The OP presumes that torture is a valid method of eliciting truth. It is not. Studies have proven again and again that torture is only useful in getting people to say what they think the interrogator wants them to say. They spew wild stabs at the air until they begin to sense a warming to their narrative, then they will develop that narrative in whatever direction elicits positive reinforcement.
Also, torture takes time, days on end to really break someone. Once they are broken you can’t fix them, even if you discover they never had the information you wanted.
I would throw the switch if it meant waterboarding the person once, because that is the answer that I would give myself. Would I rather be waterboarded once than watch five people die horribly? Yes, of course. Would I rather be broken and then left to live than be hit by a trolley myself? Absolutely not.
Torture does awful things to the torturer as well as to the tortured. I don’t wish to live in a society where torture is accepted as a routine action. Think of how coarse and unfeeling a society like that must be.
Yep. If I saw someone leave behind a duffel bag, and I looked in the duffel bag and it was filled with hundred dollar bills, I might be willing to walk away with the duffel bag instead of running after the guy and returning it to him. That doesn’t mean stealing is justified, it’s just that stacks of hundred dollar bills could be enough to make me do something morally wrong, like stealing.
The whole point of the train hypothetical is in determining whether you feel like you are responsible for your own inaction. For me, if I don’t switch the track, I am guilty of murdering those five people. But, for a lot of people, those people were going to die, but if you flip the switch, then they are guilty of murdering the one person.
I’m pretty sure that Mr. Dibble is of the latter type, and thus nothing will justify him committing torture, as that would be the only thing making him guilty.
As for me, it has to do with the weighing of how bad torture is versus death. I think I could waterboard in your absurd hypothetical, since I know the worst they are going to experience is a panic attack. And I’ve had those, and I know you can move on from those, especially if there’s a clear trigger–thus giving you something to work with to avoid creating a phobia.
But I’ve also been asked if I would eat a baby to save the world (as an example of the questions the head RA would ask on job applications). My answer was that I would want to be unable to do it. Yes, I’d be performing an immoral act, but I couldn’t eat a live baby, no matter what.
You have to factor in that, too. How many people couldn’t do it, but would think they were being immoral in refusing?
There was a very famous case in Spain that happened in 1910. Summing up – in a village near the city of Cuenca, two men were accused of killing another one, who had disappeared. They were arrested, accused of the murder of that man, but they were released not long afterwards for lack of evidence (among other things, the body of the victim had never been found).
In 1913 the case was reopened, they were re-arrested, and were then subjected to hair-rising torture. Confessions in hand, they were tried and sentenced to jail in 1918, their defense counsel being able to barely prevent them from being sentenced to death.
In 1925 they were released after receiving a pardon.
In 1926 their supposed victim showed up in his village, perfectly healthy and alive. He had just left, and had never thought of contacting anybody he had left behind.
In this case torture was even worse than useless – It led to a horrendous miscarriage of justice, punishing two people for a crime that they had not committed… For a crime that had not even taken place.
The relevant Wikipedia article quotes the comments of the Supreme Court on the matter:
After the indisputable identification of Grimaldos (the supposed victim), the Minister of Grace and Justice ordered the retrial of the case and ordered the prosecutor of the Supreme Court to appeal for revision against the sentence of the hearing of Cuenca. On the aforementioned order it is noted that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the confession of Valero and Sánchez (the two people accused of the crime), essential basis of their convictions, were extracted under exceptional continuous violence”. (…) According to the Supreme Court: “given the error of fact that motivated the sentence, it is declared void, for it punished a crime that was not committed, thus confirming the innocence of Gregorio Valero and León Sánchez” (Supreme Court, sentence from the retrial in July 10, 1926). The sentence published by the Supreme Court declared the ruling issued in Cuenca in 1918 void, therefore establishing Sánchez and Valero’s innocence; at the same time as it established the nullity of José María Grimaldos’ death certificate, and established the corresponding compensations that the State had to pay to the prisoners in such cases.
But that’s a strawman. I’ve never seen anyone argue even remotely seriously that torture should be used to elicit a confession, and then that the confession should be used as evidence, or anything of that sort. That’s obviously a terrible idea.
