A fate worse than death?

There's a debate on interrogation which seems to be winding down over at First Things: Evangel. I've interacting with various individuals (but mainly with John Mark Reynolds). Here is my side of the exchange:

steve hays
January 11th, 2010

“The main problem with torture in order to gain information, as I see it as a Christian, is that it removes our ability to trust in the sovereignty of God. We torture because we are worried about what the future holds.”

Does having gov’t employees who inspect the structural integrity of bridges express distrust in God’s providence?

steve hays
January 11th, 2010

“What then of pre-trial treatment? What means are permitted in questioning a suspected criminal, that is, someone who has not yet been found guilty of a punishable crime? Since ancient times brutal means have often been employed to elicit a confession or incriminating information from a defendant.”

The question at issue is not to extract a confession under duress, but to extract intelligence under duress. This is about counterespionage, not pretrial discovery.

“Even if the suspect is guilty of harbouring information about fellow conspirators that might be crucial to stopping a terrorist act, he could just as easily give false or misleading information to his interrogators, who would not necessarily know the difference.”

It’s no different than a homicide detective who grills a suspect. He then treats what the suspect tells him as a possible lead which he must follow-up to either confirm or disconfirm. If it turns out to be a false lead, he goes back, armed with that information, to grill the suspect again.

“Any effort to do so will almost inevitably tempt us, in our choice of means, to flirt with the edges of legality and rectitude.”

i) Whether or not we’re skirting the edges of legality begs the question of what laws we should have in place. Do we have good laws? Do our laws protect the innocent, or do our laws protect the assailant?

ii) Should we start with questions of legality or questions of morality?

steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Adam Omelianchuk

“The government has the right to bear the sword, but it does not have the right to carve lines into a detainee’s skin for sadistic interrogation purposes.”

A straw man argument.


steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Adam Omelianchuk

“Actually, it is very different. A detective ‘grilling’ a suspect is not the same as torturing a suspect. Torture is thought to be an aid to investigating–to getting truth from the detainee–it is not the process of investigation itself.”

You’ve abandoned your own argument. You originally objected to “torture” because it’s ineffective in yielding reliable information.

This assumes that an interrogator (or his superiors) simply takes the information at face value, rather than attempted to do any fact-checking.

To the contrary, information from a terrorist is no different that information from a criminal suspect. In both cases they may feed the interrogator misinformation. In both cases the interrogator will treat that information as a possible lead which may or may not turn out to be a false lead.

steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Adam Omelianchuk:

“Hardly.”

It’s a straw man argument for you to compare, let us say, a CIA interrogator who uses sleep deprivation on a terrorist to extract information regarding a terrorist plot to a torturer who is takes a butcher knife to a victim for sadistic pleasure. Not only is your comparison grossly inaccurate, but it’s downright defamatory.

Why do you think it’s morally permissible for you, as a professing Christian, to misrepresent the opposing position with scurrlious comparisons?


steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Adam Omelianchuk

“You are thinking that information extracted from a suspect via lawful means and torture are in the same epistemic place. So why is torture necessary at all?”

“Torture” is your tendentious word, not mine. Don’t impute your assumptions to me.

“The argument for torture rests on a dubious premise that it will lead to reliable information, for when the suspect is put under its duress the suspect will be more willing to tell the truth.”

It rests, on part, on the premise that absent an adequate motivation, he may have no incentive to say anything at all.

“Information extracted from a detainee or a suspect via torture is thought to be more reliable, and therefore torture is necessary for the state to do in order to protect its citizens.”

i) There’s no prior assumption regarding its reliability or unreliability. But we can only check out the reliability of what he says, not what he refuses to say.

ii) At the same time, he does have an incentive to tell the truth if he thinks that lying will result in renewed interrogation.

“But you do not think this is the case, for information extracted under lawful methods of interrogation is of the same epistemic quality as that of information extracted via torture.”

i) To the contrary, it could well be the case that more coercive techniques applied to criminal suspects would sometimes yield very useful information.

ii) However, as I pointed out to Joe Carter, there are tradeoffs in dealing with domestic and foreign terrorists.

Citizens have, or ought to have, greater rights because they have greater responsibilities. They buy into the system. There are general benefits for all. But that also comes at a cost.

