Is torture justifiable in extreme circumstances

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No.

It is an intrinsic evil, and as such, cannot be justified under any circumstances.
 
I don’t know whether it would really save life.

The confusing issue for me is that because the Church has ruled that execution is not intrinsically wrong, would it not then follow that in some instances, killing someone would be morally preferable to only hurting them?

ICXC NIKA
 
Upgrade25 said:
Even if it saves lives?
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Aside from being an intrinsic evil, it also isn’t practical. Information given under torture has no assurance as to reliability, and I can’t foresee a situation where it would be a certain way - and the only way - to save a life. It is a form of warfare, and does not fit the criteria for a just war.

In the long run torture now reinforces more torture in the future. You might say, in your enlightened hands torture will be used only as an absolute necessity; but your use of it increases the chance it will be used by others, not just to get information but for other purposes. Use now puts more lives at risk in the long run than any that hypothetically might be saved if torture were effective - which it almost certainly is not.

Again, the fact that it is an intrinsic evil rules it out anyway.
 
Say we did what Trump proposes (I know by now most of you are tired of him but just follow this train of thought). We start capturing terrorists and waterboarding them. It is decided that this isnt enough, so we begin electrocuting them. This too is proven ineffective and even worse torture methods are introduced. The problem with this is that as torture gets more extreme, you sort of lose yourself to the feeling of power. What Daesh is doing now is what I feel could be the frightening future if we choose to pursue these methods “for the greater good”. So no, under no circumstances, regardless of severity, is not an option. Bin Laden was located due to the gathering of good intel from agents posted in the nearby area and by seeing him from a drone. As far as declassed intel goes, I dont see any torture used in finding him.

tl;dr No the means dont justify the ends.
EDIT: Removed quote that I did not know was linked to Friedrich Nietzsche, probs not the best quote to post here.
 
OK. No torture. But what about “enhanced interrogation”?😃
 
Upgrade25 said:
Is torture justifiable in extreme circumstances?]
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The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church appears to say it is not:

“[N]othing [can] justify [torture,] in which the dignity of man is as much debased in his torturer as in the torturer’s victim… [The] prohibition against torture [is] a principle which cannot be contravened under any circumstances.” (CSD 404)
GEddie said:
The confusing issue for me is that because the Church has ruled that execution is not intrinsically wrong, would it not then follow that in some instances, killing someone would be morally preferable to only hurting them?
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No, that does not follow, and a helpful way to see this is to identify the syllogism which would result in that conclusion and show where it is faulty.

Here is a syllogism that attempts to use your words, which I’m going to label Argument A in case anyone needs to refer to it later in this thread:

Argument A
Premise 1. Execution is not intrinsically wrong.
Premise 2. Torture Is intrinsically wrong.
Conclusion. Therefore, execution is sometimes preferable to torture.

There are a number of problems with the above syllogism. One of them is that there is a significant term in the conclusion which is not in either premise. (Of course I don’t blame You for this, GEddie, since I made the above syllogism. But work with me here, it will make sense in a moment.) In logic, you can’t have a significant term in your conclusion that isn’t in your premises because if you do then that term is underived. Underived conclusions are the same thing as mere assertions. That’s invalid argumenation.

You can Fix the above argument by bringing out something called a Hidden Premise. A hidden premise is one that you imply without realizing it. If you insert them, sometimes they make your argument valid. In this case, we would modify the argument in the following way to bring out the hidden premise:

Argument B
Premise 1. Anything that Isn’t intrinsically wrong is preferable to anything that Is intrinsically wrong.
Premise 2. Execution Isn’t intrinsically wrong and torture is.
Conclusion. Therefore, execution is preferable to torture.

If the above premises are true, and there are no ambiguous terms, then the conclusion logically must be true as well. However, there is Also a problem with the above argument, and that is that the first premise is not always true. There are several ways we can know this. One is from the fact that it involves universality. Universality is a property of logic which can get you into trouble if you don’t use it correctly. Simply put, universality means that your premises are universally true unless you explicitly put in an exception clause. Also, as a result of that, your conclusion is universally true, unless there was an exception clause in one of the premises. Notice: the above argument contains no exception clauses, and thus, if it were a valid argument, the premises and the conclusion would all be universally true. This results in absurdity, as I’ll show in the next paragraph.