To the extent that I think there’s any chance torture “works”, it would HAVE to be in a case where it provides information that can be verified. For instance, you have a safe, and you’re torturing a guy to get the combination to the safe, and each time he tells you a combination you try it. He knows that there’s no point in lying, because that combination won’t open the safe.
In any case, I agree that (a) MrDibble’s position is bizarre almost to the point of unbelievability, and (b) the idea of having to get (presumably VERY rare) torture warrants is a good one, although of course the system would have to be set up to work VERY quickly on the rare occasions when it was needed.
But then the “ticking bomb” scenario breaks down here-- yes, that is information that can be verified, but if you are running against the clock, if the guy is brave, strong or trained enough, he will give you some bullshit that will make you lose time while you check it out. With any luck the bomb will go off while you are going around in your wild goose chase. You check it out and come back and torture him harder for the real answer? Rinse and repeat, until the bomb goes off. You have no way of knowing beforehand whether he’s told you the truth until you check. And if he is truly devoted to the cause… He may take quite a bit before you “break” him. And by that point you won’t be sure that you have truly broken him.
And if you have caught the wrong guy, but you are convinced (for whatever reasons) that he is the right one (cf. the two guys from that case I mentioned)… He may well say anything to make you stop, and you are again sent in a wild goose chase (because you don’t believe him when he says he has nothing to do with that nefarious plot).
Too many holes to make it any kind of reliable tool, I think.
Oh, I agree. The only thing I ever disagree with is when people say that torture would NEVER work as some definitive final blanket statement, which I think is overly broad.
It was a while ago that I read this thread all the way through, but I don’t recall anyone saying torture never works. People have said it’s never justified or that they would never participate in it. I can tell you now that if someone ever tortured or credibly threatened to torture me for my bank details they would get them immediately. Torture would be super-effective in that scenario but morally pretty indefensible.
Personally I think that the government should have to gain authorization from a specially appointed tribunal before they choose to torture someone.
The tribunal would require proof that:
An attack was imminent and the detainee had knowledge of the attack
All other interrogation techniques had been attempted
The detainee was a person of importance within a military or terrorist organisation
Only then should government or military forces be able to torture someone. After the torture has been completed those that committed the torture should have to go before a public court of law and undergo a retrial to assess whether what they did was justified, effective or necessary. If it was neither of these things those that were responsible for the torture should then face criminal prosecution.
But if you would literally let the world burn… every one of the six billion humans alive today die, all of their hopes and dreams and potential snuffed out, the entire SPECIES of which you are a part extinguished forever, solely so that YOU did not have to engage in a single (in isolation) incredibly unpleasant and immoral and evil act which inflicted quite a bit of pain (but did not kill) another human being, one known to be evil; well, I can’t even describe how ridiculously immoral a decision that is.
It’s one thing to say “I wouldn’t torture, except in ridiculous hypotheticals”. It’s just nonsensical to say “I wouldn’t torture, even IN ridiculous hypotheticals”.
Sorry, I refuse to consider the decision not to torture another human being as immoral, under any circumstance, any more than not murdering or not raping are ever immoral.
A world that needs torture to save it is just Omelas, and I’d happily walk away from it, or watch it burn.
There’s no difference, the question is about what my morality says I should do, the degree of ridiculousness of the hypothetical is irrelevant. They’re all ridiculous hypotheticals to me.
Well I also did wonder if Mr Dibble was off base, but his explanation IMHO has to be taken into account, the idea I think is that if we have to reach for a hypothetical about saving the whole world I would then begin to think that there is a coyote involved.
As we have seen, it is only in a setting where authority figures are present the most likely place this hypothetical could take place, a regular bloke has really just about a 0% chance to be involved on this. (And so few and iffy successes have been shown that this idea of torture remains evil because in virtually all occasions, you will lose more than your soul)
But we are talking now about saving the world, but to reach that hypothetical however we have to include a lot of things, including getting the gods into the picture.
I think that reaching this level of an extinction event and that one person will have the chance to save it is something that only a trickster god will get to be involved and we know that Yahweh is like that.
