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Saturday, March 25, 2006

Backpedaling

***QUOTE***

Jim Lippard said:

Steve:

Your post is a bit heavy on the ad hominem and you have drawn inferences about my position and circumstances that aren't based on what I actually wrote. If you read the comments on my original post at the Secular Outpost, you'll see that my own answer to the survey question is "rarely" rather than "never."

So, to address your points in order, your claim in (i) that I assume without argument that torture is always wrong is mistaken. I neither said nor implied that--the most you can infer from what I wrote is that leaning in favor of widespread use of torture is less moral than opposition to most use of torture. For the record, I do think that torture is prima facie wrong, and as a public policy matter should be prohibited across the board. There are possible circumstances where the use of torture to obtain information may be the best possible course of action on utilitarian grounds, just as there are possible circumstances where murder or cannibalism may be the best possible course of action--but I don't think that calls for a revision of public policy to have anything other than an absolute prohibition on them. There is always the necessity defense in a court of law. I happen to think that the U.S. should abide by the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and UN Convention Against Torture (UNCAT) which the U.S. Senate ratified in 1994. What do you think?

In response to (ii), I agree that there are interrogation techniques that fall short of torture, which also have the added benefit of being more reliable--recipients of torture tend to say what they think their torturers want to hear. You say I don't bring my critical thinking skills to bear on a topic that I didn't even discuss.

In response to (iii), again you've fabricated a position for me to disagree with (i.e., you've engaged in the straw man fallacy). My actual position is that those who fall on the end of the spectrum of endorsing widespread use of torture are less moral than those who fall on the end of the spectrum of opposing most or all uses of torture. Likewise for murder.
3/25/2006 11:38 AM
Jim Lippard said:

To bring home a more specific example--Bush administration advisor John Yoo (who, along with Alberto Gonzales, was the primary architect of the Bush administration's position on torture) has said that the president has the authority to order that the child of a terrorist be tortured, by crushing his testicles, in order to get the terrorist to talk.

Do you think that such an action could be moral? I don't, and I think it not only should be but is illegal as well (I strongly disagree with the "unitary executive" arguments for expansive presidential powers that seem to have completely lost sight of the fact that the judiciary and legislature are supposed to have equal weight to the executive branch).

Also, you stated as a premise in your argument to the erroneous conclusion that I'm "intellectually isolated" in the sense of not having any non-like-minded friends that I have posted "many ill-informed or ill-reasoned posts." Which posts are you referring to, can you point out a few of the many, and possibly explain why you characterize them as such?

Finally, why didn't you link to the post on the Secular Outpost you are responding to? That reduced the likelihood that I (or other Secular Outpost readers) would see your comment. Fortunately, Sean Choi pointed it out, encouraging some cross-blog and cross-worldview interaction, which I welcome.

***END-QUOTE***

Let’s respond in order of importance, from the most trivial to the most serious.

i) I don’t hyperlink because I’m a Mac-user who employs Safari, a browser which Blogger doesn’t support when it comes to certain html-type refinements.

ii) As to intellectual isolation, Lippard’s own blog is rich with caricatures of those with whom he disagrees.

iii) As to the ad hominem charge, I chose to partly pitch my response at Lippard’s own level. His post was an ad hominem smear against Christians.

iv) Which brings us to the straw man charge. After he was challenged in the combox, he began to backpedal and caveat his position in various ways.

The inferences I drew from his original post were not a straw man argument. Rather, since, in his original post, he elected to stake out an unqualified claim, I drew the inferences which follow from the unqualified terms in which he himself chose to frame the issue.

v) But this presents a dilemma for Lippard. The reason his original post was so unqualified is that he needed to cast it in utterly simplistic terms to make it a successful hit-piece against Christians.

For as soon as he begins to admit to certain moral ambiguities and exceptions and borderline cases, the smear job loses its simplistic impact.

All that aside, since Lippard has now mounted a substantive reply, let’s run back through the substantive material:

“For the record, I do think that torture is prima facie wrong, and as a public policy matter should be prohibited across the board. There are possible circumstances where the use of torture to obtain information may be the best possible course of action on utilitarian grounds, just as there are possible circumstances where murder or cannibalism may be the best possible course of action--but I don't think that calls for a revision of public policy to have anything other than an absolute prohibition on them.”

i) Lippard fails to define “torture.”

ii) His position is a moral and legal muddle. He seems to believe that torture can be justified under certain circumstances, but even so, that it should be illegal. This doesn’t make any sense.

