Defining Torture

In a comment on this post Bill Keezer questioned whether torture should be prohibited in all circumstances, raising the wrenching hypothetical dilemma of a loved one who can only be saved from certain death by applying torture.

I tried to offer some reasons why one should never resort to torture, but it occured to me that I’m not perfectly clear on what exactly we mean by torture, and thus what kinds of actions fall under that category.

So, it seems necessary to ask: what is torture, and what distinguishes it from other uses of force or coercion?

Here, from the UN Convention against Torture, is an attempt at a definition:

… ‘torture’ means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

(Emphasis added)

The highlighted parts seem to me to be a nod toward something like the principle of double effect. It’s not torture to inflict pain as a foreseeable but unintended side effect of some other legitimate sanction, or constraint, or whatever. In other words, to count as torture, the infliction of the pain must be intentional and is usually intended as the means to the end sought.

In the post I cited from Disputations, Tom quotes from the relevant passage in the documents of the Second Vatican Council:

… whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed.

(My emphasis again)

I think the notion of “coercing the will” gets at part of what we find so horrific about torture, apart from simply the infliction of the pain itself. The notion of coercing the will seems to imply an invasion of the inner sanctuary of the self – of reducing the self, soul or personality itself to a thing to be manipulated. This distinguishes torture from other forms of coercion which at least leave the will intact. For instance, the robber who says “Your money or your life” is undoubtedly engaging in coercion, but the victim’s will is still free to assent or not. If our dignity as human beings consists in part of our freedom of will, torture, to the extent it destroys this freedom, destroys the victim’s dignity.

None of this shows that the torture is categorically wrong, and there do seem to be some outstanding questions such as: How severe does pain have to be to count as torture? What about the threat of severe pain? Is that torture?

Hopefully, though, a clearer idea of what counts as torture will facilitate the understanding of its moral status.