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To be honest, I'm not comfortable with the 'torture is bad because it is ineffective' argument, because it sidesteps the larger moral issue. For the sake of ar

by yen223 13y ago

To be honest, I'm not comfortable with the 'torture is bad because it is ineffective' argument, because it sidesteps the larger moral issue. For the sake of argument: if it turns out that slicing off a man's left hand will always yield 100% verifiable information, should we still be doing it? My answer to that is still going to be no. The effectiveness of torture is besides the point.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> To be honest, I'm not comfortable with the 'torture is bad because it is ineffective' argument, because it sidesteps the larger moral issue. I, on the other hand, favor it because it sidesteps the moral issue and presents what is, in fact, a strong and compelling argument against torture that does not rely on first principles that are demonstrably not held by those who would advocate for torture in the first place. The fact that torture is wasteful even if you ignore any moral considerations is a lot more powerful of an argument against it than one which requires the audience to accept that "torture is wrong" is true as a matter of moral first principles, no matter how much one might wish that the rest of the population would accept that moral principle.
mhurron 13y ago
> The effectiveness of torture is besides the point. Except it's not. Those that are willing to turn to torture don't have a moral issue with it, it would not be just another tool if they did. The effectiveness of the tool is an argument people like that are interested in. In just the same way as those that do have moral issues with torture don't care if it was very effective, your arguments need to be tailored to the audience. Given a varied audience, you hit all the points. Torture doesn't work for extracting information, it's effectiveness is basically useless. That is, if you are torturing to get information in the first place.
bostonpete 13y ago
If torture were effective, it would allow the debate to be framed as a tradeoff. If slicing off the man's left hand would allow you to save X lives with 100% certainty, pretty much everyone has a value of X for which they would justify the action -- for most people that value would be quite low. The problem with these tradeoffs is that there's no clear cut moral high ground on which choice is correct -- it's a murky area. So it's a much more compelling argument if you can make the case that the tradeoff doesn't exist at all b/c torture is ineffective.

by yen223 13y ago

dragonwriter 13y ago

> To be honest, I'm not comfortable with the 'torture is bad because it is ineffective' argument, because it sidesteps the larger moral issue. I, on the other hand, favor it because it sidesteps the moral issue and presents what is, in fact, a strong and compelling argument against torture that does not rely on first principles that are demonstrably not held by those who would advocate for torture in the first place. The fact that torture is wasteful even if you ignore any moral considerations is a lot more powerful of an argument against it than one which requires the audience to accept that "torture is wrong" is true as a matter of moral first principles, no matter how much one might wish that the rest of the population would accept that moral principle.

mhurron 13y ago

> The effectiveness of torture is besides the point. Except it's not. Those that are willing to turn to torture don't have a moral issue with it, it would not be just another tool if they did. The effectiveness of the tool is an argument people like that are interested in. In just the same way as those that do have moral issues with torture don't care if it was very effective, your arguments need to be tailored to the audience. Given a varied audience, you hit all the points. Torture doesn't work for extracting information, it's effectiveness is basically useless. That is, if you are torturing to get information in the first place.

bostonpete 13y ago

If torture were effective, it would allow the debate to be framed as a tradeoff. If slicing off the man's left hand would allow you to save X lives with 100% certainty, pretty much everyone has a value of X for which they would justify the action -- for most people that value would be quite low. The problem with these tradeoffs is that there's no clear cut moral high ground on which choice is correct -- it's a murky area. So it's a much more compelling argument if you can make the case that the tradeoff doesn't exist at all b/c torture is ineffective.