The definition in your first paragraph seems perhaps overbroad. It seems it would include incarceration in solitary confinement, (perhaps incarceration at all)
No, not necessarily. Incarceration (including solitary confinement) has as one of its purposes the prevention of harm to others, and it’s a punishment imposed justly for an offense. In other words, if I act so as to harm others, the government is acting justly in putting me in a place where I can’t do so. No such “breakdown of the will” is involved. Incarceration might be torture depending on how it is done and why, but it’s far more likely to fall into the category I described later–disorienting a person a bit, giving them time to think isolated from those who might strengthen their resolve, etc. It doesn’t override a person’s will in the way torture does–and if it does, then it is torture.
Huh? How does detoxification attempt to override a person’s will and make them do something they are determined not to do?
I think you’re misunderstanding what I mean by “overriding the will.” I don’t mean simply exercising coercion. I mean causing such intense pain and discomfort that the person is no longer capable of acting rationally, because they will do anything to end the suffering. So they do things that they wouldn’t otherwise do.
For instance, threatening someone’s life if they don’t cooperate (while obviously unethical in most cases–perhaps not in case of someone justly sentenced to death already) is not torture unless it’s done in a way calculated to appeal to irrational fears. Even then, this would require a broader definition of torture than I laid out above (I kept the definition to physical sensations.) When (in Orwell’s
1984) Winston is threatened with an apparatus that will make rats eat his face, that’s psychological torture (again, that’s actually a broader definition that I suggested, but I’d be willing to expand my definition to include that kind of deliberate appeal to irrational fears–and, of course, having rats eat your face is very painful, so physical torture is involved if only in threat form). My point is that if a person says, “I don’t want to die, so I will cooperate,” making a rational decision, then their will is not being overrided.
But in the case, say, of waterboarding–the form of torture most often defended by Americans today as “not really torture”–the whole point is that you induce an irrational sensation of drowning that will make a person behave in ways that they would never, rationally and deliberately, choose to behave. That’s obviously torture. The fact that some folks defend it as not torture is an example of just how morally depraved so-called “conservatism” has become in America (just as–in case anyone might accuse me of ignoring this–the fact that “liberals” defend the legality of chopping up children in the womb is an example of how morally depraved so-called “liberalism” has become).
spanking and making a child sit in a corner
I think that spanking might fit the definition I gave. My definition was overbroad in the sense that it should have included the further clarification “for a purpose not intrinsically connected either to the good of the person on whom the suffering is inflicted or the infliction of just retributive punishment.” I have come to the conclusion that spanking is not a good way to discipline children, in part because it
does qualify as torture by the definition I gave. However, I don’t want to start a debate about spanking, so I should have kept the debate to the use of torture for purposes unrelated to the improvement of the victim or the infliction of just punishment. (Similarly, we would probably all agree that intensely painful forms of execution–drawing and quartering, breaking on the wheel, burning alive–are wrong, but that’s still a somewhat different set of issues.)
It would even apply to fraternity hazing and military practices designed to induce a degree of unit cohesion the subjects would otherwise resist and which resistance is intended to be broken down.
Only if applied to unwilling draftees with principled objections either to military service in general or to the cause for which they were asked to fight. In those circumstances it certainly would be hazing.
The point of my definition is that if discomfort is intended simply to “tip the scales” for a wavering person or to shake the person up a bit, in combination with other approaches, it’s not torture. If, however, it is intended to override a person’s fixed determination in ways that no more humane approach could do, then it’s torture,
because it is intrinsically dehumanizing and treats the person as a means. You fixed on the word “discomfort” and seem to have ignored my qualifications, as if I had said that all discomfort was torture.
The contrasting treatment cited would seem to include sleep deprivation, since it definitely confuses and disorients. But it’s also uncomfortable. Is sleep deprivation torture or not?
I think it depends on the intensity. Mild sleep deprivation is not torture. For instance, I’m mildly sleep deprived right now (I have a newborn daughter who will be two weeks old tomorrow). But not to the point that I’d betray my friends and my basic convictions in order to get some sleep–just to the point that I might not be functioning quite at top condition. I’m not advocating for sleep deprivation, simply admitting that mild sleep deprivation doesn’t meet my criteria. Extreme sleep deprivation, however, would do so.
Here’s another way of looking at the criteria. If the treatment was applied to someone on “our” side–say to a Christian to get them to deny the faith–would we consider them morally responsible for their choice, or would we say, “Well, you probably weren’t fully responsible for your actions”? If the latter, then it’s torture.
And isn’t the following circular?
“But if it’s effective, it’s effective because it is so cruel that it can break down the resistance of a stubborn, committed person. Therefore it is evil.”
Isn’t the conclusion included in the premise?
I’m not trying to be a smart aleck here. I’m really not.
You’re not being a smart aleck–just mistaking the nature of the statement (my fault for casting it in a syllogistic form). It’s not an argument for the basic moral definition of torture I’ve proposed. It’s an application of that definition. If it is true that overriding a person’s will in the way I’ve defined it is intrinsically evil, then any infliction of discomfort that can only be justified by its high level of effectiveness against a stubborn, determined, tough prisoner is intrinsically evil. Forms of interrogation that are not torture, on the other hand, don’t need to be very effective to be justified. They are used in combination with other approaches in order to “nudge” folks into doing what you are trying to persuade them to do.
Edwin