My point here is that just like the forbidden fruit I do think that the gods already know that it is going to happen, after eating the fruit the gods will toss us out with ourselves blaming for the failure and not god for doing what was needed for us to develop. And in the matter at hand, regardless if we torture the baby, the gods could set this hypothetical just to blame humans for the disaster that they know already is coming anyhow. It does help the gods tell themselves that they are blameless. (This is very simple, IMHO it is more likely that the humans in authority positions will be the ones setting this up so as to wash their hands, and it also helps the ones in favor of torture to justify their flawed ideologies)
Of course I’m mostly an agnostic these days and it is more likely that I will deduce that if confronted with that hypothetical I will think that it is more likely that it is the crazed villain of the Saw movies the one who is setting that hypothetical. Knowing that it is more likely that I will end up dead anyhow I will not torture or eat the baby, I will know that the rest of humanity will be ok while a crazy man is cutting my head off for not playing his game.
Killing another human being is wrong. Just about everyone agrees with that. But there are exceptions where it is not wrong. Most moral codes acknowledge the need for exceptions. Orthodox Jews will break sabbath if it’s required to save a life.
Why is it necessarily the world’s fault that it’s in this situation? If a child is kidnapped and you’re faced with the decision of whether to torture the man you believe to be the kidnapper, the fact that saving the child (arguably) requires torture does not in any way reflect on the child. A crazy hypothetical involving committing torture to save the world doesn’t necessarily reflect on the world.
I’m not really sure what that means… I’m sure that either committing or suffering torture is a terrible and traumatic experience for any decent human being. But people are tough and can survive all sorts of shit. Could a decent human being forced into one of those terrible hypotheticals commit torture and then just smile and walk away from it? I’d like to think not. But it’s also a bit hyperbolic to say that no amount of therapy/time/whatever could ever possibly allow them to regain even a shred of their humanity, yada yada yada.
Sure, but I think you’re just fighting the hypothetical. There’s a huge difference between “someone CLAIMS that committing torture will save the world, should you do it” and “you KNOW that committing torture will save the world, should you do it”.
Following up on my position here a bit, I hope that no one thinks that I am FOR torture. Rather, I think that people are falling over themselves in a fairly silly fashion to prove how absolutely ludicrously extreme their anti-torture position is.
Look, I’m very much against using nuclear weapons. I would argue that using a nuclear weapon is MUCH worse than torturing a single person. It kills tens of thousands, and causes massive suffering… WAY more actual pain than the torture of a single person, because of the number of people left with their skin melting off etc etc.
I’m quite happy that no one has used a nuclear weapon in the past 70 years. I hope no one uses a nuclear weapon for the next 70 years. But I’m quite happy making a statement like “we should not use nuclear weapons except in the most dire and unusual circumstances”, and most people wouldn’t look askance at that italicized qualification. Why is torture so much worse than nuclear weapons that for torture it is unacceptable to acknowledge the possibility of any exception, no matter how contrived?
I was referring to torture being an important reason on why we did go to Iraq, about a million souls lost thanks to the authorities trying to find evidence to justify an invasion. And I’m also taking into account the many innocents that were tortured to get confessions like the doctors and nurses in Libya. It is a good bet that the torturers in those cases and to this day do think that they did the right thing.
Nope. just letting you know what that hypothetical does imply, the moment you want to make it reach those absurd levels we are dealing then with divine intervention and I would tell the one setting the scenario that I bet that the world was going to end anyhow or that the deity will not be as evil to make the choice of a simple person to decide the fate of humanity.
That will assume that then I’m god, I would think of a better way to save the world.
Umm, well, then we agree? I have certainly not said anything that could possibly be construed as supporting torture in any of the above situations (or, really, any situation at all other than the contrived).
But it’s also hardly an unavoidable side effect of torture that torturing will always cause a million people to die, so… I’m not sure what your point is.
Not necessarily… this doesn’t have to just be the random sadistic alien/god performing a twilight-zone-style psychological experiment.
It could be a nihilistic terrorist who has planted a vial of unstoppable virulent super-flu that will be released via a timer in 1 hour, but you caught him and are trying to get him to tell you where it is.
Do you think torturing a single person is worse than using a nuclear weapon?