Take the presumption of innocence in a criminal trial. That’s a classic tradeoff.

It’s justifiable under the terms of a social contract.

iii) That’s quite different than dealing with foreign terrorists.

steve hays
January 11th, 2010

I can’t speak for all parties concerned, but speaking for myself, Christians have to make ethical decisions on a daily basis. Some trivial, but some momentous. And we need to have the right toolkit for make reasonable decisions, consistent with our Christian duties.

This includes our national policy regarding counterterrorism. I’m puzzled by why Rev. McCain finds this puzzling. It’s fine to post pretty pictures about Christian art and music, but that’s no a substitute for patiently working through difficult moral issues.

If Rev. McCain were an army chaplain or military chaplain, he’d need to counsel doctors, patients, family members, or soldiers on challenging moral issues in ethics and bioethics.


steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Rev. McCain,

How did I set up a straw man? You seemed to indicate that all this talk about “torture” was a waste of time.

I’m genuinely curious about whether you believe Christians in general or Lutherans in particular should participate in this debate. Do you think Lutheran theologians have any specific moral guidance to offer on issues like this? Is it important for Lutheran theologians to offer concrete moral direction on the ethics of counterterrorism?

In my experience, your habit is to default to pious advice about “Looking to Jesus.”

But what would do if you were pastoring a church, if a gov’t (e.g. FBI, CIA) interrogator were a member of your congregation, and he came to you for counsel on the legitimacy and/or limits of coercive interrogation? Would you give him some criteria? Or would you tell him to listen to a recording of the St. Matthew Passion?

I’m not saying that you, personally, have an obligation to speak to this issue. Maybe you don’t feel qualified. Fine.

But you seem to have a problem with other people speaking to this issue. Do you think we should just let secular liberals and secular conservatives hash it out?


steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Rev. Paul T. McCain:

“It is becoming like torture to read yet one more blog post on torture.”

But when I respond by saying “I’m puzzled by why Rev. McCain finds this puzzling,” you reply by saying “Steve, I regret you felt it necessary to exercise the ‘snarky option’ when you said, ‘I’m puzzled by why Rev. McCain finds this puzzling.’”

So why is it “snarky” for me to say I’m puzzled by why you find this puzzling, but it’s not “snarky” for you to say that you find it torturous to read one more post on torture? Can you explain the essential difference?

“You have just responded with obnoxious and insulting remarks.”

No, I simply posed a series of questions. You’re the representative Lutheran here. What’s wrong with asking a Lutheran what Lutheran theology has to say about ethical issues raised by counterterrism, including coercive interrogation? Why do you resent the opportunity to answer that question? Would John Warwick Montgomery resent that question?

If you think Lutheran theology has some detailed guidance to offer on this controverted issue, why don’t you share it with us? Why is that an unreasonable request?

Wasn’t that the point of Joe Carter asking you to join this blog? So that you could bring a Lutheran perspective to the discussion?

BTW, Montgomery and I have corresponded in the past. If you resent me asking you what Lutheran theology has to say on the issue at hand, perhaps I should ask him instead and post his answer on my own blog.

“You are obviously spoiling for a fight, but you’ll have to take your aggression out somewhere else.”

You’re the one who’s ratcheting up the aggressive rhetoric, not me.

“And, I do apologize if my posts containing God’s Word, beautiful paintings, and music and my urging people to look to Jesus have offended you.”

So why don’t you explain how God’s word and looking to Jesus furnish moral concrete guidance on counterterrorism? How does that cash out?

It reminds me of an old book by Tom Skinner, If Christ Is the Answer, What Are the Questions?


steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Matt

“Therefore, the argument that it is acceptable to act in an immoral manner (torture) to gain information that could save lives removes our trust. There is no excuse ever to act in an immoral manner, or a manner that goes against what Christ teaches.”

I think everyone here agrees with that generic principle. The question at issue is whether every form of coercive interrogation is a special case of that generic principle. You need to justify your claim that any kind or degree of coercive interrogation is intrinsically evil.

steve hays
January 10th, 2010 |

Terrorists aren’t POWs. Terrorists go out of their way to flout the laws of war.

