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Originally Posted by sprocket
Examples of a reasonable form of absolutism are pretty lacking, in my opinion.
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Does it strike you as odd that you are absolutely opposed to absolutism?
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Not really... but questions regarding the ethics of torture should raise those kinds of thoughts, at least a little bit, if one is to claim they have actually given the issue due consideration.
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I guess. Though to tell you the truth, I didn't have to do a lot of soul searching or thought experiments to come to the conclusion that rape is wrong. And whenever I have the opportunity to reiterate the claim that rape is wrong, I never feel the need to qualify it with a statement about how I can imagine that it would be okay in some instances.
Even then, torture in the abstract isn't the problem here. The problem here is how torture typically plays out in real life: inefficient as a means of gathering quality information and with little regard for human rights.
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Well, I wanst really commenting on torture as implemented by the previous administration.. but in general, there are possible situations where torture would be moral. I'm sure that any scenario I could posit to you, would be immediately dismissed as a "Jack Bauer" fantasy, but whatever.
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Because it probably would be Jack Bauer fantasy. Jack Bauer fantasies are the standard response when one is attempting to justify torture.
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If you can imagine a sliding scale, where the morality of an act of coercion is proportional with the severity of the risks involved with failing to acquire information necessary to prevent some disaster, you should be able to understand how I feel about it. On the low end of the scale, you might have a typical police interrogation... on the high end of the scale you might have more advanced torture techniques. On one hand though, I do think there is probably an upper limit on the type of torture that could be realistically ethically used, but I don't think waterboarding gets there... nor naked human pyramids.
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But why would there be an upper limit on the type of torture used? Is it possible that your problems with the "absolutist" perspective is that it sets a much lower upper limit on the types of ethical torture than you?
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If say, a million lives are at stake, and the best possibility to save them was through an act of torture, I think it would be morally questionable not to go through with it. Heck even if 9/11 could have been prevented with an act of torture...
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I understand where you're coming from and I don't necessarily disagree with your math. I just think that the the odds of such a situation occurring are vanishingly small and that discussion of such situations tends to obscure how torture plays out in reality.
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This has nothing to do with me trying to feel "secure"... its about coming to a reasonable conclusion about the ethics of torture. I don't think the anti-torture absolutists have proven their case, that I have seen.
I don't think I would really advocate that we actually permit torture as a matter of public policy... but I would be all for letting someone off the hook if they used torture reasonably.
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Of course it's about feeling secure, the circumstances you are describing are at their core about maintaining some sense of security.
As for proving cases, your case isn't particularly compelling either. Do you know of any instances where Jack Bauer tactics have directly contributed to the prevention of mass murder? Have there been any rigorous scientific studies about the effectiveness of torture at preventing mass murder?
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Then why is there such confidence behind the claims that torture is unreliable? Do we have good scientific information to corroborate these claims, or can we dismiss them as unsubstantiated?
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I think that the lack of confidence in the effectiveness of torture at providing reliable information is based on statements made by people whose job it is to know how effective torture is at providing reliable information. Willravel could probably tell you more.
In any case, I would hope that you begin applying your rigorous scientific standards to your own perspective. You might find that there is little scientific evidence corroborating the claim that torture
is effective.