Is torture ever acceptable?

ionapaul

Well, what do you think?

Beruthiel

no it's not
I can't think of one reason where it could be

loz_the_boz

Depends on situation,

If a nutcase has bured alive my child and she has hours to live - and he knows where she was bured etc /.................

loz_the_boz

I suppose we should also define torture

mental/physical ?

ionapaul

I have always found this question very hard to answer. What if torturing a person would save another's life? 10 lives? 100 lives? 1,000 lives?

Zulu

In a word, no.

Darren

loz_the_boz wrote:

Depends on situation,

If a nutcase has bured alive my child and she has hours to live - and he knows where she was bured etc /.................

In this scenario I'd torture it out of them myself. I'd probably get some satisfaction out of it as well.

Zulu

ionapaul wrote:

I have always found this question very hard to answer. What if torturing a person would save another's life? 10 lives? 100 lives? 1,000 lives?

Then it's necessary, but not acceptable.

vorbis

Zulu wrote:

Then it's necessary, but not acceptable.

thats a complete fudge Zulu. If you believe something should be done in a certain situation then you're accepting it being done in that situation. Myself I think its acceptable in exceptional situations. What people mean by torture would also be useful. Generally I'd calssify it as some form of major mental or physical pain.

Tommy Vercetti

No, never.

Sparks

No, because it doesn't work.

Manach

In exceptional cases and only if the torturer would be willing to stand trial afterwards and answer for his/her actions.

luckat

Never.... though where clampers are concerned I'd find myself wavering a little....

ChipZilla

Sparks wrote:

No, because it doesn't work.

Course it does. If I hammered six inch nails through your feet into a floor, doused you in petrol, and started threatening you with a blowtorch you'd tell me what I wanted to know.

Same goes for electrocution, beating with bars of soap in a towel, beating the soles of feet, sleep deprivation, etc, etc. Everybody has a breaking point...

luckat

But ChipZilla, I'd tell you what you wanted to know *whether it were true or not*! Am I a member of the Taliban? Yes sir! Is this me photographed with Ossie Bin Laden? Deffo...careful with that blowtorch, sir... Am I planning to blow up the Statue of Liberty because I think it's bad art? How very perceptive and intelligent of you, sir...

Sparks

ChipZilla wrote:

Course it does. If I hammered six inch nails through your feet into a floor, doused you in petrol, and started threatening you with a blowtorch you'd tell me what I wanted to know.

Precisely. That's why it doesn't work. I'd be telling you what I thought you wanted to hear, not what you knew you needed to hear. Hence the many false alarms in the US based on information taken under torture - the aim of the tortured is to stop the torture, not to divulge honest information and the aim of the torturer is to force the tortured to divulge secret information, not to verify the authenticity of that information. Therefore if the tortured wants to stop the torture, he can make up something and the worth of the information is often based on how much torture has been applied.

ChipZilla

Hmmm, I suppose for torture to work properly you would need to hang on to the person being tortured until the information you get is verified.

Zulu

vorbis wrote:

thats a complete fudge Zulu. If you believe something should be done in a certain situation then you're accepting it being done in that situation. Myself I think its acceptable in exceptional situations. What people mean by torture would also be useful. Generally I'd calssify it as some form of major mental or physical pain.

Well, no, it's not. In the situation previously pointed out - a physco has your child buried alive.... - I/you would personally feel it nessary to do whatever in order to get the information required, but that dosen't make it acceptable to me/you/society, or the moralistic codes we live by.

Sparks

ChipZilla wrote:

Hmmm, I suppose for torture to work properly you would need to hang on to the person being tortured until the information you get is verified.

So you torture someone, get the information, go off to verify it and it isn't correct. Now what? You going to nail hands to floors twice? How do you know you won't get wrong information the second time? And what if there's a time deadline?

luckat

Ah, but what's an acceptable situation? One person's acceptable situation is not necessarily another's. And what is acceptable has a tendency to broaden, once the idea that torture is allowed under some circumstances is established.

ChipZilla

Sparks wrote:

So you torture someone, get the information, go off to verify it and it isn't correct. Now what? You going to nail hands to floors twice? How do you know you won't get wrong information the second time? And what if there's a time deadline?

Not having ever tortured someone myself, I'd guess that if the info you got was wrong you'd have to come back with something more excruciating than the first effort. You wouldn't use all the 'good' stuff up on the first go. Having your feet nailed to a floor would probably be a walk in the park compared to, say, someone ripping out your fingernails and toenails with a pliers.

gandalf

Let me see if we are talking about the War on Terror TM then once you start to torture people you fall quite rapidally off the high moral ground. You become as bad as those you are defending the world against (Supposedly :rolleyes:).