How do you define “torture”? Is any form of coercive interrogation, however mild, “torture” in your eyes?

steve hays
January 10th, 2010

“Question: I’m curious to hear why, if torture is allowed by the state, that it’s use can only be justified on foreigners and not on our own citizens. Capturing terrorist who have knowledge of actions that will cause future loss of life are rare. But the police capture criminals every day who have knowledge that could prevent the deaths of innocents. Why don’t we allow the police to torture them?”

In response to Joe’s question:

i) The use of the word “torture” is prejudicial. I understand that opponents will use this word in characterizing their own opposition since they think that designation properly applies to a whole spectrum of coercive techniques. But keep in mind that many proponents of coercive interrogation reject that broad-brush definition.

ii) There is no absolute moral distinction between a foreign terrorist and a domestic terrorist (i.e. US citizen). And if, for the sake of argument, we regard coercion as morally permissible (or even obligatory) in a ticking timebomb situation involving a foreign terrorist, then it would be morally permissible to extend that to a domestic terrorist.

iii) However, the distinction isn’t purely ad hoc. The notion of citizenship is bound up with the notion of a social contract. A social contract involves a tradeoff. You assume certain responsibilities in exchange for certain rights.

And this, in turn, carries the presumption that every member of the social contract (i.e. citizen) is entitled to certain protections, even if an individual shirks his civil duties–because the responsible citizens shouldn’t lose their protections on his account. One for all and all for one.

iv) But in principle, there are extreme cases where that conventional presumption might be overridden. Such immunities are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. And there might be extreme situations in which rote adherence to that conventional presumption would subvert its rationale.

It depends on how hypothetical we want to get.

steve hays
January 10th, 2010
John Mark Reynolds

“An action may be torture if it breaks the free will right of a person through psychological or physical means, but is necessarily torture if it inflicts such harms permanently.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to build a particular version of action theory into your definition, then derive a corresponding right from your definition. In other words, the right not to be “tortured” apparently derives, on your definition, from the presupposition that human agents enjoy libertarian freewill. That being the case, to violate their libertarian freedom would be inherently evil.

If that’s your position, then your opposition to “torture” is contingent on your precommitment to libertarian action theory. And, in that case, the moral permissibility or impermissibility of “torture” is not something we can resolve by debating the pros and cons of “torture” directly. Rather, we’d first need to debate the pros and cons of whatever action theory is sponsoring your position on “torture.”

On the face of it, the debate over “torture,” as you have cast it, is a presuppositional debate. If that’s the case, then we need to debate the underlying presuppositions rather than “torture” per se.

But perhaps I misread your intentions.

steve hays
January 10th, 2010
John Mark Reynolds

“An action may be torture if it breaks the free will right of a person through psychological or physical means, but is necessarily torture if it inflicts such harms permanently.”

i) I’m unclear on the driving principle.

a) Is the primary objection to depriving an agent of his right not to have his freewill violated? (Let’s call this a “libertarian right.)

b) Or is the primary objection to inflicting physical and/or psychological harm?

Moreover, I don’t see how this definition confers immunity from “torture” on the terrorist.

If, on this definition, he’s coercively interrogated, then he’s been denied his libertarian rights.

However, his libertarian right is not the only libertarian right to take into consideration.

His victims didn’t give consent to be maimed or murdered.

The victim’s survivors (friends and family) didn’t consent to lose their loved one in a terrorist attack.

So even if we grant JMR’s principle of the sake of argument, that simply generates a dilemma. For however you cut it, someone will have his libertarian rights denied him.

That being the case, why should the libertarian rights of the guilty assailant trump the libertarian rights of the innocent victim?

iii) Furthermore, killing a terrorist, whether on the battlefield or by judicial execution also deprives him of his freedom of choice or freedom of opportunity.

iv) And if the rejoinder is that a terrorist gives implied consent to his own death by assuming the risky occupation of a terrorist, then, by the same token, isn’t he giving implied consent to whatever may befall him at the hands of his captors in case he’s taken alive?

steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Jeremy Pierce

“Steve, I’m not sure why you think JMR’s argument requires libertarian freedom.”

I didn’t say it “requires” it. I’m merely exploring one possible interpretation of his argument.

