Under one view, it is worse to torture someone than to kill him, at least provided the level of torture is sufficiently high. That can hold, a’la Amartya Sen, even if the person, in the Paretian sense, would prefer to be tortured than to be killed.
Most of us, including left-wing opponents of torture, think it is OK to kill al Qaeda operatives to stop an operation in progress or perhaps even kill them pre-emptively with reasonable cause. Those same people don’t think it is OK to torture, except under extreme circumstances. They also usually think that the slow torture of jail, including the homosexual rapes, is OK or perhaps to be ignored rather than to be either endorsed or countered (read Jane Galt on related questions).
One question is why (traditional) torture should be so much worse than murder. For instance we might think that torture is worse for "public choice" reasons. Perhaps the "mentality of the torturer" infects the body politic more than the "mentality of the murderer." Perhaps it is more likely that torture privileges will be abused than that murder privileges will be abused. Well, maybe, but I haven’t seen the evidence. At the very least our current state of knowledge on these questions does not justify the extreme aversions of the anti-torture critics.
(Could it be that torturers are simply less admirable than murderers, as Robin Hanson suggested to me, and thus we like torture less?)
I toy with the moral view that torture is simply worse than painless murder. Pain is a bad in a way that a missing life is not, noting that we must make adjustments for the pain of the relatives of the murdered. Forget about comparing just the consequences of each action, there is something relational and enduring about the torture which is highly objectionable.
But no matter where I come out on that issue, I endorse a strong anti-torture view because I am in general anti-punishment. Punishment is sometimes necessary, but in my core I think it is also wrong to send people to jail and that we should do so only with great trepidation. Of course this view is unacceptable to the American public.
Many torture critics, willingly or not, end up with a waffling view on the sanctity of life. In their moral schema murder is less bad than torture. Sure, murder can still be "very very bad," but surely we start to wonder why lives are worth less than avoiding pains. Some extreme pacifists will argue that we have no license to kill the same operatives we might otherwise be torturing. That position would at least be consistent.
I believe the anti-torture forces, of which I count myself a member, find it easy to posture on the torture question, but overall they do not sit in an easily defensible , or for that matter popular, moral position.
Last week Robin Hanson dared me to write a pro-torture post; this is the closest I can come to that.
Addendum: International law, and other legal documents, surely creates other differences between torture and murder, but I am asking the prior question of how those laws should read.
I am curious what you would recommend be done with violent, predatory criminals (other than jail)?
Since Lost is the only exposure to torture I have, I’ll use it as an example that there are strong reasons for torture in a community at risk. To Robin’s suggestion that torturers are less admirable people, it’s hard to make that point about Sayid, a former Republican guard for Saddam Hussein and a professional torturer. Sayid’s torturing uncovered the infiltration of one of the Others – the false Henry Gale. In the end, the Losties chose not to listen to Sayid, and that mistake cost them dearly. But, it’s interesting that torture appears to have been the only mechanism available to have uncovered the plot involving the false Henry Gale.
That said, torture elicits false positives, even for experts like Sayid. Sayid caught Gale in a lie only because Shannon had died recently, and therefore Sayid felt certain that it was impossible Gale could not describe in detail the burial of his alleged wife. But he’d been unable to learn that Sawyer was bluffing when he had tortured him earlier. So it appears to be a fairly crude instrument, eliciting many false positives, and costly to the community because of the guilt they incur. Sayid seems to be on the island partly because of his past as a torturer, for instance. It’s the one sin he cannot escape – yet, he knows his value to the community lies in his brutality and ability to ignore his conscience for the sake of his friends. So perhaps torturers are heroes.
They also usually think that the slow torture of jail, including the homosexual rapes, is OK or perhaps to be ignored rather than to be either endorsed or countered
That’s simply untrue, unless you’re making the naive college-kid point that if you don’t devote everything to a cause or ideal, you aren’t really supporting it. I assume the next post will say, “Liberals don’t really believe in redistribution; look at how few of their high and mid-high income earners give away the majority of their income to the poor.”
