Kolya on 18/10/2012 at 08:47

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Here's a little story for you SE: There was this guy once who survived a car crash because he didn't wear a seat belt. Got thrown out of his car instead of being crushed in it when a truck hit it.
So my question for you is this: Do you really want to wear a seat belt when a truck hits the side of your car and not wearing a seat belt would be the only way to survive?
Because that is the argument you're making. Completely geared towards a predefined answer and disregarding the fact that seat belts save lifes all the time and that if such a rare situation happens where a seat belt would be detrimental, it probably could have been avoided in another way. Whereas the conclusion that we shouldn't put on seat belts anymore to avoid such a situation is either completely retarded or willfully misleading people so they endanger themselves.

Correspondingly the principles of separation of powers, innocent until proven guilty, the right to a fair trial and the right not be subjected to torture constantly save lifes and protect people. Whereas your comic book fantasies of saving a thousand lifes through torture is incredibly unlikely. And even if it would arise, tossing these rights out would not be the solution. Again that idea is either retarded or misleading people by scare tactics into endangering themselves by giving up rights that protect themselves. Why would you make such an argument, SE? Just for argument's sake I hope, in which case you got what you wanted and might as well acknowledge now that legalising torture would be very dumb.

DDL on 18/10/2012 at 09:03

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Vas: Interesting points. I'm not sure I altogether agree, but that's a gut feeling, so I guess I need to think why. I think mostly those other examples are not wholly equivalent to the torture argument.

Euthanasia, for example, boils down to a strict case of voluntary vs involuntary, which is where I would draw the arbitrary line. Yes, there would probably be many arguments over how strictly we interpret "voluntary", but ultimately you're partitioning into "people who want to die" vs "people who don't", which is fairly binary. I don't think "desire to die" lends itself quite so readily to a sliding scale ("I feel about 78% suicidal"), but even then it could simply be modified to "sustained desire to die" or similar.
"People should be allowed to die if they wish to." and "People should not be killed if they do not wish to die."
It's easy to sort people into one of the two camps (at least conceptually), and it ultimately comes down to the desires of the individual concerned.

Torture is deliberately deciding to inflict lasting (often permanent) physical and psychological trauma on a living thinking human being who (we can assume) most definitely does NOT want this to happen: the desires of the individual concerned are utterly irrelevant, which, to my mind, makes it a different kettle of fish.
If we don't go for the blanket ban, we end up with things like
"It is legal to torture people against their will if a legitimate case can be made that 45 or more lives are at stake"
-Arbitrary points beyond which torture suddenly becomes "OK". Why 45 lives? Why not 44? Why not 2? I guess you could argue there's an semi-binary cut-off at the point of "if a life is at stake" vs "if no lives are actually at stake", so maybe the scale isn't quite as...smooth as I'd like to think, but then I suppose you'd still need to add qualifiers, like "if a life is a stake and conventional non-torture based methods are unlikely to yield success within the appropriate timeframe". It gets..messy.


(abortion is a much trickier argument (nice work!), especially given things like "medical intervention at very late term to protect the life of the mother at the expense of the foetus" and stuff. I suppose it mostly comes down -on these terms at least- to whether you think a foetus is a "living thinking human being", but I guess I'm at risk of going wholly off-topic here)


All that aside (as purely moral reasoning), Muzman's links seem to support the claim that torture doesn't really work anyway: the information given is unreliable at best. So perhaps a better response to

"would you stop short of torture if you knew the perpetrator had information that would save thousands of lives?"

is "yes, because you're fairly unlikely to actually get that information. And the time you waste deliberately hurting a human being could be better spent trying to obtain that information via other means. Like actually talking to the person, for instance."

Carrots have a better success rate than sticks, it would seem.

EDIT: also, tbh Kolya said it better.

Vasquez on 18/10/2012 at 09:36

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Of course not, but the principle of slippery slope is comparable here. I mean, "but it could escalate to worse things" is basically another emotional response, it's just disguised better than screaming YES! or NO!

And if you turn the slippery slope/sliding scale -thought around, you'll face another set of moral questions: Where do you draw the line of punishing people at all? There is always, always the chance of making a mistake or misusing the punishing tool. If someone gets a life sentence in jail for a crime s/he didn't do, that might subjectively feel like torture on many levels - and if you tell him/her "At least you get to live!" it probably doesn't make the person feel much better.

There's also the thought that since allowing torture - let's assume it would work at least in most cases (obviously this is a long leap in reality) - would lead to creating legal outlines on when, how, whom etc. and controlling closely how those rules are implemented, that in turn might actually lead to less torture and/or less severe means of torture.
I'm not saying "since people do it anyway, let's allow it!", in fact not saying let's allow it at all, but that is one more angle to think about it.

Vasquez on 18/10/2012 at 11:03

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Thirith, I meant the principle is the same: painting horror-scenes of how everything gets out of hand if something is allowed. I wasn't directly comparing torture to euthanasia or abortion at all.

The right to trial is a problem, obviously. But that's why I said "torture laws" might result to less Jack Bauer -torture, because then it would be limited to the most extreme cases only, with code of conduct and people overseeing it's being followed.
Let's not forget the victims have rights, too - right to live, right to be safe. I think here is the gist of the question: if (yes yes BIG if, but let's assume again) it was 99,9% certain torture would result to saving the victims, should the rights of the perp outweigh their rights.

Vasquez on 18/10/2012 at 11:16

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I know DDL, that's yet another question that makes the whole thing so damned difficult ;)

Edit. Any thoughts on why is it ok to put people in prison for life, even though you can't be 100% sure they deserve it, but not torture a person to save [innocent] lives?