I believe that he’s a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, and in my experience the Eastern Orthodox affirm libertarian freewill (e.g. Maximus the Confessor, Joseph Farrel, Perry Robinson, Photios Jones). So I’m just wondering if that’s a theological presupposition of his objection to coercive interrogation inasmuch as coercion violates the freedom of the terrorist to withhold information by “breaking his will” (as JMR is fond of putting it).


steve hays
January 9th, 2010

“Torture is intending to inflict permanent psychological or physical harm to a man in order to break his will and get information from him that he does not wish to give us.”

It is?

i) Why define “torture” as the intent to inflict “permanent” harm?

Does this mean that if a technique does not inflict permanent physical or psychological harm, that you regard an impermanent as morally licit?

ii) Does sleep deprivation inflict permanent harm?

iii) How does your permanent/impermanent distinction square with your criterion of “soul liberty?”

I thought you objected to “torture” because any form of coercion violated the “soul liberty” of the agent.

But how is your permanent/impermanent distinction relevant to that objection? Even if it’s impermanent, it remains “torture” if you define torture as anything coercive.

It seems to me that you’re is making up the argument on the fly. It looks very piecemeal and ad hoc to me. Am I missing something?

iv) The intent of coercive interrogation is not to inflict permanent harm, but to use coercion as a means of extracting intel from an unwilling terrorist.

Whether the harm is permanent or impermanent would be incidental to the intent.

Indeed, an interrogator might well wish to avoid inflicting permanent psychological harm since it might be necessary to interrogate the terrorist again in case the information turned out to be bogus.

steve hays
January 9th, 2010

“Torture is, by its very nature, a drawn out act that leaves the man tortured with psychological wounds that he will have to work out in this world not in the world to come.”

i) Whether the mental wellbeing of the terrorist is all-important begs the very question at issue.

ii) But beyond that, this objection is problematic on its own grounds. For innocent survivors of a terrorist attack also suffer “psychological wounds.” Their mental wellbeing may be shattered for life as they suffer the inconsolable loss of their loved ones in the attack.

So either way, you’ll be left with “broken” individuals. That being the case, why should the mental wellbeing of the terrorist take precedence over the mental wellbeing of his victims?

Even on his own terms, I’ve unclear about the coherence of JMR’s moral priorities at this juncture.


steve hays
January 9th, 2010
“While two Wrights certainly can make an airplane, two wrongs don’t do anything but mulitply wrongs.”

Whether it’s wrong to break the will of a terrorist begs the question.

“The terrorist is a man and my enemy. As a Christian my basic disposition toward him is love.”

i) And what about your disposition towards his prospective victims?

ii) Moreover, it’s not a question of whether he’s my personal enemy. He may be no threat to me personally. But he’s a threat to others.

Do you think one can be equally loving to everyone? What about a schoolyard sniper? If it’s a choice between the life of the sniper and the life of the next victim in the crosshairs, should the police sharpshooter be more loving towards the sniper than the students he has pinned down in the schoolyard?

“The mental well being of a terrorist is not the issue.”

Is isn’t? I thought you made that a central issue. We mustn’t psychologically wound the terrorist.

“His crimes have harmed his own soul and God will judge him. I can punish him for his crimes, but there are limits to what a man can do.”

That’s a category mistake. Coercive interrogation isn’t punitive.

“He broke individuals, but (in a Christian ethic) that does not mean I can break him. It is not eye for an eye in our faith.”

That commits the same category mistake.

“We do not help the victims of terror by terrorizing the terrorist.”

Oh, please! We certainly help potential victims by preventing their victimizing by a terrorist if we can foil the plot through effective interrogation.


steve hays
January 9th, 2010
John Mark Reynolds

“I am sorry for them and will help them as much as I can…”

You’re “sorry” for them? That’s it?

Feeling sorry for them is hardly a moral substitute for taking precautionary measures which would forestall their unjust loss in the first place.

Feeling sorry is appropriate if that’s the most we can do. But it’s not something we should do in lieu of taking reasonable measures to avoid tragic, foreseeable outcome.

“…but not at the cost of adding to the wrong.”

Which begs the question of whether we’d be adding to the wrong.

“I am not calling the prospective victim, the terrorist is.”