Note also that, “Those same people don’t think it is OK to torture, except under extreme circumstances,” is also true of killing (in your account, “murdering”) someone: no one thinks it’s OK to execute Al Queda operatives who are in our control and who have not had at least a modicum of due process. Well, no Democrat and no Blue thinks that.
but overall they do not sit in an easily defensible , or for that matter popular, moral position.
This is a sloppy post, and you’ve not made the slightest step towards demonstrating the above. I’m not even sure of the outline of your argument. And the connection you seem to imply between “easily defensible” and “popular” by listing the two serially is bizarre.
I hope your throwaway line about Hanson’s dare explains this moronic post. The murder/torture comparison you make is not realistic: you propose murder “to stop an operation in progress”, which implies clear guilt on the part of the murderee. In such cases toerure might be acceptable, in a counterfactual world in which torture is the only possible way to stop the individual in question from completing the operation in progress. (Which is presumably the only reason why we’ve justified killing in such cases.) Torture isn’t used in such circumstances – it is for extracting information about potential operations from potential suspects. (And even in the case of ongoing operations, it is used to (try and) stop the actions of other persons — not the recipient of the torture, who is obviously already in custody.) We shouldn’t sanction gov’t torture of suspects any more than we should sanction government murder of suspects. All that not to mention the pragmatic effects, that we’d like discourage torture and other human rights abuses worldwide, which our own endorsement thereof makes quite difficult.
Invective is a good sign that I have hit a nerve. On SCMT, it does not matter for the comparison whether we call it “killing” or “murdering” the al qaeda operative. True, we (usually) don’t kill operatives in our custody, but we are willing to kill those outside of our custody. In any case there remains a killing vs. torture comparison (even if some other comparisons involve relevant ancillary information) in which we seem to think killing apparently is fine but torture is not. And while we may (ought?) to seek to capture operatives before killing them, it could equally be argued that we may try to stop terrorist operations in the field before torturing for more information. But often, in both cases, we can’t achieve the preferred end and thus we resort to some less preferred end.
Remember, the point of the post is not to defend torture, but rather to show that many torture critics are not very consistent and place a great stress on what are actually fairly arbitrary distinctions. I welcome you all to take a more consistent anti-punishment position.
I have never heard a non-arbitrary ethical distinction for (traditional) torture per se. Every argument I’ve ever heard for why torture is imoral, comes down to people rationalizing their aesthetic predispositions, which I feel are not to be trusted.
I have to agree with everyone here objecting to the claim that left-wing opponents of torture think that prison is OK or to be ignored. It is simply false, and the post really falls apart when the supposed contradiction vanishes. The “murder” comparison is really best made with the death penalty, after all, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more likely advocate for abolishing the death penalty than a left-wing opponent of torture!
If you’re inviting the left wing to agree that prison is miserable and something really should be done, then you’re preaching to the choir. Crime is a difficult problem to tackle and I’m at a loss for how we should “put the teeth” in law enforcement for a cost which is not astronomical, but we agree that our prison system is far enough gone that something needs to be done. But if this is your goal, then you really shouldn’t preface the argument by accusing your natural allies of not caring.
One last thing: I don’t think anyone’s been defending torture as punishment, though they may subconsciously enjoy imagining it as such. The (relatively few) people willing to actually defend torture as such defend it as a means of getting information. Perhaps Jack Bauer showed them that beneath the fingernail lies a button to reveal the truth about where the terrorist nukes are hidden?
EditDelete
Invective is a good sign that I have hit a nerve.
Possibly. But it’s not a particularly good sign that you hit the nerve you intended to hit. (Looking at the responses, I’m not sure what definition of “invective” you’re using, either.) Here, I think people are irritated because someone who we think of as reliably fair, if not always on the right side, has ascribed an argument to liberals that they don’t hold.
True, we (usually) don’t kill operatives in our custody, but we are willing to kill those outside of our custody.
The in-custody/out-of-custody distinction is a pretty important one. Insofar as you think denying people–including, or even primarily innocent civilians–food and medicine is torture, we’re pretty clearly willing to do that. See, e.g., Economic Sanctions, Iraq.
there remains a killing vs. torture comparison (even if some other comparisons involve relevant ancillary information) in which we seem to think killing apparently is fine but torture is not
Except that, as you noted in the post, this isn’t true. Again, the ancillary and the parenthetical matters. We do think torture is OK in some circumstances–ticking time-bomb, etc.–just as we think killing is OK in some circumstances.
