Well, ya see, there’s good torture and there’s bad torture…

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2 responses to “Well, ya see, there’s good torture and there’s bad torture…”

1. December 3, 2004

   Bill

   Lee, I can’t see it as being that simple. Almost any real world argument can be “smacked down” with absolute deontological positions. But such a position can get you or someone you love killed.

   Hypothetical situation: A person you care for deeply is held hostage but not for ransom or any purpose other than coercion of your behavior or to kill as an object example (there have been plenty of those situations in the news this year), and you have your hands on someone who knows who has that person and where they are being held. You also know that the person you hold is of no value in a trade. So far this is a very realistic scenario, just look at previous hostage situations.

   Do you a) treat them nicely and hope their good nature will tell you what you need to know?
   b) treat them any other way and question them?
   If b), at what point do you draw the line between interogation and torture, and if you know that not getting the information will lead to the death of the person you care about, what is justified?

   Final question: If you self-righteously use no coercion (by the way the implied use of any coercion as torture is an overbroad definition) on your prisoner and your loved one dies, how do you live with knowing that if you had done something they might be alive? Is your moral purity worth allowing someone innocent to lose their life?

   The AnalPhilosopher has some excellent posts and papers relating to such issues. He is a deotologist vs. a utilitarian, and points out the problems well.

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2. December 3, 2004

   Lee

   Bill –

   I agree that the line between “coercion” and “torture” may be a fuzzy one, but I would still say that there are some things that fall on the torture side of the line that should be categorically prohibited.

   In the scenario you describe I would probably be very tempted to use torture if it was a matter of life or death for a loved one. But would that make it right? What about torturing the child of the person holding my loved one hostage? Once the consequentialist logic is accepted I fear things get very slippery.

   But even if we’re willing to accept that line of argument, this is a far cry from justifying torture as a matter of government policy. I have next to no faith that once torture is made official policy that it would be limited to “acceptable” forms of torture. And again, the slippery slope looms. Once we accept torture to get at terrorists, why not serial killers, or other more mundane criminals? Aren’t their victims’ lives worth just as much as the victims of terrorists?

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