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Ethical nit-pick: In degrees of 'evilness' it shouldn't matter whether or not the person being tortured is convicted or not — unless you subscribe to the rather
by Freak_NL 9y ago
Ethical nit-pick: In degrees of 'evilness' it shouldn't matter whether or not the person being tortured is convicted or not — unless you subscribe to the rather unenlightened notion that condemned criminals by default deserve worse than what the judge handed down as a sentence in a fair trial.
- StavrosK 9y agoIs torturing someone who has committed a hundred murders and someone who has committed no murders ethically equal? I can see both sides of the argument making good points.
- ljm 9y agoIf you consider torture to be ethically bad (which I suspect most would), then it would be strange to make an exception to it and say it's bad except someone did something to deserve it, no? From the position of the person doing the torture, I would find it hard to say that someone else's crime permits me to be less ethical myself, as if committing a hundred murders needs to be balanced out by adding to the crime.
- slededit 9y agoI consider locking other humans up to be ethically bad - but I can't think of anything better than prisons. Something being ethically bad is insufficient to rule it out. The degree of the ethical failure matters, as does the purpose of the action. This will inevitably be read to imply I'm advocating Torture which I am not. I'm merely pointing out that binary ethical/unethical is insufficient.