But often, in both cases, we can’t achieve the preferred end and thus we resort to some less preferred end.
Here you seem to be assuming things. It matters that people believe that the ends we seek–protecting US lives–can be accomplished without torture but not without killing. That’s an empirical claim, and maybe we’re wrong. But if you simply assume away a key part of our argument, then of course you’re going to find our argument lacking: you created the lack.
I welcome you all to take a more consistent anti-punishment position.
Nobody’s claiming any sort of idealized posture on this. But I think you’re overstating the extent to which you’ve demonstrated that we’re not very consistent.
And, finally, Typepad sucks.
Some extreme pacifists will argue that we have no license to kill the same operatives we might otherwise be torturing. That position would at least be consistent.
I’d argue that the above is the only consistent form of true pacifism, and that it is by definition immoral, equating all actors and all outcomes. Somebody who, say, wants to kill my wife or daughter is not the equivalent of some random schmoe on the street. Killing the former I would consider a highly moral act, while killing the latter I would not. To fail to make a distinction between the two is repugnant in and of itself. There are no privileged frames of moral reference.
Tyler,
murder is more accepted when it is a result of combat. The other side is trying to harm you too. That’s why the death penalty is controversial, but killing Bin Laden is not.
Torture means inflicting pain to someone under your control, rendered defenseless. For some reason we feel irked by such a situation. I can think of a feel answers for this:
- Paretian arguement: a human being can be reformed and brought back to society if he feels respected. Torture usually goes deep in breaking people’s dignity. So, torture alienates people that could be brought back to society. It’s very hard to overcome or forgive a torture experience.
- Theory of moral sentiments: torture is done at such a close range that we put ourselves in the place of victims and feel their pains.
- I think you already mentioned this one in the post: once opened, the door to torture is much wider than to murder. The threshold is very fuzzy.
Best, Eduardo
rationalizing their aesthetic predispositions, which I feel are not to be trusted.
Actually aesthetic predispositions is all any of us have, in the end. It’s the elaborate pretension that there is such a thing as measurable general welfare (or utility) that is not to be trusted. Of course, dueling aesthetic predispositions leave you without a way to settle disagreements (except inasfar as you can convince someone that their means will not lead to the hoped for ends).
For myself, when I hear justifications for torture based on increased security, I am always reminded of the biblical question: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his own soul?”. It is not surprising to me that an economist would have trouble justifying opposition to torture, however.
Let me put it like this. There are all these minds in the world, perhaps in the universe, that experience various levels of happiness and sadness, joy and pain. When we look back from the future we would endorse moral principles that lead to many happy minds. But there are two conflicting views.
The “totalist” view says that we should aim to maximize total happiness. In this view, any mind which is not so unhappy as to commit suicide is a net positive. The “averagist” view says we should aim to maximize not total happiness but average happiness. In this view any mind which is unhappy is a net negative.
Neither view works well. The averagist view would endorse killing off all the minds which are less happy than average, which will thereby raise the average. However we should then do that again, and again, until there is only one mind left, the happiest one of all. (Actually this is not quite true, it neglects the negative impact on the remainder of all those deaths, but still the reasoning goes through to some degree and is clearly inconsistent with our moral intuitions.)
The totalist view endorses increasing population pressure until every single person is so unhappy that they are almost ready to kill themselves. This is an extraordinary degree of unhappiness and no one would endorse a planet full of people living like that as a moral optimum.
Given these problems, we need to find some other principle for evaluating the effects of a moral rule. Otherwise we have no basis for choosing morality via an outcome-based analysis. What principle will work?
