DDL on 11/10/2012 at 09:36

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Fair point. :)

Actually, that raises another question: I'd argue that "treating people as non-human", and "torturing people" are wholly separable things: pretty much the central tenet of torture is causing deliberate suffering to gain advantage, and if you're not viewing your torturee as a person, how can you gauge their suffering?

It's the old chestnut "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference": at least when you're torturing someone you care about what they say. ("I don't mind if you cut me as long as you're paying attention to me" :p)

It's the difference between ethnic cleansing because you really hate people X, and ethnic cleansing because you "just need to get them out of the way, ideally by the most efficient means available". The latter feels vastly more abhorrent to me, because it dehumanises. It's the difference between shooting people and just bulldozing over them. Shooting is what you do to things you want to kill. Bulldozing is just a way of clearing...stuff.

So yeah, I'll accept your definition of 'inhuman', but argue that even then it's by no means clear-cut.

SubJeff on 11/10/2012 at 09:53

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This.

Except I think it can be legalised and isn't always "wrong". In the information gathering scenario I think it would be wrong and actually immoral to not use it.

Pyrian - even given it's overall lack of efficacy is it not useful in some select circumstances? I'm not suggesting using it be used all the time. I recognise the danger of "justification creep"; where once you say it's okay in instance X someone argues for it being okay in instances Y and Z. That is, of course, to be closely guarded against in the same way as the death penalty should be.


Koyla - once we get past the idea that torture is somehow immoral, wrong and inhumane we can get on to when it should be used as punishment and who should administer it. :p

Let us not forget that there are still countries that use corporal punishment. This is torture in some form, is it not?

Thirith on 11/10/2012 at 10:12

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What if someone is an accessory to the crime in question, which is a lesser crime than being the perpetrator? Would that crime already make torture an ethically acceptable choice?

To my mind there are two issues here: 1) What justifies the use of torture in these cases? Is it only the likelihood/certainty that the person in question has vital information, or does the person have to be guilty? 2) If it's the latter, how guilty does a person have to be before torture is justified?

And it's almost impossible to separate the question of guilt and that of punishing the innocent. In a constitutional democracy, a trial is required to determine whether a person is guilty and of what crime. Even if you catch someone in the act (what act?), you still need to determine whether they're an accessory, an accomplice, the main culprit etc. If this doesn't matter, because you're only interested in the intended positive outcome of the torture (i.e. getting information that saves lives), then you may as well grab the suspect's wife and torture her, for instance. She may well have some information that will help, plus threatening her with torture may make the suspect more likely to provide information. The only way to avoid this question is to invalidate the principle that everyone is entitled to a fair trial, because you'd need to decide up-front who is guilty enough to warrant being tortured.

I don't see any version of this where the slippery slope isn't a real, immediate danger. I'm usually not a fan of slippery slope arguments, but in this case? The slope is very slippery and steep.

P.S.: It's easy to take this logic even further. Why not torture (publicly?) those who are convicted of violent crimes? It may act as a deterrent and save others, right?

demagogue on 11/10/2012 at 10:42

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This gets into the other issue that torture creates a "torture industry" where you end up having experts that train in it and train new members, and there's an office with a budget and institutional memory, and like any bureaucratic office or process, it has to justify its existence to keep its funding, so you have the experts writing torture memos into regulations all over the place and it's hard to keep it from infecting the entire security apparatus. This is a real tendency. There's a reason why torture is synonymous with police states, and why Abu Ghraib wasn't an "unfortunate exception" but the completely expected outcome.

It's not just that dictators and police states lean towards a culture of torture, a culture of torture incubates dictators and police state mentality.



The legal definition of torture is (1) infliction of severe physical or mental pain, (2) intentionally, (3) by an officer acting in official capacity, (4) for a designated purpose (and there's a list, the two big ones being getting information & coercing a confession).

So no, corporal punishment doesn't meet the definition of torture under the 4th element. But if it's serious pain it's probably prohibited under another int'l human rights law (which a country has to adopt into its domestic law to be a member of the UN*) prohibition on disproportional or degrading punishment.

The death penalty is allowed under int'l law for only the most serious crimes, and it can't involve serious pain or degrading treatment.

* Incidentally this may include the prohibition on torture, which is another reason you're not going to see any state openly advocating it. It's a non-derogable right that would put them in direct violation of treaties they have to ratify to be a member of the UN (like the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and ICCPR), and possibly jus cogens customary law against torture.

DDL on 11/10/2012 at 10:43

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Vasquez: I think that's probably a pretty common way to view it, though: I'm pretty sure that if it was the life of someone I cared about on the line, I'd probably be happy to jump to torture too, but in the cold rational light of day, I know that even then I'd still be wrong to do so.

We set laws in the cold rational light of day probably because we know that in the heat of the moment we just can't be trusted to think that rationally. :)