing.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It's the norm when the circumstances dictate that it is the norm. The behaviour of all species is dependent on circumstances.

Are you claiming it's all nurture and no nature?

 

[westprog]

Are you claiming it's all nurture and no nature?

I find the distinction between nurture and nature somewhat artificial. It seems to be something that is far more talked about with humans that with other species. Everything that humans do is due to their biological nature. Everything that humans do is in response to their environment. Clearly its possible for learned behaviours to be passed on. Whether or not moral behaviour is built in genetically, it's part of the biological specification of human beings - as is immoral behaviour. And I repeat - to consider the norm for human behaviour as being the twentieth century in the western world, ignoring everything else, is not reasonable. Consider mankind as it has existed throughout history, and the willingness and ability to kill other humans can be seen as not only common, but almost a defining characteristic of the species. Obviously intra-species deadly violence is limited in its scope. If killing fellow humans were an everyday affair, then humanity would quickly wipe itself out.

 

[westprog]

Killing 'others' requires people to first believe the 'others' are not human. I posted a link discussing dehumanizing.

Reading studies on groups such as Native Americans and other primitive* peoples, one finds that the name they give their own group can typically be translated as "human beings".

How far back does this go? Well, what happened to the Neanderthals?

 

[Belz...]

But once again, mobs and lynching are not the norm.

Who said it was ?

Well that ought to be a clue for you.

Just because we have laws against rare behaviour doesn't mean laws are there solely against rare behaviours. Killing is not a rare behaviour, also.

 

[Belz...]

To be fair to Skeptic Ginger, the only way to conclusively prove we're born with morals built-in would be to raise a child from birth to adulthood in a sterile, controlled environment and then test them. Would be extremely difficult to do though; imagine using children's books to teach the child to read while trying to avoid any moral lessons...

Ever seen the Kurt Russel movie "Soldier" ? They pick babies at birth and raise them to be cold killers.

Far be it from me to make an argument from a movie, but assuming you could take a child from birth and raise them this way, would Ginger say we're deprogramming their natural tendencies ? I could reply that children raised in 'normal' homes in the west are also deprogrammed of said tendencies. We teach them that hitting each other is not nice, while otherwise they do it willy-nilly. We tell them that stealing is not nice. We tell them to wipe their butts when they go to the stool. Oddly, we keep having to tell them all these civilised things, over and over, over several years, only to have them memorise part of it and ignore the rest all too often, forcing us to have laws in place to prevent them from running red lights all the time and endangering their kin. Doesn't sound to me like we're genetically predisposed to be nice to each other.

 

[Belz...]

You picked up on that too, huh?

Well, that veil was pretty thin, anyway.

 

[Belz...]

However, even when most people need to kill another person, it's very hard to do. It goes against our moral grain.

Emphasis mine.

Our what ?