Can someone concisely formulate what makes torture so immoral?

Great Debates
61

Sure.
First you said that people thought torture was bad, but that those opposing torture did not realize how violent the world is–as if making the world more violent was any sort of excuse.

Then you said that we would make up some sort of infallible test and only use it when it was needed
as if we could actually make such a test or that those employing it would ever do so fairly.
(As a bonus, you threw in the odd and unsubstantiated claim that torturers did not really want to inflict pain.)
You also threw in the idea of torturing someone who had already been convicted of a crime, thus violating the Constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments.

Then you proposed that we assume that the victim of torture is a bad person (as if the torturers, today, do not already make that assumption) and that torture is the only way to get information to prevent something bad happening (something that has only ever occurred in silly plots on TV and the movies).

You continue to flounder about looking for any random excuse to inflict pain on another human.

Well, so far, I have been doing a pretty good job of deconstructing your arguments before you extend them, so you appear to be mistaken on that point.

= = =
Torture is wrong. It inflicts terrible pain on a person who is captive and who cannot either flee or defend himself or herself. None of your rationalizing hypotheticals have stood up to even cursory examination.

62

These comments were not construed as a single argument and should not be taken as a single line of reasoning.

I understand that we’re on opposing sides of this debate. But if you discredit my position with these backhanded remarks, this turns into more of a fight than a debate.

I know you think my position is weak, I have no serious arguments, perhaps I’m not the brightest bulb. This kind of talk makes those thoughts worse. Can we detach from this personally, or are you vested in this topic on a very deep level to the point where this is going to turn into a fight no matter what?

This is incorrect. You haven’t deconstructed my arguments, you’ve mischaracterized them.

= = =

This is incorrect. I haven’t been able to form an argument because you haven’t played along with my hypothetical. Instead, as you admit you attempted to extend my line of reasoning to the logical conclusion, and mischaracterized the argument in the process.

That’s okay. Tomorrow I’ll make some time to come back here with a fully fleshed out argument that doesn’t require you to play along.

63

I generally agree with your points made in this thread, but this is not a good rationale against torture. I mean, it is, but it is not sufficient. The state inflicts terrible pain on a person who is captive and who cannot either flee or defend themselves in other scenario which we as a society have deemed acceptable. We execute people. Imprison them for life in supermax facilities. Terrible pain is not sufficient criteria to draw the conclusion that something is simply wrong.

64

I noted that you kept creating increasingly silly scenarios. You asked to see them. Now you are complaining that they were not a single argument.
Are you even reading your own posts?

I can only discredit an argument that is discreditable.

If you have a serious point to make, the take the time to actually think out your position and present it. As long as you simply continue to ask the same question over and over, only trying to box in your opponent with more elaborate scenarios that fail to address the actual issue, you are going to invite the same sort of response.

I see no place where I have mischaracterized your posts.

65

Point taken on the “silly arguments” (from your perspective of course)

  1. By talking about what torturers today think, you are subtly reframing the hypothetical way from the ethical argument. It’s not relevant and steers the conversation away from the point of the hypothetical. This is why I’ve been asking you not to write out my arguments for me.

  2. You just hand waved away torture as a silly TV plot line without presenting any evidence for your position. Somehow you feel entitled to attack me when I don’t provide a reference for every sentence in my post.

I’m going to bow out of this conversation; I only like debating when the other side is able to keep the debate impersonal and argue with an open mind and I don’t think you can do that, at least not with this topic.

66

I choose the Potter Stewart test for torture: if it inflicts terrible pain or discomfort, accomplishes no goal with redeeming social importance and gives Dick Cheney a boner, then it is the simply wrong in the same way that killing lots of helpless people is wrong.

I call it the Dick Cheney test. If someone like Dick Cheney, who is decrepit and on death’s door for decades on end and is so evil the Devil won’t take him for fear he will take over hell, advocates something that is against international law and norms, then it is wrong. Your mileage may vary, and you may want to call it the Kissinger or Pinochet test.

67

But it does work. The purpose of torture is to inflict pain. It succeeds at that purpose. It’s evil because it’s specifically setting out to perform an evil goal as its primary and intended purpose. It’s not a matter of the pain being an unfortunate side-effect of some other goal (which may or may not be a moral one); it’s pain for the sake of pain. The only justification possible for torture is “Let’s do it because we’re EEE-VIL!”.

