You contend that I said:
“you’re now arguing it’s possible to torture a mentally competent person but it’s not possible to torture a mentally incompetent person.”
I have categorically not said that.
It is ethical to cause the same amount of pain to a consenting competent person (because of their autonomy) and to an incompetent person through necessity.
Torture is not causing pain itself. Torture is causing pain against the will of a person without adequate justification.
[QUOTE=Pjen]
Torture is not causing pain itself. Torture is causing pain against the will of a person without adequate justification.
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It causes pain to incarcerate someone who wants to be free, or has claustrophobia. It is against their will. Justification is all in the eyes of society. It causes pain when you force medical treatment on a minor against the will of their parents who don’t want that treatment for their children due to religious or other personal belief.
The state has a duty to ensure that the people in their charge remain healthy even when this goes against the personal belief of the person in question. Once that person is no longer under the charge of the state and no longer incarcerated they can then take their life as they see fit. That some unspecified but asserted by you number of ‘civilised’ ‘western’ countries don’t see it that way is unfortunate, though I haven’t seen a lot of examples presented by you demonstrating that such ‘civilised’ nations actually follow through and allow prisoners to suicide at will, but since you aren’t willing to back up that assertion we’ll just say that this is the case for the sake of argument. The US, being un-civilized (and spelling civilized with a ‘z’ instead of an ‘s’, an obvious uncouth thing to do and further demonstrating how barbaric we are to folks such as yourself), does not agree that this is an action we should or will take. Most of the US posters to this thread also don’t seem to agree with your blithe disregard for the human lives in the charge of the state, and, frankly, putting back on my skeptical hat, I don’t believe your assertions that many ‘western nations’ who are oh so ‘civilised’ act in such a manner either, and I think you are merely talking out of your ass and asserting things you WISH were true but probably aren’t, at least not for each and every ‘western nation’ that isn’t the US. There are probably degrees and complexities and variation between the various ‘civilised’ nations on this, with things being more a gradient than a cut and dried black and white demarcation, as you attempt to imply. I come to this conclusion because you have as yet backed up nothing you have asserted in this thread, and I figure that if you could you would have, instead of attempting to muddy the waters and handwave away requests for cites by crying about proving negatives and other horseshit along those lines.
You can violate an unconscious person (though it would be excusable in circumstances such as yours); I don’t think you can torture one.
Why is “caring about” prisoners killing themselves more important than caring about not inflicting torture?
You do admit, then, that there are different possible tenets of ethics and that choosing what tenets are important affects the ethical thing to do. Excellent.
No-one is saying that one system is better than another. I could not possibly as I am an extreme moral relativist.
What is true is that the Western democracies can be divided into two camps. One camp has the USA and one applicant, Israel, the other has the rest of the countries of the western world. This fact must be of interest to ethicists.
Extreme CPR can result in broken ribs and other collateral damage that later causes major pain. Not supporting Little Nemo, but just clarifying.
[QUOTE=Pjen]
You do admit, then, that there are different possible tenets of ethics and that choosing what tenets are important affects the ethical thing to do. Excellent.
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I have always admitted this. It’s you who seem to be unable to distinguish between a world that is black and white, and one that has at least 50 shades of gray.
Your own words in this and other debates makes this statement hard to reconcile. However, I have no doubt that you think this is true.
Your unsupported assertion says this is so, but I’ll take it with a grain of salt. Regardless, even if it were true, that just means to me that your ‘civilised’ nations have some serious flaws in their thinking and actions.
If you believe that currently any western country other than the USA force feeds hunger striking prisoners, you should be able to produce news articles about the practice.
There are articles about the UK which ceased the practice some thirty years ago, and about Israel which force fed some Palestinian prisoners some years ago. Both the UK and Israel made the practice illegal. Israel currently has a parliamentary bill pending seeking to reintroduce force feeding.
Apart from those examples there are no other Google hits for force feeding of prisoners in the Western world.