I think you must have used the wrong verb. Did you mean “harming” rather than “calling”?

If so, then it’s quite possible for a third party to harm someone through negligence. If a hospital administrator knows that one of his surgeons is an alcoholic, but takes no preemptive action, and the surgeon butchers a patient, the administrator is morally complicit.

However, it’s possible that I misread your sentence.

“We may execute him for his greater crimes.”

The question at issue is not what we can do after the fact, but what we can do in advance to avert a foreseeable atrocity.

We can also stand by as we watch a man beat his 5-year-old to death, then execute him for murder. But is that a substitute for timely intervention?

“There are simply some things we cannot do (surely you agree?) to save the innocent.”

I agree. And thus far you haven’t come anywhere near crossing that threshold.

“The fact that he is a threat does not justify doing anything to stop that threat. Right?”

Agreed. But these fact-free abstractions do nothing to resolve the concrete issue.

“We can stop the sniper by killing him. Nobody disagrees (in this thread with that).”

But killing the sniper isn’t loving to the sniper. It’s loving to his potential victims, but not to the sniper.

“I don’t think all punitive actions wrong, but I also don’t think all good ends (hopefully stopping a future harm) justify all actions.”

Agreed. But that’s another airy-fairy abstraction. To set an abstract boundary says nothing about what lies on either side of the boundary.

“The harm I do in torture is certain and the good I will get from it less so. Much less so.”

That’s a tendentious claim. One the one hand you “traumatize” the terrorist. So maybe he has nightmares for the rest of his life. Big deal. Why should terrorism be a risk-free occupation?

On the other hand, you save the lives of, let’s say, dozens of innocent men, women, and children.

Or let’s say it’s just one 5-year-old girl. Say she’d be horribly burned in a terrorist attack. Or lose her mother. How you think the harm of “torture” (as you define it) outweighs the good of her physical or emotional wellbeing still eludes me.

“The usefulness of torture depends on: a. having the right man, b. knowing he has good information, c. be willing to do whatever it takes to get that information. Nobody I know believes that ‘c’ is moral.”

Richard Posner might demur.

However, I’m happy to keep this within the confines of Christian ethics–since that’s my own frame of reference.

Incidentally, you’re a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, aren’t you? To my knowledge, and I’m no expert, the Eastern Orthodox could be pretty ruthless in suppressing heretics, not to mention what they had to do to fend of Muslims armies for as long as they could.

How does your opposition to any form of coercive interrogation correlate with the anthropology of Eastern Orthodox theologians?

“Everyone I know argues that waterboarding is NOT torture, because ‘c’ is obviously a problem.”

i) Depends, in part, on how you define “torture.” If you define torture as anything coercive, anything designed to break the resistance of the terrorist, then, yes, waterboarding would qualify as torture.

ii) However, I think that trivializes the definition of torture.

iii) Moreover, you’re equivocating. Waterboarding a terrorist is hardly a case of “doing whatever it takes.”

From what I’ve read and seen, waterboarding is very unpleasant. It triggers an involuntary gag reflex. Unbearable.

But there are far worse things you can do to a human being, both physically, emotionally, or both.

iv) Even more to the point, you’re fallaciously arguing that because forms of “torture” or coercion at the far end of the spectrum are illicit, then any form of “torture” or coercion is illicit even if it’s far milder. But it’s hardly valid to extrapolate from the most extreme cases conceivable to far more moderate forms of coercion, like, say, sleep deprivation.

“On examining what effective waterboarding is I think it is torture and so cannot be done.”

You define it as torture because you define any coercive technique as torture. You posit such a low threshold for what constitutes torture that by definition, waterboarding is torture–just as various techniques well short of waterboarding are torture under your definition.

“If you believe “c” then we have too little in common to talk.”

I agree with you that “c” goes too far. However, your test-case (waterboarding) fails to illustrate “c.”

“We might foil the plot, but only by becoming like them.”

I always find it intriguing that opponents of “torture” like yourself presume to raise moralistic objections to “torture,” but in the process you erase all moral distinctions.

Coercing a terrorist to divulge actionable intel doesn’t make us just like him. Aims and motives are hardly irrelevant to the moral valuation of a deed.

