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immoral now, but not so definitively unethical. If one person were tortured to save the lives of 100, is that unethical. Possibly, but also possibly not. The

by tyre 7y ago

immoral now, but not so definitively unethical. If one person were tortured to save the lives of 100, is that unethical. Possibly, but also possibly not. The classic thought experiment around this is the trolley problem, where murdering innocents can save more lives than non-action.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
I don’t really like this example. Has there ever been a situation where things were things were so urgent that torturing somebody was the only option? I doubt it. And if torture is so useful why only apply it to foreigners and not criminals at home?
anigbrowl 7y ago
The problem with trolley problems (and utilitarianism in general) is that they assume a degree of foresight that rarely exists in the real world. You know there are more lives at risk on path A than path B, and you know that pressing a button will reliably allow you to choose between them. None of this obtains in the torture case. Suppose you learn with certainty there is a bomb somewhere on Main Street, and you capture X, the evil bomber, with only 10 minutes to go. You want X to give you the exact location, because you don't have time to evacuate the whole street. So you torture X...but what if he just gives you the wrong location? It will take you several minutes to check it out, and while you're doing so, the bomb goes off. You've failed. Even when you know for sure that the torture subject has the information you want there is delay between getting an answer and verifying it. In any ticking clock scenario the original malefactor can build in a plan for a diversion or the equivalent o a warrant canary to warn co-conspirators. So what do you do? Send someone to check but act like you don't believe them and keep torturing X anyway? X knows it will take non-zero time to validate any answer and can structure the evil plot to take account of that. If you keep torturing X, you might just get a second decoy, plus there's now a strong argument that you're just doing it because you like it, and have picked a job which provides you with the excuse of necessity. And ticking-clock-with-captured-terrorist scenarios are so rare in reality as to be nonexistent. Almost invariably torture is deployed either to terrorize people or to fish for information which the subject might or might not have. Generally, if prisoners won't supply the information an interrogator desires, they don't have it; and if they do have it, they're sufficiently strong-willed to withstand the torture. In a good many cases, the fact of torture motivates them to hold out, because it validates their moral opposition to a power that tortures people in the first place.

by tyre 7y ago

Ididntdothis 7y ago

I don’t really like this example. Has there ever been a situation where things were things were so urgent that torturing somebody was the only option? I doubt it. And if torture is so useful why only apply it to foreigners and not criminals at home?

anigbrowl 7y ago

The problem with trolley problems (and utilitarianism in general) is that they assume a degree of foresight that rarely exists in the real world. You know there are more lives at risk on path A than path B, and you know that pressing a button will reliably allow you to choose between them. None of this obtains in the torture case. Suppose you learn with certainty there is a bomb somewhere on Main Street, and you capture X, the evil bomber, with only 10 minutes to go. You want X to give you the exact location, because you don't have time to evacuate the whole street. So you torture X...but what if he just gives you the wrong location? It will take you several minutes to check it out, and while you're doing so, the bomb goes off. You've failed. Even when you know for sure that the torture subject has the information you want there is delay between getting an answer and verifying it. In any ticking clock scenario the original malefactor can build in a plan for a diversion or the equivalent o a warrant canary to warn co-conspirators. So what do you do? Send someone to check but act like you don't believe them and keep torturing X anyway? X knows it will take non-zero time to validate any answer and can structure the evil plot to take account of that. If you keep torturing X, you might just get a second decoy, plus there's now a strong argument that you're just doing it because you like it, and have picked a job which provides you with the excuse of necessity. And ticking-clock-with-captured-terrorist scenarios are so rare in reality as to be nonexistent. Almost invariably torture is deployed either to terrorize people or to fish for information which the subject might or might not have. Generally, if prisoners won't supply the information an interrogator desires, they don't have it; and if they do have it, they're sufficiently strong-willed to withstand the torture. In a good many cases, the fact of torture motivates them to hold out, because it validates their moral opposition to a power that tortures people in the first place.