If there are licit exceptions, why should these exceptions not be codified?

iii) Whether “torture” is ever licit is, in my opinion, a qualitative rather than quantitative question. So I reject the way in which the question was framed.

iv) The fact that he also thinks that murder or cannibalism may be justified under certain circumstances sheds a very revealing light on secular ethics (pardon the oxymoron).

Given his outlook, who would you rather have with you in a lifeboat, James Lippard or Franklin Graham?

“ There is always the necessity defense in a court of law. I happen to think that the U.S. should abide by the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and UN Convention Against Torture (UNCAT) which the U.S. Senate ratified in 1994. What do you think?”

i) I’m not a lawyer, and even if I were a lawyer, that would not automatically make me a legal expert on the relevant area of law.

ii) I believe that laws ought to exist to protect the innocent from those who would do them harm. If we have laws which impede that function, they need to be repealed.

iii) As far as Constitutional law is concerned, I subscribe to original intent.

iv) The rationale behind the Geneva Conventions is that we will treat your POWs with respect if you treat our POWs with respect. If one party to the contract fails to keep up its end of the bargain, then the original rationale is moot.

v) This doesn’t mean that we should abuse detainees simply because we can. But those who don’t play by the laws of warfare are not entitled to its protections.

vi) The US should pull out of the UN.

vii) I don’t object to the idea of international treaties governing basic human rights.

“In response to (ii), I agree that there are interrogation techniques that fall short of torture, which also have the added benefit of being more reliable--recipients of torture tend to say what they think their torturers want to hear. You say I don't bring my critical thinking skills to bear on a topic that I didn't even discuss.”

i) You didn’t discuss the moral and practical nuances because you wanted to do a hatchet job on Christians, and nuance would get in the way.

ii) Reliability is a necessary (though insufficient) criterion.

“In response to (iii), again you've fabricated a position for me to disagree with (i.e., you've engaged in the straw man fallacy). My actual position is that those who fall on the end of the spectrum of endorsing widespread use of torture are less moral than those who fall on the end of the spectrum of opposing most or all uses of torture. Likewise for murder.

i) You mean your ex post facto position, after you were called on your cheat shot.

ii) That’s the easy way out. The hard-cases are never at the extreme end of the spectrum. Rather, it’s the borderline cases that present the hard-cases.

“To bring home a more specific example--Bush administration advisor John Yoo (who, along with Alberto Gonzales, was the primary architect of the Bush administration's position on torture) has said that the president has the authority to order that the child of a terrorist be tortured, by crushing his testicles, in order to get the terrorist to talk.”

Do you think that such an action could be moral?”

No, I don’t.

“I don't, and I think it not only should be but is illegal as well (I strongly disagree with the "unitary executive" arguments for expansive presidential powers that seem to have completely lost sight of the fact that the judiciary and legislature are supposed to have equal weight to the executive branch).”

Once again, I’m not qualified to comment on all the legal technicalities. However:

i) I notice that those who think that the judiciary should function as a check on the executive don’t seem to think there should be any check on the judiciary itself.

ii) There’s a difference between what is morally wrong and what is legally wrong. A common tactic, used here, is to taint a Bush official with the opprobrium of a morally odious example when he is merely offering a legal opinion.

Now to ask you a question: what is your case for secular ethics? What is your source and standard of moral norms?

1 comment:

  1. Steve:

    Just came across this post, as I'm not a subscriber or regular reader of your blog.

    Initial points:

    i. I also use a Mac and Safari quite frequently. You can easily add links in Blogger using Safari by using HTML.

    ii. Examples? I'm certainly not as precise in brief blog postings as I would be in a journal article, but I'm open to digging in deeper in discussion and debate.

    iii. The difference is that I made a general statement about a group (without stating or implying that it was the case for every individual member of the group) on the basis of empirical evidence which was cited, while you made a specific statement about an individual without supplying any evidence.

    iv. I haven't changed my position, I've described in with greater precision.

    v. Incorrect--I restated the argument in more detail in the comments of the original post. You should apply some Gricean charity and respond to the strongest and most precise version of my argument.