68

Plus as an added bonus for the evil doers (and IMHO it is one of the big reasons why they do it) there is false evidence to be obtained that does justify the money and power to be had and to be maintained by the ones doing the torture.

69

It’s worse than that. The “actionable intelligence” obtained via torture is bullshit, made up on the spot by people wanting the pain to stop somehow, and diverting actual resources toward it and away from real intelligence actually hurts the torturing country itself.

70

Do you read what you post?
You are the one who claimed that torturers were only interested in the information and had no interest in inflicting pain. You are perfectly free to support that claim with evidence. Failing that, my response to your hypothetical remains valid.

Again, you are free to provide a real world example where the use of torture resulted in the savings of thousands of lives. Failing that, I am well within my rights to point out that imaginary scenarios do not provide a solid basis on which to argue a hypothetical.

In any event, I have explicitly declared that regardless of the three (so far) scenarios that you have presented, I would not consider torture to be justifiable.

You have not yet attempted a debate. You have asked us to accept unrealistic scenarios as a basis for us to admit that we might be OK with torture, but you have failed to actually put forth an argument in support of your position.

71

Torture makes the world a worse place. The human race has gradually moved to a era when many rights are guaranteed by law in many places for many people. That’s good for me and good for you and – hopefully – good for even more people in the years to come.

I can’t prove that rule of the strongest is wrong. I can’t prove that the power holders in North Korea are worse than the people making the rules in Sweden. But to me, accepting government-backed torture is burrowing back into a hole filled with maggots, shit and rotten meat. It’s a place I want to leave behind, not a place I want for my home.

As for how I’d convince someone on-the-edge to be against it? Yeah, it’s the golden rule. Are you going to support when it’s you, or your child, being tortured?

72

You can’t answer whether torture is wrong or right without first stating clearly upon which morality you wan’t it to be based (ergo you must solve the morality debate) otherwise you automatically lapse into utilitarianism at which point the answer is, well maybe, sometimes, I guess, but only if its worth it.

Its a question reliant on fundamentals.

73

It is the authorized use of evil. (Against something that may or may not be actually evil. )

It is not just that it is very bad for the person receiving it but also very bad for the person preforming it, and the society which he/she lives in.

74

I’m in no way an apologist for torture, but that’s just an asinine comparison. Is it likely that a team of seals will burst into an apartment, find bomb-making supplies and a map of new york, and just as they do a guy who was typing on a computer yanks the power cord out? No, not at all. But to compare it with a hypothetical involving aliens is just silly.

Granted, I bet the median number of times a situation like that happens per year of serious intelligence investigation is probably zero, but that doesn’t mean that it’s just an imaginary fantasy.
That said, I don’t think there should be any legal allowance for torture ever. And if Jack Bauer actually finds himself in that incredibly unlikely situation, and decides to torture the guy, then he should absolutely be prepared to face the legal and moral consequences for his actions.

(I’m also fairly skeptical of the blanket statement that torture just plain doesn’t work… particularly in the kind of very rare situation mentioned above, which of course is so rare that we have a very small sample size. I know that I personally would cough up the password in about 35 seconds. Can someone tougher than me hold out for 72 hours? a week? I admit that I don’t really know, but I’m skeptical that anyone else really knows either. Certainly there have been some evil regimes that were both willing to torture and famous for the efficiency and organization. Did Nazis stop torturing captured French Resistance fighters a few years into the occupation because they realized it just wasn’t working? Granted there are other potential reasons for torture in that situation, intimidation of the population, punishment, etc.)

75

I come to this debate late and for the basest of reasons - morbid curiosity after an earlier contributor got themselves suspended. However I feel moved to make two observations.

First: What is torture? I assume there is no objection to a prisoner being asked questions. I assume physically dismembering a prisoner (in the search for information) is torture. But what of the vast grey area in between?

Can a prisoner be slapped gently during interrogation? Can a prisoner be interrogated for hours at a time (sleep deprivation), denied water, denied toilet facilities, kept too hot or too cold…

Is it OK to attack religious beliefs (feed a Jew pork), shave beards or allow women to watch male prisoners using toilets?

If actual violence is taboo is it OK to just threaten violence? Is it OK to bang on tables and throw chairs around? How about an ornate threat - bring in silent, masked men wearing rubber aprons and pushing blood stained trolleys of surgical instruments. Providing they are not used is that OK?