Reducing a premise to absurdity proves a premise wrong. We can do that to the above argument. If anything that Isn’t intrinsically wrong is preferable to anything that Is intrinsically wrong, then let’s use two examples: sexual intercourse and lying. Sexual intercourse is not intrinsically wrong. Lying is. Now, keeping in mind the principle of universality, let’s plug them into the first premise and make the following argument: Anything that Isn’t intrinsically wrong is preferable to anything that Is intrinsically wrong. Sexual intercourse Isn’t intrinsically wrong and lying Is. Therefore, sexual intercourse is preferable to lying. << That argument is wrong because sexual intercourse is sometimes Worse than lying, if the circumstances are bad enough. An example is in an act of rape. Remember, since there are no exception clauses in the above argument, the premises and the conclusion would all be universally true. But, since there are circumstances where sexual intercourse is worse than lying, such as when the circumstances involve rape, it follows that there Should be an exception clause in one of the premises.

In order to avoid the reduction to absurdity, we have to apply an exception clause to Argument B.

Argument C
Premise 1. Anything that Isn’t intrinsically wrong is preferable to anything that Is intrinsically wrong, unless the circumstances make the first thing even worse than the second thing.
Premise 2. Execution Isn’t intrinsically wrong and torture is.
Conclusion. Therefore, execution is preferable to torture, unless the circumstances make the execution even worse than torture.

^^That is a valid and true argument, and it also gives us an escape clause which we can use to escape the problem you noticed in your post. There are gradations of evil that can cause something that is Not intrinsically wrong to be Even Worse than something that Is intrinsically wrong, if the circumstances are unjust enough. Applying this to torture and execution, we can defend the following principle: in any situation where you Can (physically, not morally) torture someone, it is Not morally permissible to execute that person – not unless the circumstances change. I suppose the reasons for this come from the conditions for a just execution, and we can get into them if that would help, but I think this post is long enough already. 😛 I hope this helps. Please let me know. God bless!
 
As it has been said, torture is impractical. If the captive has no information and lies to make the torture stop, then acting on the misinformation they provide wastes our resources, time, gives away our position, etc. If it were effective the U.S. government would shout about its success to the heavens because they would love to justify it rather than falling back on hypothetical scenarios to make it seem palatable.
 
You have to define torture. And different people will have different definitions. You will generally be talking across each other.
 
Depends what you mean by “torture”.

The KGB used to practive “progressive amputation” and video tape it and send it to your relatives.

That produced a lot of “cooperation”.

[Did you ever wonder why so few Soviet/Russian diplomats were kidnapped? Well, that’s why.]

On the other hand, moderate discomfort?

Dunking in water?

“Water boarding”.

Seriously?
 
Oreoracle said:
As it has been said, torture is impractical. If the captive has no information and lies to make the torture stop, then acting on the misinformation they provide wastes our resources, time, gives away our position, etc. If it were effective the U.S. government would shout about its success to the heavens because they would love to justify it rather than falling back on hypothetical scenarios to make it seem palatable.
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Without in any way arguing in favor of torture, I do reject the idea that torture doesn’t work. That is a modern assertion. Historically this was known to be false. Torture was used because it works, and there are any number of historical examples that make this point. Raise whatever moral objections to torture you can, but this particular practical objection is not accurate.

Ender
 
AnnArbor said:
This.
Or implying that some methods of torture (weatherboarding) really aren’t.
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As I noted in the second post of this thread, torture is an intrinsic evil.

But Monte is correct in one point, that there is no clear moral definition of what constitutes torture.

In the case of water boarding, how much water poured on the face constitutes torture, one drop?, one milliliter?, one liter?, 10 liters?

For sleep deprivation, forcing someone to stay awake how long, one hour past bedtime, two? 10?

What is the PRECISE definition that can be used to identify the act?
 
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