    ---

    More substantive points:

    i. I'm happy with the Amnesty International definition here:
    http://www.amnesty.org.uk/torture/definition.shtml

    ii. My position is not a muddle and it does make sense. You should read up a little more on the law, specifically on defenses of justification and excuse, and on the necessity defense. If you think all exceptions can be codified, you don't understand the law or the function of the judiciary.

    iii. I think taking a fuzzy position on this subject is very likely to lead to abuse.

    iv. I didn't say that those things were necessarily ever justified (in a legal or moral sense), only that there are theoretical cases where they are the best possible course of action on utilitarian grounds--in very bad circumstances. What I had in mind here was Lon Fuller's classic "The Case of the Speluncean Explorers" (online here: http://www.nullapoena.de/stud/explorers.html).

    There are real life cases--see The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens (1884), which is part of English common law and incorporated into American common law; Dudley and Stephens were found guilty of murder but the jury could not decide if it rose to the level of felony in the circumstances. I agree with the reasoning and decision in this case, which illustrates the position I've taken that there should be an absolute prohibition but a recognition that some circumstances may provide a necessity defense which may provide some mitigation.

    Since you offer a "ticking time bomb" justification for torture, you should be able to conceive of similar situations where murder is necessary for the resolution. The difference between you and I is that you think this really provides a justification and the course of action is right, while I think the course of action is still wrong and deserves punishment, even if it's the best (or only) way to prevent some worse consequence from occurring.

    Cannibalism without murder is even easier to understand--most are familiar with the story of the Uruguayan soccer team in the Andes told in the book _Alive_. In that particular case, I think the justification is sufficient to reach the level of defense (rather than excuse) and mitigate punishment.

    ---

    Law:

    i. You don't need to be a lawyer to have a basic understanding of criminal law. I highly recommend Leo Katz's _Bad Acts and Guilty Minds_--a very entertaining and informative book.

    ii. I think the function of law is a bit broader than that, but if you add the proviso that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty, I think I can agree with your statements.

    iii. If you're going to advocate originalism, I think you can do that in a reasonable way, but not with originalism of intent. You can't measure original intent except in a very indirect and unreliable way; original meaning is more feasible. (Recommendation: Randy Barnett's _Restoring the Lost Constitution_, which argues for a form of originalism of meaning for constitutional interpretation.)

    iv-v. I disagree with your interpretation; I think it's best to adhere to these conventions even if one's enemy doesn't, on the basis of respect for basic human rights.

    vi. While I'm sure I agree with you about some serious deficiencies of the UN, I disagree with your statement.

    vii. We agree.

    ---

    Interrogation.

    i. Your attribution of motive is in error. Many of my blog posts are short, point the reader to another source, and offer a brief comment, not a detailed argument. You choose to infer malice and dishonesty because of lack of nuance, even though in the particular case I have spelled out the argument in more detail.

    ii. We agree.

    ---

    Straw man:

    i. You may choose to believe I'm lying when I say I haven't changed my position, but merely spelled out details that I didn't originally give (since I wasn't even describing my position on torture in the original post), but I'm not.

    ii. It takes an extreme case to make anything like a reasonable argument for justifying torture. There are no borderline cases in the middle.

    ---

    Yoo example:

    I'm glad we agree that the Yoo example wouldn't be moral.

    i. The checks on the judiciary are that the executive appoints the judiciary with the advice and consent of the legislative, and the legislative authors and the executive signs into effect the laws they interpret. What further check do you think there should be?

    ii. I agree with your first sentence, but I believe the actual effects of the Yoo/Gonzales positions have been demonstrably immoral.

    In answer to your question, I tend to lean towards a rule utilitarian position, with basic values being evolutionary (biologically and socially) in origin (cf., Axelrod on evolution of cooperation), though I'm not entirely decided about what's the best meta-ethical framework. I have Erik Wielenberg's Value and Virtue in a Godless World on my to-read list, as I've heard that it is quite good.

    In my opinion, most ethical and epistemological issues can be productively debated even without agreement on metaphysics, because there is often common ground on enough of the relevant basic facts and principles regardless of their source.

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