On the one hand we have a malicious terrorist who uses any means whatsoever to kill the innocent for no good reason. On the other hand we have a conscientious interrogator who uses some, by not all means, to protect the innocent from unjust harm.

If you refuse to draw necessary ethical distinctions, then you have no right to make moral pronouncements.

“I would not buy victory at that price and I hope that my innocent fellow citizens would be willing to die for the ideals of our nation.”

You’re welcome to speak for yourself, but I’d like to think our national ideals include the duty to take reasonable precautions in safeguarding innocent men, women, and children from mass murder.

“We fight to defend a way of life and must not destroy it or undermine it in our way of defending it.”

A way of life is a luxury of the living. How does allowing jihadis to kill us preserve our way of life?

“Otherwise, we could save all the lives by merely giving up and letting the first set of terrorists win. We could give them what they want (power) and nobody would die.”

You have defined “torture” in such minimalistic terms that if we captured a terrorist with foreknowledge of an impending attack on a sold-out football stadium, and if we knew that he suffered from coulrophobia (due to some childhood trauma), it would be morally preferable to let 100,000 spectators die in a conflagration rather than violate his “soul liberty” by bringing a circus clown into the interrogation room to perform a skit in his presence.


steve hays
January 10th, 2010
Thanks, Mr. Reynolds.

However, in context, my question pertained to the *historic* position of the Orthodox church. Back when, say, the Byzantines and Romanians were having to fend off Muslims armies. Or back when the Orthodox church had the temporal power to suppress heretics.

How did those measure line up with the Orthodox anthropology of Orthodox theologians or prelates back *then*?

steve hays
January 10th, 2010
Brian Boeninger

“Could you say a bit more about what this talk of ‘taking precedence over’ and of goods ‘outweighing’ harms amounts to? Even if we agreed on a certain theory of value according to which, say, the death of 1000 innocent people ‘outweighs’ the harm done to a victim of torture, I don’t see how that would do much to support the view that torturing someone in order to prevent 1000 deaths is morally justified – probably not even if one accepted a fairly bald consequentialism. After all, it seems likely that the death of 1000 innocent people ‘outweighs’ (in the same sense) the harm done by, say, raping or killing or torturing the innocent daughter of a terrorist we think has relevant information, etc. But surely you agree that raping the innocent daughter of a terrorist in order to prevent 1000 deaths is not morally justified, no?”

i) Your counterexample involves a fatal equivocation. My example involved a contrast between a wrongdoer (i.e. a murderous terrorist) and the innocent victims of a premeditated plot. Your counterexample ignores the distinction between guilt and innocence, malicious intent and noble intent, as if those considerations are irrelevant to moral decisions.

ii) ”Torture” is your choice of words, not mine.

iii) And why would you characterize a terrorist as the “victim”?

“So even if we agreed to a theory that ‘weighed’ harms in the manner your comments suggest, we wouldn’t be any closer to a justification of torture unless we subscribed to a moral principle (‘an action is justified/permissible if the harm it does is “outweighed” by the harm it prevents’) with absurd consequences.”

But that’s a misrepresentation of what I said. Why did you misrepresent my argument?

i) I introduced a qualification involving the distinction between guilt and innocence, malicious intent (i.e., to take innocent life) and noble intent (i.e. to save innocent life).

Why does that disappear from your summary? There can be no distinction between right and wrong without an attendant distinction between innocence and guilt.

Suppose a wounded schoolyard sniper (say, a man in his 30s) is wheeled into the ER along with one of his gunshot victims (say, a 7-year-old student). Suppose both the sniper and student have the same rare blood type. The hospital only has enough of that plasma on hand to treat one of them.

Do you think the needs of the innocent gunshot victim ought to override the needs of the wounded sniper? Or should the surgeon flip a coin?

“At the very least, you’d want to stipulate that the harm caused by torture is outweighed by the harm that the torture prevents *and* that there are no available alternatives that do less harm. But even this principle seems open to the type of counterexample I’ve mentioned above (not to mention the reasons to think that real-world cases rarely if ever satisfy the second conjunct).”

That builds on your previous misrepresentation.