If you are to continue to insist that other Western countries do currently resort to the practice, you should have no problem producing a cite.
I have done my very best to do the impossible- to prove a negative empirically - a task which is known to be impossible.
[QUOTE=Pjen]
I have done my very best to do the impossible- to prove a negative empirically - a task which is known to be impossible.
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You’ve certainly done your very best to try and rebrand my request as impossible and proving a negative, but I’ll leave it to anyone interested to simply scroll up and see for themselves and judge whether my request for a cite from you to back up your repeated assertions was unreasonable.
It’s your assertion…and one you’ve repeatedly rejected backing up with cites. Why would I backup YOUR ridiculous assertions when you’ve done nothing to defend them other than repeating the assertions??
Again, this isn’t what I asked you for, but you keep trying to shift the discussion to this. And, again, I’ll simply rely on readers of the thread who might be interested to simply scroll up and see how you’ve attempted to muddy the waters and have singularly failed to cite any sort of defense for your assertions.
That’s nice but again doesn’t relate to what I asked you to cite so is just you trying to muddy the waters and shift the discussion.
It’s not even an issue here. Medical procedures are not torture despite the absurd claims being made here. The fact that this claim is absurd is why I’m find it so easy to pick apart the arguments people are making.
The real issue is competency. Do prisoners have the right to refuse medical treatment even if such refusal would cause them serious harm or death? That’s a legitimate debate fairly stated.
My opinion is that I place a higher value of a prisoner’s life and physical well-being than I do about his abstract rights. Other people have different opinions and I can respect that. I’m not saying that a prisoner’s rights don’t have value; I just prioritize them lower than his life.
What I don’t respect are people who can’t defend their position with reason and resort to demonizing their opponent. I generally find that the people like this haven’t even really thought about the issue they are so strongly pontificating on. They usually acquired their belief due to something like a catchy slogan or because somebody else told them what they should believe. Because these beliefs haven’t been thought through, it’s easy to pick them apart.
I disagree. You think that “medical” intent automatically means a procedure is not torture?
What exactly do you want a cite for?
If it’s a legitimate medical intent, yes.
If forced feeding was being used as a form of torture, why is its used restricted only to prisoners on hunger strikes? Why wouldn’t the government order non-striking prisoners to be forced fed as a means of torturing them as well? Same question about the claim that forced feeding is used as a form of punishment.
Your logic is crazy.
Supposing beating was used to deal with hunger strikers alone. The fact that beating was not used for non-hunger striking prisoners would still mean that beating was torture.
Feeding through a tube is only painful if the person resists. Skilled personnel can do enteric feeding with little discomfort. It is resistance that makes it painful and therefore torture.
Well, it’s also painful if the administering personnel have no particular interest in it not being painful. Or a contrary interest, such that force-feeding techniques would be revised to make them more tortuous.
Prisoners who choose not to eat are not the group being force-fed, rather it’s prisoners who choose not to eat and make their intentions known.
If prisoner B97-549 elects to skip lunch today, nobody knows about it, right? Prisoners just aren’t monitored to that degree. If B97-549 continues this behavior, maybe going to the cafeteria, getting a tray, sitting for a bit, offering his tapioca to a friend, then busing his tray, he could do this for a long time, right?
Once it becomes obvious B97-549 has lost most of his body weight and is weak what would happen? Is he permitted to decline a medical exam/bloodwork/etc?
In the rest of the world, yes. In the US, probably no.
Agreed. But even if applied as gently as possible against an unconsenting person, it would still be torture.
Pain is not the intent when you perform a medical procedure. It may be an unfortunate side-effect but the intent is to alleviate the medical problem.
Torture is when you are intentionally inflicting pain for no purpose other than to inflict pain.
And your example is silly. Beating somebody up is not an appropriate response to any medical problem.
Prisons do monitor which prisoners are eating and which are not. If the prison suspects a prisoner is not eating they’ll have somebody watch him during mealtimes to see if he’s eating his meals or just throwing them out.