You are very clearly begging the question here; not everyone agrees that use of torture 'cedes moral high ground', or that torture made the Germans, Japanese, or North Vietnamese 'bad'.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beg_a_question
It's bad because it increases human suffering, and it's unfair to harm someone who can't fight back.
That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, but let's say a terrorist is captured and you have to put a stop to his operation. His cell will kill a hundred or so people in the next month. You don't torture him and the bomb goes off killing 243 people. A year and a half later you capture another and you have to put a stop to his operation. What do you do?
About 4 years ago I went to a talk given by the author of the book, the subject was along the same lines as the book: how torture is ineffective because it damages the subject's ability to recall information. Afterwards someone asked a question that a lot of us had been thinking: that in a lot of situations where torture might be used, the information being asked for is very well known to the subject, so unless serio…
Taking it from a more political point of view rather than neurological, Shakespeare did a political play on this subject which was summarily all about blow-back or stone cold revenge — "Titus Andronicus." (A movie by Julie Taymor of the play "Titus" is quite powerful) In politics and war The dirtiest fighter makes the rules and now that the United States tortures people, I suspect we will be "one-upped" in the next w…
Indeed, once you resort to torture or other "questionable" means, you can't accuse or deny enemies from using them too; this sets new standards. The argument is generally "but they already do it", and in my opinion it fails to recognize 1) the large scale validation for every belligerent, 2) the race to "no-rule" warfare, as limits are one-upped once (de facto) accepted. So it's not because _some_ belligerents are willing to use banned means that everybody should start using them too.
My question to anyone who believes this article to be correct is whether they would have found the same sources and type of evidence credible if it had produced the contrary result. If the answer is no, it shows that you should not expect this article to convince any of your intellectual opponents. For the record, I am not sure whether torture works or is morally justified in the circumstances where it has been appli…
One other thing to remember in discussions around torture is that the "ticking bomb" situation simply doesn't happen, as reported by professional interrogators. This means that "ticking bomb" is an outlier scenario and the base moral discussions should not start from there.
If by some astonishing bad luck some that type of scenario did happen (highly unlikely, but the probability is not zero), that's what "extenuating circumstances" is for.
We already have provisions in law to allow for the very rare and unusual situations where someone is guilty of a criminal act for a good reason. Therefor the people using the mythical "ticking bomb" scenario are asking for something else.
It's bad because it increases human suffering, and it's unfair to harm someone who can't fight back.
That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, but let's say a terrorist is captured and you have to put a stop to his operation. His cell will kill a hundred or so people in the next month. You don't torture him and the bomb goes off killing 243 people. A year and a half later you capture another and you have to put a stop to his operation. What do you do?
This might happen in some (arguably extremely rare) cases, but you know that's the narrative that will be used every time it will be somewhat convenient to torture someone.
It's bad because it increases human suffering, and it's unfair to harm someone who can't fight back.
That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, but let's say a terrorist is captured and you have to put a stop to his operation. His cell will kill a hundred or so people in the next month. You don't torture him and the bomb goes off killing 243 people. A year and a half later you capture another and you have to put a stop to his operation. What do you do?
You fire half your detectives fpr incompetence. You know how hard is to procure even rudimentary explosives without leaving a trail?
The idea that you cede the moral high ground when you use torture seems to have been forgotten. I don't care if it works. I grew up believing that we were "The Good Guys" and under no circumstance is it ever acceptable for the good guys to torture people. What made the Viet Cong so bad? They tortured people. What made the Japanese so bad? They tortured people. What made the Germans so bad? They tortured people. We sh…
You are very clearly begging the question here; not everyone agrees that use of torture 'cedes moral high ground', or that torture made the Germans, Japanese, or North Vietnamese 'bad'.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beg_a_question
You can make that statement about anything and everything. Using your standard: Not everyone agrees that the earth is a sphere, therefore any statement which assumes it is a sphere is begging the question.
Even if it is working, would that make it ok? What about rape? Should it be criminalized? Is that worth a scientific study from nature? Why is torture in a civilized society not considered like rape. Anyone who suggests, does it, debates about its merrits, should be considered a crazy idiot, ostracized and laughed at. But notice how we as a a society are debating its merits. We have already lost so speak. We lost fir…
Saying that something is not debatable is exactly the opposite of living in a democracy Excluding hate speech, surely But since you were very fast to call anyone a "crazy idiot" I can see how worried about you are about a "civilised society" instead of your personal opinions
Allowing fringe ideas to dominate discussions so centrally is also exactly the opposite of living in a democracy.
I would argue your audience is failing to understand what torture is. Most people are deathly afraid of any pain. But they're also not agents/operatives/soldiers for their government. They're not at war with an enemy they think worth fighting and killing. So they don't have a particular strong desire to conceal information from anyone who threatens them. This means, in an actual scenario of torture interrogation, you…
> I would argue your audience is failing to understand what torture is. Most people are deathly afraid of any pain. But they're also not agents/operatives/soldiers for their government. They're not at war with an enemy they think worth fighting and killing. It almost sounds as if you are trying to define away torture for a fringe case where it's guaranteed to be useless. This is a legalistic approach not anymore conv…
AFAIK, torture does not work for "getting the combination to a safe or finding where a merchant keeps their money stashed". It is still used because it is a very effective way to frighten the opposition. Torture is often shown on TV, where the good guys force the bad ones to tell the truth. It is completely unrealistic.
I think torture should be illegal and I think the "enhanced interrogation" techniques used at Guantanamo are abhorrent. But I also think there are real-world scenarios in which torture is not only moral, but where it would be immoral not to torture. This sounds absurd, but consider this real-life case given in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy[1]: A woman's car is stolen. Unknown to the thief, her child is slee…
If you're going for utilitarian points then yes, in the story to torture and save the child causes less overall damage. The problem is (as always with utilitarian scenarios like these) that you can only know when to torture or not if you're omniscient. What happens if the guy is innocent? Or what happens if the kid is already dead or the car is too remote to reach in time no matter what you do to the criminal? (In both cases, not torturing is the more utilitarian solution, since the kid will be dead no matter what).