fiveredapples wrote:
From where I stand, which is on the side of Reason, my opponents are doing a terrible job of arguing that CIA water boarding is torture. Frankly, I don't see how they could ever win that debate, but they aren't even trying -- they just vehemently state that it's so, huddle together chanting that it's so, and then expect me to capitulate to their emoticons and trolling. Eh...not impressive.
The other rude awakening waiting for them, if they ever manage to defend at least adequately their opinion that CIA water boarding is torture, is that they will have to defend their opinion that torture is morally impermissible. Ha ha ha...I only laugh thinking about how they will receive this news. When you live a life surrounded by like-minded idiots, rarely will your assumptions be challenged, so of course they're stumbling for words to defend their assumptions now. And I'm trained in philosophy, I've put thought into this debate, and I will eviscerate any lemming who spouts philosophical nonsense at me. So, my opponents have two huge hurdles before them, neither of which they will clear.
I didn't say I do not regard it as wrong to make people suffer. That's a dishonest characterization of what I said. I said that in some circumstances (e.g. in certain self-defense cases), it's not morally wrong to make someone suffer.
I gathered you were not a pacifist!
Whatever we call it, it must involve inflicting such pressure that the people being interrogated cannot stand it. That they will talk, rather than endure it, on that we can surely agree.
Quite the contrary. The fact that there is one instance of morally permissible inflicting of pain means that the tenet "It's morally impermissible to inflict pain" is false.
What I meant was whether there was a single general moral argument that covered all cases in which one might inflict pain, whether that meant a slap on the wrist or wartime bombing. If one was a pacifist, the answer would be 'Never' but I think for most people it would be that it had to be proportional to the harm it is intended to prevent.
You have a Kantian ethical view, which is not even the popular view of ethics, so you should be arguing for your ethical view, not assuming it as the default view. The "Nazi at your door" is a famous counter-example to your kind of ethics. In this scenario, if a Nazi knocks on your door asking if you've seen any Jews lately, and you have seen some lately (psst, you're hiding them in your attic), then it would be morally permissible to lie to the Nazis. This is something most people agree with, which gives the lie to your view that moral acts carry with them some absolute moral value, right or wrong, in all cases. So, again, unless you have an argument for your fringe ethical view, I don't see why I have to entertain the silly inferences you draw from it.
First, a word about Kant. I know the '
Nazi at the door' example is always given and would say that it isn't an accurate account of Kant. The point about the categorical imperative is that it should be universal, but that doesn't mean it has to be simplistic, i.e. it can be more than
'do not tell lies'. I could also have as a universal principle '
try to protect the lives of others', which would allow me to lie to the Nazis. Kant did not tell us; '
Do x and that is ethical'. On the contrary, Kant argued that the morality pertains in the will of the
agent, not in the
action. It would be quite possible for two people to make different choices but both to be
acting morally, i.e. with moral intent.
I certainly did not mean to imply that I thought moral acts had some absolute value in themselves. But I do think we ought to be able to explain how we decide how we should act in particular cases. What general principle we are following (like 'self defence', or 'pacifism' or whatever). And this must make us open to being challenged - whether we really followed our principles. And also to hard cases; where following a principle seems to legitimise acts we are instinctively uncomfortable with. I think this is unavoidable - for both sides. After all, those who rule out torture in all circumstances often get challenged with the 'ticking bomb' scenario.
So you want to know how I would defend my view that torture is sometimes morally permissible. Let's make absolutely clear that I have not conceded that CIA water boarding is torture. Because these morons will jump on this particular response, thinking they can now move on from defending their (wrong) opinion that CIA water boarding is torture. They cannot. But, having said that, I will answer your question.
As I see it, the notion of 'murder' and 'torture' differ in an important respect, at least in how most people employ them. Murder is by definition an immoral and usually an illegal act. If you wish to have my house and wife, and the way you do that is by killing me (and it's for no other reason), then you have murdered me. Your act is an immoral act (and illegal), and we give such immoral acts the name 'murder.' Something must first be immoral to be named murder. It's not the other way round. It's not that an act becomes immoral because we name it murder. So if you tell me some act, Act X, is murder, then you have better show me how it was immoral, which should be easy enough to show.
Well murder may not be quite the best example, since it is a crime and one could say that it is a technical matter. We do not think all murders are equally immoral. In the UK, although the sentence is always 'life', in practice people are released if the circumstances are considered such that they are unlikely to do it again.
In the Biblical sense, I agree 'murder' means 'immoral killing'. But in that Biblical sense, we might not necessarily agree that any particular killing was murder, i.e. that it was immoral.
Torture, on the other hand, is employed by most quite illogically. Torture, somehow, magically perhaps, makes an act immoral by virtue of being called "torture." That's pathetic, but it's how people here treat this notion. If CIA water boarding was immoral, then you should be able to show me why it's immoral, without needing to say it's torture. Dubbing Act X 'torture' -- supposing torture is immoral -- only makes sense after you've shown that it was immoral. You can't dub Act X 'torture' in order to show it's immoral -- that's question begging and silly. So, the notion of torture should do no philosophical work -- cannot do any philosophical work for you -- until you've first shown that CIA water boarding is immoral sans the aid of the magical power of the word "torture."
As I say, I am not bothered about the word. Like 'murder' it has some sort of legal definition, but that is irrelevant to the moral issue. I certainly do
not argue that if I am right is saying that waterboarding falls under a particular definition of 'torture' that 'wins' the moral argument.
Regarding who has the onus to prove '
that thing the CIA did' was immoral, or otherwise, I assumed that since you had raised the subject you had a position. Please do not assume I imagine it is simple. Your earlier point that it is odd to say we must not waterboard people, but it is OK to kill them in war (along with innocent bystanders) using bombs and missiles, needs answering.
But as I wrote earlier, it goes the other way too. Even if we argued that '
that thing' is sometimes acceptable, we still have the problem of where we draw the line, and why. As I asked; can we do it to US citizens? Or where we are not certain whether they have any information to give? I think that if someone argues that '
that thing' is sometimes acceptable, then I think there is also an obligation on them to set the limits.