No. The victims of torture continue to suffer the effects of torture long after the actual torture concludes.
If it wasn’t the case then we wouldn’t need charities like The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture.
The “ticking time bomb scenario”. (Wikipedia) See also Ethical arguments regarding torture.
Here’s a real-world case from 2002 (just one kid instead of one murder per minute though): German local police president threatens torture on kidnapper in order to find out missing boy’s whereabouts. Raised a really big political stink then. (Only five years later of criminal police and ministry of interior hammering the idea into our heads that effective law enforcement on the people is going to need “new methods” - y’all want Big Brother to be able to protect you from the Terror Bogeyman, don’t you - I’m not quite sure anymore how the public would react nowadays…)
I am deeply, deeply afraid of a naked and sexually aroused Carla Gugino. Please, please, don’t put me in a cage with a naked and sexually aroused Carla Gugino.
Hmm, this raises an interesting point. Going by Rule 34 of the Internet, if someone thinks of an automated death factory scenario that justifies torture, someone will make a movie about it and leave movie goers with lots of new thoughts and interesting ideas about the morality of torture. Of course, one movie goer will decide to copy the idea and make a real automated death factory.
Or are we supposed to wait for it to happen first instead of planning ahead?
Hey! Get out of my cage, I’m expecting Carla any minute. Mmmmm, Carla Gugino.
- Torture is never justified.
Because of number 1, the other two questions are irrelevant.
hmmm . . .Briar patch indeed.
regarding the OP - it is an absurd construction of implausibility, but I wil play.
I would torture 1 person to save 500,000 lives if I were morally certain that the person had the information to save those lives and would resist giving it to me under any other circumstances.
After saving the lives with this instantly verifiable information, I would surrender myself for prosecution to whatever authority could legitimately prosecute me fully and aggressively.
I can’t possibly speculate upon whether one extreme fictional construct in your scenario can effectively overcome another extreme fictional construct in your scenario. If you tell me which way that coin lands, it might change my answer.
I’m not big on absolute statements of justice, myself. Nor do I believe that every action I make is (or even should be) perfrctly just. I do agree that legitimizing torture as a tool for exercise by any state is a bad idea. That is not the same as saying that torture is never justified or that torture should never be used. Sometimes personal moral imperatives will contradict the laws of any institution. When that happens, I hope to have the courage to follow my personal convictions and the honor to accept the consequences afterward.