What about threats to the family? How about the popular “Here is a photograph of your beautiful wife. We are going to get the President to announce on TV you DID tell us secrets… Let’s hope your terrorist buddies don’t believe us and take it out on your wife or your daughter…”

What about threats to lock someone up for 500 years in a SuperMax in solitary confinement. Is that not torture? What about threatening a black man with being “accidentally” locked up in a prison of mainly Neo-Nazis? Or a white man in a wing with mainly black gang bangers? What about actually locking them up in those situations?

I could continue indefinitely but what is OK and what isn’t, when does interview become interrogation become enhanced interrogation become actual torture?

Secondly: I think - personal view here - it is naive to suggest torture never works and, however you choose to define it, I mean actual, literal, undeniable and morally inexcusable, abhorrent torture.

Say you have a terrorist and you suspect the terrorist knows, amongst other things, the location of a terrorist arms cache. Torture them to provide a location. Check out the location. If there is an arms cache there the torture did work. If there wasn’t an arms cache the torture failed but the operational cost of checking a location is relatively low.

I agree that torture a prisoner long enough and they will almost certainly, ultimately, “admit” to anything so in that respect torture is not a universal panacea and cannot guarantee reliable information. But it can be used to gather a range of information and some of that data can be easily checked and that data stream can be valuable and can aid the fight.

For the record, and to make my position clear, I don’t believe torture should be used. But as I asked earlier - what is torture?

TCMF-2L

76

Those are the words of Napoleon Bonaparte. But what would he know, he only conquered most of Europe, clearly he’s more naive about such matters than the guy running interference for those sick bastards at the CIA.

77

In the U.S. I’ll settle for a ban on “cruel and unusual” punishments. Similarly, on the SDMB I’ll settle on the essential code of conduct being “don’t be a jerk.” Those phrases can be parsed to a subatomic level, and their meaning will change with time and the authorities enforcing them. And with the accumulation of precedent.

78

Baal

I am not sure whether you are trying to be funny, sarcastic or whatever by apparently slipping in a reference to me being a jerk.

For clarity I was not trying to be a jerk or in any way insincere in what I posted. If I gave the impression I was then I apologise.

I still feel the question “What is torture?” is not sufficiently answered by a simple “Cruel and unusual” but perhaps that is just me being ignorant. I am receptive to being enlightened. I did give some examples of different behaviours which could be used in questioning and I feel some are not necessarily torture but equally not the way I would want to be treated. But then again not a way “real” terrorists could complain about being treated… But then, yet again, how to tell whether a prisoner is a “real” terrorist or just an innocent victim of some wrongful arrest?

Grumman

While repeating I believe torture is wrong on moral grounds I still believe it is capable of yielding useful data. I am unconvinced by references to Napoleon.

I am no historian but having rushed to Wikipedia I note the Mongols conquered even more of Europe (Eurasia if you insist) for far longer than Napoleon managed and their modus operandi was characterised by genocide and the slaughter of civilians. I wouldn’t use that historical example as a template for the, to quote, “Sick Bastards” at the CIA.

TCMF-2L

79

How about some of these:

  1. The information gained through torture is unreliable.

  2. A person being tortured is likely to say anything to stop the torture.

  3. There is a good chance that a torturer will err in choosing a subject for torture, resulting in tremendous suffering to a person entirely uninformed about the information sought.

  4. Torture has long-term emotional and mental consequences that can ruin a perosn’s life, or create lasting resentment (creating your next enemy).

  5. The outrage created by torture aids your opponents in recruiting support.

  6. Torture insures an individual torturer, an institution using torture, or a society allowing torture against suffering, resulting in a willingness to tolerate or commit more cruelty.

  7. An individual has a human and civil right not to self-incriminate.

  8. A government or institution that is empowered to torture is likely to use torture or the threat of torture to elicit false confessions or other corrupt practices.

I see it as akin to statutory rape or incest laws or bans on cannibalism.

Yes, I can conceive of a situation in which it might be okay—or less not okay—for close relatives or adults and not-quite-yet-adults to engage in mutually consensual sexual behavior. And, yes, perhaps I can conceive of a situation in which one human being eating another human being hasn’t directly caused anyone harm.

But those limited, theoretical possibilities are so limited, and the downside of allowing for such theoretical possibilities is to inject a poisonous element in our culture are so massively consequential, that it is better to stick with a flat ban.

80

Interesting belief you’ve got there. Would you happen to have any solid evidence to back it up?