You’ve heard this one: A terrorist is being held captive. He knows where a bomb is scheduled to explode in a few hours, one that would kill thousands of innocent victims. Is it OK to torture him to get the information in time to defuse the bomb? But I don’t want to argue about that one again. Try this:
You are being held captive by a foreign power. Although it is a mistake, your captors honestly believe that you are a terrorist and know where a bomb is scheduled to explode in a few hours. Is it OK for them to torture you? (Cap tip to John Rawls.)
7 comments:
The real question is, why in this day and age aren't there more sophicated alternatives?
Well, this has always been the problem with this ridiculous question. How is it that the capturers know that the person they have captured knows where and when (and even that) a bomb is about to go off? If this "information" was itself obtained through torture (and we know that people will say anything to bring about the end of torture, including complete lies, unsurprisingly), how believable is it? (Indeed, it is a not-so-widely advertised fact that neither the Gestapo nor Japanese military intelligence ever tortured for information. They always understood that such information was unreliable. They tortured to punish and intimidate.)
Barkley
Another variant: A terrorist is being held captive. He knows where a bomb is scheduled to explode in a few hours, one that would kill thousands of innocent victims. We know he won't yield to torture in the remaining time, but we have his children in custody too. Is it OK to torture his six year old daughter in front of him to get the information in time to defuse the bomb?
Alan
Is it OK to torture him to get the information in time to defuse the bomb?
No, because the hypothetical 'problem' is delusional on its face and the 'solution' to it is even more delusional. It's not an argument; it's a psychotic episode.
Try this question, instead: A voice in your head tells you that guy who lives across the hall is Satan and he is preparing to devour the world. Is it OK to shoot him in the face to save humanity?
Exact same illogical structure, speculative leaps and gaps. My advice to Dick Cheney: next time you're having a psychotic episode, don't act out -- take your meds instead.
Memorize that retort: "That's not an argument; it's a psychotic episode."
I would like to take issue with those who think the standard torture question is a psychotic episode. Given not only the 9/11 attack but also those in London and Madrid, I think it is entirely rational to suppose that, at this hour, there are individuals scheming the mass murder of our neighbors (or us). The difference between rational fear and psychosis has to do with what counts as evidence. ( I don't like the way you looked at me.)
Barkley is partway there, IMO. The problem with the standard question is that it adopts a perspective that no actual decision-maker faces. We are never above the world, looking down, knowing everything with certainty -- except for that damned bomb. The potential torturer believes with some degree of confidence that the prisoner in front of him is a terrorist, that the prisoner has the needed information, that torture will elicit it, that the information can be acted on to prevent the planned atrocity. A full account of the decision context is unavoidably Bayesian. This is one point of my alternative question.
But there is another, somewhat subtler. A different problem with the standard question is that it fails to differentiate between two motives for torture, a rigorous utilitarianism that denies any notion of rights (and that can be assessed on utilitarian grounds, as Barkley does), and simple sadism. I don't know the psychological literature, but I think there's plenty of evidence that sadism has a wide appeal. The real point of my alternative is that it takes sadism out of the equation. Or rather, it puts the horror of torture -- the opposite of sadism -- back in.
I feel odd explaining this; I thought the juxtaposition of questions made these points clear, but messages always seems clearer from the writer's point of view than the reader's.
Peter,
Well, maybe your formulation is supposed to raise the issue of sadism, but I think that this problem is one that tends to arise once torture is put in place and established as a routine and regular operation. Those who get a kick out of doing it tend to come forward to do it, or those who are doing it learn to get pleasure out of it. Think the pathtetic clowns at Abu Ghraib.
But the original question, and its variants, involves the basic justification for ever torturing for information, that is, getting it going in the first place. Sadism is in that sense really a subsidiary issue, especially when one thinks of the format of this sort of question, which implies that torture is to be used only for very special cases or circumstances. The problem, of course, is that this never happens. Once it starts, it becomes routine, and then sadism appears as its accomplice.
Barkley
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