Mycroft
High Priest of Ed
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But not the primary part.
If it could be shown that torture could be a very effective way of gathering information, would you be open to changing your mind about it?
Salmon Rushdie on "Extraordinary Rendition"
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But not the primary part.
If it could be shown that torture could be a very effective way of gathering information, would you be open to changing your mind about it?
Mycroft
High Priest of Ed
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Sure, but "due process" is following the process set down by law. If torture were legal, then torturing someone might well be following "due process."
Correct?
I'm no lawyer, but I think that the idea of "due process" is related with certain basic legal principles, stuff that you can't really mess with without causing the whole legal building to come down. For instance, if you torture someone to prove guilt, then you are punishing someone before innocence has been proved, in other words, you are not considering him "innocent until proven guilty". You can always argue that torture isn't "punishment", of course, but I won't take you seriously.
Of course, you could always come up with this new law were only people who have been proven guilty can be tortured, but then you would have to go to the trouble of having a trial before torturing. But that would pretty much defeat the whole alleged point of torturing (that is, obtaining information fast), wouldn't it?
No, not really. I have already explained why. The whole means and ends thing, remember?
luchog
Neo-Post-Retro-Revivalist
I would definitely agree with that, and am completely opposed to torture on both moral/ethical and practical grounds.
One thing that I've always found... wrong i guess, is what I consider a false separation of means and ends. I can't see them as distinct enough for the "end" to justify the "means". They are inextricably linked. Two sides of the same coin, as it were. The nature of the end desired is reflected in the means used. And the nature of the means used show up the true, rather than nominal, end desired.
Someone who uses bad means while claiming to desire a good end is lying, definitely to others, and very likely to himself. His true desired end is different from what is claimed; and is obvious in the means used.
And I'm not really explaining this very well. Too much work on too little sleep, I guess.
Elind
Philosopher
This is rubbish. I mean no such thing, nor have I ever said it. Go join AUP in the corner.
The purity of our goals can justify any necessary means! And we can know that our goals are pure because they're our goals. Not like the goals of our enemies, which are necessarily wrong, because if they weren't they wouldn't be our enemies.
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
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Who said "guilt", in the legal definition, had anything to do with it? POW's are not guilty of anything, and they are never tried before any court. Yet they are detained indefinitely. Similarly, who said torture had to be for the purposes of establishing guilt? If it is instead used to discover intelligence which will be acted upon, then "guilt" has nothing to do with it. So again, if rules are laid down establishing how and when torture can be used, there's no violation of the concept of due process at all. In case you haven't figured it out yet, that is not an argument that we SHOULD do such a thing, merely that your understanding of the problems with it is wrong.
Mycroft
High Priest of Ed
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Need more straw?
Mycroft
High Priest of Ed
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I'm with luchog on this. The ends define the means, and it makes no sense to separate the two.
Would you take candy from a child if you thought the candy would make the child sick?
?????
It is one thing of many. If we use torture, then we are no better than they are regarding torture. I have no idea why that is too complicated.
Kevin_Lowe
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I'll put my hand up to this one. I could approve of torture if (and only if):
1. It actually provided highly reliable information in a timely fashion.
2. Those subject to torture were only those who had been shown in a public court, beyond reasonable doubt, to have conspired to commit mass murder and to be in possession of information likely to prevent future acts of mass murder.
3. That anybody shown to have in any way sexed up evidence, lied or misled a court in order to get a torture order would get whatever the torture victim got.
However the problem is that we do not live in a world where any of these happen to be true, or even close to true.
We live in a world where torture is ineffective, where torturers are carefully hidden from public scrutiny by the US government, and where there is absolutely no accountability whatsoever for the crimes these people commit.
Actually, I could get behind torture in one other scenario.
1. The people tortured were themselves either torturers or politicians who protected torturers.
2. Making a horrible and public example of them would deter future torturers.
I'm not sure #2 would be true in the real world though, since the people who commit such crimes generally think they will get away with them and so are not deterred by legal consequences.
In practise, I'm against torture in much the same way that I don't believe in Thor. As a good skeptic I admit that I could conceivably change my mind, but I'm more likely to flip fifty heads in a row while balancing blindfolded on a naked human pyramid than I am to encounter evidence that will make me change my mind.
Elind
Philosopher
That of course is a line of reasoning we hear a lot, particularly from those who are we but don't like we much.
Perhaps one could approach it from the point of which goals have achieved the most, in common criteria of wellbeing? Ours or our enemies?
Elind
Philosopher
One reason is that all such arguments assume that everyone agrees what is torture, which is far from true; and secondly that somehow life is not worth protecting if we think we might have to do something unpleasant in the process.
Mostly I think, no offense meant in your case, that people who make this very routine common statement in such a manner, do it mainly because it makes them feel good and superior, particularly over spoilsports like me.
fishbob
Seasonally Disaffected
Exactly. You might note that I merely paraphrased YOU. Go find your own corner.
Elind
Philosopher
I note that you are lying.
Ok... But if the end defines the means, I also think that the means define the end. For instance, what if you have to beat up the kid in order to get the candy so that he won't get sick? In other words, what you do to accomplish an apparently desirable end defines the end. My mom used to tell me that you can't make a good cake with rotten eggs.
Did you mom ever have any unpleasant medical procedure done, to save her life? Maybe chemo? Or a surgery that is painful to recover from?
I've gone through lots of discomfort, to achieve an end-result that I know is better than I would get without going through the discomfort. Pretty normal part of life, actually.
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
You are talking about subjecting innocent people to torture so you can sleep soundly at night and then say the pain was worth it. Ask them if it was.
When did I say anything about "innocent" people?