Can anybody explain what would be the point of a prison that wasn’t some kind of torture? Furthermore can anybody explain the point of a justice system that didn’t involve some kind of torture? Aren’t we just drawing an arbitrary line at what kind of torture we feel comfortable inflicting (ie prison, vs. beatings) based on our own aesthetic judgments. Aren’t we all going have somewhat different preferences concerning what level of torture we feel comfortable with (granted that we could all agree we wanted to be on some kind of pareto optimal combination of pain and deterence or justice or whatever. I have no problem with any of this; but isn’t this exactly what is going on?
You’re post seem to ignore some vital differences in the circumstances when we find killing acceptable and not.
Most of the time when we see killing people as acceptable it’s during uncontrolled situations where it’s not a straight choice of either 1. Killing them; 2. Torturing them. It’s instead a choice of for example 1. capturing them and interrogating them for information; 2. Killing them and stopping them from committing future atrocities.
Here no. 1 is clearly the preferable option, ceteris paribus. However, in option 1 (capturing them) we might risk losing 10 of our own soldiers in the operation. As we put more value on our own soldiers’ lives than on al Qaeda operatives’ or surrounding civilians’ lives (rightly or wrongly, that’s another ethical discussion), we will most times choose to kill them as risk free as possible. This is the true comparison you need to make, not some random comparison between killing people in the field vs. torturing them in Gitmo.
If you compare torturing vs. killing a captive in a safe environment, say torturing an innocent civilian you’re holding in Gitmo, versus killing this innocent civilian, I would think that most people hold the killing to be the worse crime.
If you think that killing is so often seen as more accepted than killing, why do you think there is such a huge amount of research put into the use of torture in battlefield conditions (ie. non-lethal weapons like rubber bullets, tazers, ultrasound, etc. Use any of these methods against a prisoner and it will certainly be seen as torture). The reason why the army wants to torture people on a battlefield instead of killing them outright isn’t because they’re sadists who like to see people suffer, it’s because torture is seen as a lesser evil than killing.
Compare like-for-like and you see the consistency of the “pro-murder/anti-torture” stance.
Tyler,
I think you see problems and contradictions where there
are not any, although I can imagine that there are people
who are confused in their own thinking. Thus, it is possible
to oppose the death penalty, oppose torture, and support
wars of self-defense. After all, killing in self-defense
is not “murder” in the legal sense. Aggressive wars are
another matter and may really amount to “murder.”
To Jason Voorhees,
In the future I would strongly suggest that you avoid
referring to some assinine TV show as evidence regarding
the informational efficacy of torture, or any other matter
of any seriousness, please.
The distinction between torture and military killing is not the one you try to make: between pain and death; rather, the distinction between torture and military killing is the use to which pain and/or death is put.
In the least objectionable form of military killing, an enemy is killed to prevent them from carrying out their clear goal of causing death and destruction. I think most would agree that if this could be performed by using less-lethal weaponry, it would be morally preferable to stop the enemy through less-lethal means, even if those means were painful, and maybe even if those means were permanently debilitating (up to a point).
Torture is used to coerce a person who is suspected of being able to help you, but is unwilling to cooperate with you, into cooperation. In this context, changing the proposition from, cooperate or I will hurt you, to, cooperate or will kill you, does not improve its moral value.
To me, the factor that makes torture more deplorable than a military killing, is that the efficacy of killing is known: the individual enemy combatant can be stopped in their mission by killing them; whereas the efficacy of torture is not known: the victim of torture may be unable to cooperate, may refuse cooperation even in the face of torture, and even their cooperation can be unreliable. And usually, torture requires more effort on the part of more individuals than military killing.
In summary, torture is more objectionable than military killing, and has a less plausible necessity defense, because more work is put into the morally objectionable effort, while achieving the supposedly necessary outcome is less certain.
Um, aren’t the only folks who do talk about the inappropriateness of prison rape and try to do anything about it lefties? Did I miss a memo?
My comments were all geared toward civilian crimes/criminals. I don’t have any idea about what constitutes as morality in military terms.
Somethings that fit in military life, have no place in civilian life – and vice-versa. That’s my opinion, not saying it’s right, but I think it’s okay for there to be different rules for both worlds.
Many torture critics, willingly or not, end up with a waffling view on the sanctity of life. In their moral schema murder is less bad than torture.
