]]>There’s also a philosophical problem moving from is to ought.
If you want a more nightmarish problem, Julian Baggini’s take on the Ticking Bomb is that the terrorist will not break in time if he is tortured, but that intelligence indicates he will break if his wholly innocent son is tortured in front of him. You have someone bellowing in your ear that thousands of people will die if you don’t take action. Unrealistic yes, but so often thought experiments are. It’s a lot easier to pretend torture is ethical if you think the victim deserves it. Baggini’s experiment gets the nub of a results-based justification. I’d like to think I wouldn’t crack and authorise the torture, but I have a worrying feeling that Stanley Milgram could prove me wrong.
It wouldn’t show that torture is ethical, simply that people can be manipulated through fear.
]]>How long you live is not as important as how you live.
A life prolonged by the use of torture is a lesser life than one shortened by an act of terrorism.
Deciding that torture is ethical based on how positive the end result is for you is similar to deciding that stealing is ethical based on how big your haul of loot was.
Well said.
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