If you truly believe all the “information” in your OP is correct then yes, go ahead and torture to your hearts content. Then, once you’ve saved the world, you should be required to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that your actions were justified. If it turns out that you were torturing based on a hunch or because you didn’t want to take some other action that would solve the problem without torture or just because you like to torture, then you should be severely punished. But you shouldn’t be tortured to find out why you did these things.
Oh, I see what you mean. In response I would argue that the fact my hypothetical guarantees the effectiveness of torture in this instance is, in fact, entirely irrelevant. As I’ve said, I am really interested in exploring the perspectives of those who would oppose torture in any conceivable circumstance. To those people, the effectiveness of torture is of no consequence. Even if torture were one billion percent effective in real life situations, they would still oppose it. To them, torture is evil and torture is always evil because it’s torture.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but from where I’m sitting it seems likely that a refusal to engage with my hypothetical solely on the grounds that torture simply isn’t that effective is more or less tantamount to a tacit concession that, in this instance, with the effectiveness of torture being guaranteed, one would resort to it in order to save a great many lives.
I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s actually that it’s possible to construct a hypothetical to cast anything at all into question - I believe people’s refusal to engage with the hypothetical is therefore an expression of their refusal to accept it as a tool for meaningful analysis - at least when the hypothetical becomes so extreme, or absolute, as this one.
“Can you fly by flapping your arms?”
“Of course not, don’t be silly.”
“What if you lived in a world where people could flap their arms and fly, do you think you could fly by flapping your arms then?”
“That world doesn’t exist. It can’t exist, it’s impossible”
“Yeah, but what if it did? You think you could do it then?”
“Well, maybe, I mean I suppose…”
“AH HAH! I have you! If you could fly in my impossible world that I just made up, then you are being disingenuous if you say that it’s impossible to fly by flapping your arms!”
“Oh wow, you’re right!” Jumps off cliff, flaps arms, dies.
Yes. And this hypothetical is so torturously wrought (pardon the pun) that he isn’t even talking about torture anymore; instead it’s a form of deus ex machina that happens to be spelled and pronounced “torture”.
I’m not sure why this needs to be dragged out for so long. In simplified terms:
Torture is wrong.
People having free will, can do the wrong thing if they so choose.
In a time of duress, a person should make a judgement call if they believe that the utility of torture outweighs the potential impact of not torturing. This is a personal decision.
If the difference is great enough, that person should be willing to make a sacrifice to follow their convictions.
If that person is right, then they should throw themselves at the mercy of the courts/public.
If that person is wrong, then they should accept the consequences.
We shouldn’t over-think these kinds of scenarios, the judgement should be made at the time of the event. The potential torturer must decide in his/her own mind if the potential result is worth their sacrifice, and accept responsibility for his/her actions, or the actions of his/her subordinates.
ETA: shiftless said it much better than I did. And George, the fact that I and many others might do it in the proposed scenario does not make it morally right.
No, the moral status of torture is not situational. It’s morally wrong… every time.
As long as one feels torture is wrong every time, there are no less clear cut scenarios.
Whether or not you put unrealistic scenarios together where someone never lies and whether you know someone is 100% guilty, these things cannot and will not ever be true. I feel that the torturing is cruel, inhumane, and against anything that a moral person believes in.
Just curious: Is there any historical evidence that torture has successfully obtained accurate, useful information that could not have been obtained any other way? Has the “Jack Bauer scenario” ever played out in real life?
The status of torture is NOT situational. There is no possible scenario in which torture has been shown to work better than other interrogation techniques. There’s nothing situational about it. Torture doesn’t work. Let me repeat that again. No matter what fantasy situation you invent that makes you a “billion percent” sure that torture will work, in the real world torture does not work. Torture does not work. Do you understand yet?
He knows torture doesn’t work. He’s asking, “If it did work, would it be ok?” In other words, is your moral objection to torture because it doesn’t work, or because of other reasons?
The hypothetical scenario does not include any mention of a superintelligent psychic chicken, so I don’t feel the need to respond in any detail.
Sorry, the chicken is in the cleaners.
(Okay, maybe it isn’t funny… but it tickled me.)
Did she have to cross the road to get there?
Could you slowly lower a screaming baby into an incinerator? What if you knew you could save 100 million lives by doing so?
I think it’s quite obvious that the moral status of incinerating babies is situational. Incinerating a baby over a parking ticket is obviously inhumane, but incinerating a baby for information which could conceivably save thousands of lives is arguably less so.
I’m concerned about the ethics of people who say they would rule out incinerating babies in every conceivable circumstance.
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The reason hypotheticals like this are stupid is that you can always construct some bizarre situation where any act, no matter how monstrous, can be justified as part of some convoluted moral calculus. It proves nothing.
The pragmatic approach is to say that torture is wrong, full stop. Then if an actual extreme situation ever arises where torture might have been justified we can judge the torturer by the actual facts of the real-world event.
It seems to me that attempting to construct a hypothetical like this inevitably leads to problems. In this case, we are supposed to believe that this guy is impossibly intelligent, yet he never thought that we would torture him? A real evil genius would have broadcast his gloating message across the world from his completely secret island fortress.
So, lets see what we actually have: A lone guy who says that he has set up a way to wipe out humanity. Personally, I would ask him to move along and stop trying to irritate people. If, for some reason I can only blame on the stupidity of the person confronting this man, they believe him, then they must also assume that the guy has planned on your torturing him and that by doing so you are simply playing into his hand.
This is kind of like the movie Se7en. By torturing him you would be helping him to achieve the aims that he clearly must be hiding from you.
Hey, in my impossible world it’s pigs that fly by flapping their wings. Your impossible world is just flat out crazy.
That would be
Would you shoot child and kill your child in this situation?
which also spawned this thread:
Invent the most preposterously unlikely moral/ethical dilemma
Interestingly, these are two of only three threads that come up in a search for “Hitlet,” which is a term for a juvenile or infant Hitler.
If death was pleasurable for the victim and inexpensive resurrection techniques were widely known, would murder be wrong?
Sure, no problem.
Bonus!
No, I wouldn’t torture him.
What I would do is broadcast on every news channel announcing that this person will cause the death of most of the planet in 2 weeks time. I would then drop him tied up into the middle of Times Square and let the people decide if torture is acceptable to them.