Torture is unacceptable fullstop. As has been stated already who decides what is acceptable, the military, politicians, your local mob !!!

Hobbes

ionapaul wrote:

I have always found this question very hard to answer. What if torturing a person would save another's life? 10 lives? 100 lives? 1,000 lives?

What if killing a child would save anothers life? 10 lives? 100 lives? 1,000 lives? Would you do it?

What about if raping a child would save anothers life? 10 lives? 100 lives? 1,000 lives? Would you do it?

You know it is very easy to say "in special circumstances", but who decides those circumstances?

If we are talking about "War on terror" bare in mind that a lot of the people detained have not even been charged with a crime, and some after 2 years have been released without ever been charged with anything. Does that make it right?

Torture is not acceptable under any circumstances.

ionapaul - do you include the use of chemicals as being part of torture. i.e. truth serums, that will make the person tell the truth, but leave them a wreck afterwards?

Torture? yes. In exceptional circumstances. The child example, or perhaps a nuke to be found etc. Very strict guidelines.

But regular use of torture to a braod selection of people? no.

Beruthiel

Hobbes wrote:

You know it is very easy to say "in special circumstances", but who decides those circumstances?

it was decided yesterday, in an english court room that it was acceptable to go on intelligence obtained under torture, as long as the tortures were not english – so basically saying, it’s ok to torture people :rolleyes:

Hobbes

Deleted User wrote:

Torture? yes. In exceptional circumstances. The child example, or perhaps a nuke to be found etc. Very strict guidelines.

So you would torture people to find Saddams WMD? After all Bush said he was making nukes.

no. Exceptional circumstances.

i.e. You have the one person in custody that knows where the bomb is located and armed. You need that info. So you torture, using drugs. Yes, in this instance i think its allowed.

The broad selection of a population to determine an unknown? No way.

Tommy Vercetti

Deleted User wrote:

i.e. You have the one person in custody that knows where the bomb is located and armed. You need that info. So you torture, using drugs. Yes, in this instance i think its allowed.

But later you discover that the person who you originally tortured to find out that there is a bomb in the first place turns out to have only told you this because he dislikes having his testicles electrocuted, and there is no bomb at all. Oh well. :rolleyes:

ionapaul

Deleted User wrote:

ionapaul - do you include the use of chemicals as being part of torture. i.e. truth serums, that will make the person tell the truth, but leave them a wreck afterwards?

Torture? yes. In exceptional circumstances. The child example, or perhaps a nuke to be found etc. Very strict guidelines.

But regular use of torture to a braod selection of people? no.

I would have to say that personally, I would consider the truth serum as described to be torture.

I think that giving three options in the poll was a little mis-leading - if you select 'yes', either in general or just in exceptional circumstance, you obviously believe that the bad of torture (I'm assuming all here believe torture in of itself to be a bad thing) can be outweighed by the good resulting from this action.

I definitely would face a moral dilemma in many hypothetical circumstances - whether torturing someone to save a city/whatever would be acceptable to me. Like Hobbes suggested, what about killing an innocent child to save thousands of others?

Most of us (I truly believe) would torture a stranger involved in kidnapping/harming our child, spouse or sibling, if it would lead to the safe return of the family member. At that point the human instinct we have to love/protect the familiar over the alien, particularly when it comes to someone we share DNA with, will kick in strong enough to override our previously untested moral objections. That this course of action follows (the so-called) natural law doesn't make it the right thing to do, of course - nature is 'red in tooth and claw'.

Perhaps a better question - to remove the personal element from this - would be to ask if State-practiced torture is ever acceptable?

Zulu

Deleted User wrote:

no. Exceptional circumstances.

i.e. You have the one person in custody that knows where the bomb is located and armed. You need that info. So you torture, using drugs. Yes, in this instance i think its allowed.

The broad selection of a population to determine an unknown? No way.

...and what if the person in custody dosen't know where the bomb is? :rolleyes: There will always be a miscarrage of justice.

...and what if the person in custody dosen't know where the bomb is?

I'm getting tired of hearing this reason... :rolleyes:

Just assume for a second the person does know, or is directly affiliated to the group responsible.

There will always be a miscarrage of justice

Don't you think the use of always is completely off the mark? Perhaps there might be a miscarrage of justice...?