“Perhaps your language of “precedence” and “weighing” wasn’t intended to suggest a consequentialist view of the sort I’ve questioned, or you have a more refined sort of consequentialist view in mind.”

i) To begin with, I’m not the only one who’s introducing consequentialist considerations into this discussion.

Both JMR and Joe Carter have also been introducing consequentialist considerations into their opposition to “torture.”

If you disapprove of any consideration to the probability or magnitude of the consequences of a given policy, then why aren’t you more evenhanded in your objections?

ii) Any well-rounded value theory will need to integrate a number of criteria in decision-making, viz. motives, moral norms, circumstances, consequences.

iii) It’s not an all-or-nothing choice between treating consequences as either all-important or wholly unimportant.

iv) I don’t know why you’re so disturbed by the idea of comparing the tradeoffs between one action and another.

In treating a patient, a doctor has to take a wide variety of issues into consideration. He will take greater risks in case the patient is at greater risk of death unless a high-risk procedure is performed. He will consider the probable success or failure of different procedures. One procedure might have both a greater upside (superior potential benefits) as well as a greater downside (be more hazardous). Another procedure might have both a lesser upside as well as a lesser downside.

steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Brian Boeninger

“The plainest reading of your comment suggests the first objection. But I saw nothing in what Reynolds said which entailed that he disagreed with your ‘comparative value’ assessment.”

i) If he regards coercive interrogation of whatever degree or kind as inherently evil, then a comparative value assessment would have no impact on his position.

ii) On the other hand, if he’s concerned with the physical/psychological wellbeing of the terrorist, then the terrorist is not the only party whose wellbeing is at stake.

I’m drawing attention to an apparent inconsistency in his position.

“Mine was a simple request to fill in for us those gaps (i.e. implicit premises) in your argument.”

Since I’ve repeatedly and explicitly introduced the guilt or innocence of the affected parties was one of the differential factors, that is not a gap in my argument. So are you alluding to some other alleged gap in my argument?

“You’ve done some of that: you mentioned the distinction between a wrongdoer and an innocent, for instance, and one’s motives in doing an action.”

I’ve been doing that in multiple replies to JMR. So that’s not an ex post facto response to your objection.

“After all, plenty of other cases come to mind: a terrorist has information about a bomb planted in a mall which would kill 10 people. The harm done to the terrorist if one were to cut off his fingers, one at a time, and then his toes, is outweighed (in some sense of that term) by the good of preventing 20 innocent deaths; that harm is done to a wrongdoer, with the intent of saving innocent lives. Do these facts (outweighing, wrongdoer vs. innocents, motives and purposes, etc.) yield the conclusion that the harm to the terrorist is justified?”

i) We could always discuss the question whether there are some lines we can’t cross, and how to draw them. But that’s premature at this stage of the argument. Until we settle the prior question of whether coercive interrogation of *any* degree or kind is morally permissible, it’s a moot point to debate which coercive techniques fall inside or outside the bounds of moral propriety.

ii) Moreover, objecting to coercive interrogation on the basis of borderline cases is fallacious. For we’re confronted with borderline cases on many ethical issues. But unless you think the existence of borderline cases is an excuse to never act at all (and inaction is, itself, a morally freighted posture), then raising the specter of borderline cases is just a blocking maneuver rather than a principled objection.

“I still don’t know how you’d want to analyze “X (morally) outweighs Y,” or more importantly what you’d add to “X outweighs Y” in order to get a sufficient condition for X being morally permissible”

What are you looking for? A mathematical formula in making moral decisions? That doesn’t exist. We bring certain criteria to bear, and we make a value judgment.

Go back to my hypothetical of the wounded sniper and his gunshot victim. Do you have a priority structure for dealing with that situation?

“Again, my main question to you concerned why you thought that Reynolds was committed to saying that the harm of torture ‘outweighed’ the good of preventing e.g. innocent death.”

Maybe because he’s actually used arguments to that effect. The dehumanizing effect of “torture” on the tormenter outweighs the potential value of the intelligence garnered by that procedure. You can’t be a “gentleman” soldier. Or allowing “torture” leads to “disastrous” consequences. So, on that view, the “disastrous” consequences outweigh the potential value of the intelligence.

Or do you have a problem with stock metaphors like “outweigh,” “override,” &c.?