This is ridiculous. No one believes killing is less bad than torture in any circumstance in which both are alternatives.
If you are faced with an armed and dangerous attacker, it is possible to kill them but not possible to torture them while they are still armed and dangerous. Thus, some people support killing in that situation but no one supports torture in that situation.
If you are faced with a subdued captive you wish to interrogate, it is possible to extract information from them using torture but not possible to do so by killing them. Thus, some people support torture in that situation but no one supports killing in that situation.
If you wish to punish someone, you can fine them, imprison them, torture them, or kill them. The defenders of a murderer might argue that death is too harsh; the prosecutors might argue that torture isn’t harsh enough; no one is going to argue that torture is too harsh but death is okay.
Seems simple to me:
1) Torture seldom works.
2) Where torture appears to work, there can be no guarantee that the tortured person is not giving misleading information in retaliation to the torture.
3) Unlike assasination to prevent a suicide bomber (or similar), a torturer cannot later rationalise their actions if they know, believe or later discover the above two facts. As the famous ‘prisoner & guards’ experiment demonstarted – such absolute power corrupts absolutely.
4) The tortured often have family and friends who share similar beliefs and therefore make an enemy of their kin/friend’s torturer.
So even if you might want to torture someone, the best advice is always “don’t” (possibly excepting the hypothetical megolomaniac with a hidden ticking bomb).
Whereas killing in the battlefield is about survival (although the prior consideration is how you got there).
To take some real-world examples, Guantanamo Bay & Abu Graib shame the U.S. in the eyes of the world (both friend & foe), produce little useful intelligence & rally her previously disparate opponents to a common cause.
Correspondingly, I think the successful assasination of Bin Laden would be viewed as a proportionate & reasonable response to his misdoings. Perhaps this is because he is a self-styled maverick outcast (despite being a rich Saudi)…
Also contrast the other alternatives to torture or murder. I believe (despite it’s problems) the trial of Saddam Hussein is thus far widely seen as a triumph of ‘western’ due process over atavistic revenge – primarily because the participants refrained from either killing or torturing him when they could. I think he would rather have been seen as a martyr than as the defendant he now is…
I think there is a fine distinction between punishment and torture. Punishment and torture may resemble each other in deed, but are quite different in their motivations. Punishment is the retaliation for doing some illicit activity (murder, rape, speaking out against the monarch, etc.).
Torture on the other hand has nothing to do with punishment. The goal of torture is to acquire something (information, money, etc.) or to derive a sadistic pleasure. The punisher is not seen as gaining from his actions (“this is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you†), the torturer is, and that makes it unseemly.
There are actually three different questions people here are raising. One is would _I_ prefer to die or be tortured. The second is should a mythical social planner allow a death to take place if it would save someone else from being tortured. And the third is are there ever situations in which it is moral for _me_ to engage in torture (most agree already that killing can be morally justified sometimes).
These are three very different questions and only if you are a strict consequentialist does it make sense to assume that all answers should be “consistent” — where here consistent means in line with my preference ordering between torture and death.
Not to start a death penalty debate, but I remember John Stuart Mill arguing that the death penalty is a pretty good deal for the state because most people are terrified of death but inflicting the death penalty involves a minimal amount of actual pain. Therefore, the death penalty ought to be preferable to many forms of cruel punishment we could dream up for murderers. I’m not sure whether I buy the argument (and this is a very rough sketch — I’m sure you could find the complete argument on the Internet somewhere) but this shows that there are or have been very intelligent people who do indeed support the death penalty but oppose torture. The drafters of the bill of rights are included in this category as well, as someone else pointed out.
Tyler is commiting the Ham Sandwich fallacy.
He accuses torture opponents of the following logic: “Killing is okay. Torture is wrong. Therefore killing is better than torture.” This is similar to: “Nothing is better than eternal happiness. A ham sandwich is better than nothing. Therefore a ham sandwich is better than eternal happiness.”
The real argument goes something like: “Killing in self-defense or for punishing a murderer is okay. Torture as an interrogation technique or for punishing a tax evader is wrong.” This doesn’t imply that killing is better than torture any more than the fact that Tyler writes short posts and I write long posts implies that I write more than Tyler.
