I’m not sure if there is any difference at all between 2 and 3. I’m also not sure that a necessary lie is in fact unethical. IOW, none of these statements is unequivocally correct.
I am sure that a necessary lie is ethical. In the context of ethics, “necessary” seems to be a compulsion to act, and ethical actions just are those actions one should do. “Necessary but unethical” and “ethical” is just a distinction without a difference.
Torture causes more pain and is much less often justified (if it is ever justified at all.) What you are saying makes every soldier who has killed someone and every person who has ever killed someone in self-defense worse than someone who has tortured someone. And yet we as a society let the killers off free, but punish the torturer.
I honestly can’t understand why anyone would think torture is not worse than killing. I mean, people who are tortured severely enough actually wish that you would kill them.
Sometimes I wonder at how you Yanks handle language.
It is not ethical to torture. Simple as that.
It is not ethical to lie and it is not ethical to molest little children.
Simple.
But sometimes you may feel that necessity will trump ethics.
That doesn’t mean your actions have become ethical, simply that you found other things more important.
This question if something is ethical is just weaseling.
Fact is that by becoming torturers you have become monsters in the face of the rest of the civilised world. As far as you already were, because of starting an illegal war of agression.
from the OP, bolding mine;
More weaseling.
No, the other civilised Western Governments STILL DO NOT TORTURE, you do.
Sorry that this doesn’t jive with your vision as the shining city on the hill, but you have long lost this image.
I should have been clearer. My intent was to say, “Killing a person is worse than torturing that same person”, because the person survives. And if you prefer to insert the term ‘murdering’ instead of ‘killing’, go nuts with that.
I honestly can’t understand why anyone would think an experience that one survives is better than an experience that ends with death. You can always choose death later, and choosing death for yourself is infinitely better than having someone else choose it for you.
There is no other Government in the world (western or evil, civilized or barbarian) where officials justify torture and where tier are actually debates on the desirability of torture. Other nations torture no doubt, but they at least have the decency to pretend they do not.
Except that ethics isn’t just black and white. It would be lovely to live in a world where we could make a list of things that you never could do ever no matter what, and then whenever you were faced with a dilemma you could just check your list and hey, presto, you would know what to do, problem solved. But we don’t.
I think my initial point stands… killing, lying and stealing are all things that are unethical. Yet for each, there are certain situations in which it’s generally agreed that they can be reasonably engaged in. Why would torture be any different? The key question, and one I don’t have a good answer for, is whether torture-is-acceptable situations are super-duper-rare, or super-duper-comically-rare-so-rare-as-to-only-exist-in-bizarre-hypotheticals.
None of those are innately unethical. Lying to misdirect a death squad away from their victims is perfectly ethical. Killing someone in self defense or who wants to be spared the agony of a terminal disease is perfectly ethical. Stealing to survive is perfectly ethical, if that’s the only option you have; survival trumps property rights.
Torture is something that monsters do. The fact that they are willing to do it makes them a monster. Torture is more analogous to rape than it is to lying or theft.
So lying, killing and stealing can be utilized to save lives, but torture for use of gaining information could not possibly? Never has and never will? Could you explain yourself? It seems pretty obvious to me but perhaps a practical example is needed:
An enemy combatant is captured after a battle, they notice that this is a man they have been surveying for quite a while and they suspect him, with good evidence that he is a bomb maker and it is likely he has spread multiple IEDs throughout the area. He is interrogated and asked where they are. He denies to divulge any information. They waterboard him. He tells where the IEDs are, and are disarmed ASAP. The enemy combatant lives and allied lives where saved.
This is not a “ticking time bomb” crazy one off scenario, but a scenario that could, would, and surely has happened during war. Surely the credibility of the information is not guaranteed to be accurate, and that is why the practice was extremely short lived by the U.S. Even taking that into consideration though, more good can come of it than bad, such as the case with lying, killing and stealing.
First, by torturing him they deserve death; it’s a bad thing if they don’t get blown up. Second, since they are torturers they are monsters and won’t care if he’s actually a bomber or tells them the truth; they’ll torture him anyway, and probably murder him afterward. And they’ll go on to torture others. And third torture tends to give bad information, and ruins the victim for further interrogation.
Torture does not work that way except in the movies. When you get your information on how torture works from watching “24” you get an entirely incorrect view.
How do I know? From testimony by guys who have been in the position you speak of.
You misunderstand. Determining what is ethical is not black and white. As a moral subjectivist, I would argue that quite strongly you are correct. But the words “ethical” and “unethical” do not suddenly become ambiguous for it. How we determine something is ethical could be a complicated process, but if it is resolved, we don’t then have the additional burden of deciding which word to use.
And I think my point stands: this is a distinction without a difference.
What you’re missing is that as soon as you remove the ‘ticking time bomb’ craziness, there are alternatives to torture. You see, there’s this other technique called ‘interrogation.’ There is no reason to believe that information gained through physical duress is more accurate than information gained through psychological manipulation. And it has the plus of not being abhorrent.
The only benefits from ‘torture’ are:
it’s easy to conduct
it feeds the pathological sadism of those who conduct it
Constructing scenarios that actually justify torture is as easy as constructing scenarios that justify killing your enemies’ children and making suits from their skin.
It’s also good for spreading terror and for eliciting false confessions, which is why dictatorships are fond of it. And why America has been so fond of it off and on through the decades.
Oh, and another point; this thread is about the ethics of torture, not about whether or not it works. It’s unethical regardless of whether or not it works.