Ok, so you have made the case that one evil (murder) is perhaps qualitative different from another (torture), or perhaps not. So? Self-defence is not murder. What was the moral case for torture now again?
Torture vs. death both have their good traits as well as their bad traits. For anyone who commits a crime they do indeed need to be punished. Capital punishment for a convict is necessary if they have committed a severe crime, such as murdering a large number of people, or raping alot of people, or any terrorist also should fall under this category. If an al Qaeda operative is killed to stop them from commiting something on the U.S. or if they are given capital punishment after they have done something, then murder should be okay. The bad thing about murder however is that someone is being killed. Torture may be a good thing to some people because if you send someone to prison for life, then they will have to stay in that same area for their entire life and never have freedom or really have a good life. But I agree with the ones who posted that the prisons just don’t seem as bad as they used to be. Convicts are able to get drugs and just about any other thing that they want. That is not torturing them. Some convicts have it made in prison, just mainly because they don’t have to work, they are given food, water, and are able to get alot of stuff. The prison systems today need to be changed if they really plan on torturing the inmates. But as far as the torture vs. death issue. Killing an al Qaeda operative should be okay, to keep them from doing some destructable like that and as far as the issue on torture, there just needs to be some changes made.
Is torture okay for use in violent murder crimes? Yes or no?
Follow up… do you believe it can be an effective deterrant for preventing violent murders? Yes or no?
First, of all I would like to say that going to jail is not really torture. Going to jail is a punishment and not torture. Yes going to jail may have times when it may be torture but it is not garanteed it wiil be. Torture is Inflicting pain to the point that it almost kills them, but does not. Torture makes one wish for death, which is enavitable for all humans. Death is more likable than torture because in all humans we all have to face it someday, it is our destiny to die. Torture on the other hand is something that is not certain for everyone, and is also painful and unpleasant. I think that is why we would rather prefer death over torture because we will all die someday but we all won’t endure torture.
Good heavens, this discussion has become
severely tortured. Well, I guess that must
be the case for all of you who support capital
punishment and aggressive wars and similar sorts
of immoral drivel, unlike the overwhelming majority of
people in the world, especially in the high income
democracies (pretty much all of which besides the
US ban capital punishment). It is not an
accident that Amnesty International opposes capital
punishment. So, if you want to support capital
punishment, then you can torture yourself with these
inappropriate comparisons that Tyler has put up here.
Otherwise, it is very simpple. Oppose killing
people without seriously just cause, which I would
count as including self-defense, but probably nothing
else, and oppose torture. Period.
I have noticed that a lot of people responding to this blog about torture refer to the mistreatment of detainees by our armed forces. I would like to comment on this, not about the right or wrong of the torture itself. Military Police (MP) receive 8-12 weeks of training before they are sent to their units as MPs that is 3-4 months to learn how to do everything involved in police work as well as combat training. You then send these 18 year olds over and put them in the highly stressful environment of a war zone. And tell them that they have to perform duties ranging from traffic control (while under fire) to convoy escort (the most dangerous job in Iraq) then expect them to act as jailers to many of the worlds most dangerous people in less than ideal security conditions. How would the average teenager treat someone that they thought might kill them? Remember the Abu Grabe Prison was a prison before we got there; many of the inmates were already there for murder and rape. I can speak from experience as someone who has been there (Afghanistan not Iraq) and who has been personally responsible for placing the black hood over the detainees heads (which by the way are not tied or used to torture but simply as an escape prevention tool). Our soldiers are doing an outstanding job at restraining themselves, and the vast majority of detainees are treated better than you might think given the circumstances. We cannot blame these soldiers for mistreating someone in such a situation we can only blame ourselves for putting them in that kind of situation in the first place. My personal opinion is that if stacking a bunch of naked dudes on top of each other is one of the worst things that have been done to detainees then we have the best soldiers the world has ever known.
If you are wondering if I think torture should be used let me say this; once you have seen a screaming 4 year old girl whose face and arms has been blown off from an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) you really won’t care how they catch the person that did it. You just want him caught.
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