Reopening the Torture Debate

[tolbiny]

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Its not totally bizarre as only a trial of some sort can determine whether it was acceptable or not.

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If you see my first post in this thread i am for a trial process to figure out of its acceptable, but the guy i was talking about spoke of a "personal sacrifice". I see no reason that a person should expect to go to prison (or be puinished) if they are found to have done the right thing. I definately think opinion's like Duke's are disgusting, that somehow words on a piece of paper take on a mystical meaning that is more important than the humans that walk around having to make decisions every day.

[chezlaw]

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Its not totally bizarre as only a trial of some sort can determine whether it was acceptable or not.


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If you see my first post in this thread i am for a trial process to figure out of its acceptable, but the guy i was talking about spoke of a "personal sacrifice". I see no reason that a person should expect to go to prison (or be puinished) if they are found to have done the right thing.

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Sounds right to me but I think there a general confusion about what it means for something to be illegal. There are always at least two possible defenses. 'It wasn't me' and 'it was me but it wasn't illegal'.

people (particularly people in authority love claiming stuff is illegal) but only the courts an determine if it was illegal or not and in principle a good court system would render this problem trivial.

The important things are that a) it is understood that such an extreme action requires a trial and b) there is a good trial system.

edit; that automatically means there is some personal sacrifice as being tried is generally not fun and there's always some chance you will be found guilty (possibly correctly).

chez

[Duke]

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Its not totally bizarre as only a trial of some sort can determine whether it was acceptable or not.

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If you see my first post in this thread i am for a trial process to figure out of its acceptable, but the guy i was talking about spoke of a "personal sacrifice". I see no reason that a person should expect to go to prison (or be puinished) if they are found to have done the right thing. I definately think opinion's like Duke's are disgusting, that somehow words on a piece of paper take on a mystical meaning that is more important than the humans that walk around having to make decisions every day.

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Please explain how creating a law which will only come into play in extreme situations, and will need to be broken in those situations somewhat regularly, will not marginalize any law set forth by that same agency.

It's not like a lot of people would torture for the fun of it. If it were such a common thing that everyone wanted to do for whatever reason, there wouldn't be a law against it. Recall that laws of this nature come from the prevailing sentiment in society.

People hate torture because it's been used when there was severe doubt that the person even knew the information that was being sought after. Have a law against torture, then. That's fine. But the system needs to have in place some sort of mechanism for invalidating that very law in cases like the one set forth by David. It's much more disgusting to think less of the kidnapped girl's life than the kidnapper's comfort, in the name of following the law. It's also disgusting to criminalize anyone for doing the right thing.

[Bill Haywood]

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Having laws exist that need to be broken to do the right thing marginalizes the rest of the laws.

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And legalizing torture brings fascism.

There are no clean and clear solutions. Consistency brings its own tyranny. There are simple moral choices only in Sunday school.

[m_the0ry]

Torture is always wrong because it is always implemented due to a lack of information. Consequently, there is always a lack of understanding regarding the torturee's involvement. Because this hypothetical makes torture an issue of morality instead of law, our example raises two problems

1. There is no incentive for the wrongdoer to help undo his wrongdoing
2. Our picture of the situation is incomplete - differentiating between an insane man pretending to be a serial killer and a serial killer is impossible.

Note, guilt is always impossible to establish other than 'beyond a reasonable doubt' which is a legal definition. Here we are discussing a hypothetical where the conclusion is the moral definition of torture as either right or wrong. From a moral standpoint, guilt is always intrinsic to the crime committer. Torture only provides a solution to point 1 by providing incentive, but it can never be proven to provide the truth because it is inherently based on a lack of information.

Any allowance of torture will inevitably result in the torturing of innocents. Most enlightened cultures follow the principle that allowing a guilty person to do more harm is significantly more acceptable than directly causing harm to innocents. This is the decision torture always forces you to make. Even though this hypothetical can be scaled ad absurdum such that torture hypothetically prevents an infinite amount of pain and suffering, the fact is it is always a dice roll at best.

[chezlaw]

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Torture is always wrong because it is always implemented due to a lack of information. Consequently, there is always a lack of understanding regarding the torturee's involvement. Because this hypothetical makes torture an issue of morality instead of law, our example raises two problems

1. There is no incentive for the wrongdoer to help undo his wrongdoing
2. Our picture of the situation is incomplete - differentiating between an insane man pretending to be a serial killer and a serial killer is impossible.

Note, guilt is always impossible to establish other than 'beyond a reasonable doubt' which is a legal definition. Here we are discussing a hypothetical where the conclusion is the moral definition of torture as either right or wrong. From a moral standpoint, guilt is always intrinsic to the crime committer. Torture only provides a solution to point 1 by providing incentive, but it can never be proven to provide the truth because it is inherently based on a lack of information.

Any allowance of torture will inevitably result in the torturing of innocents. Most enlightened cultures follow the principle that allowing a guilty person to do more harm is significantly more acceptable than directly causing harm to innocents. This is the decision torture always forces you to make. Even though this hypothetical can be scaled ad absurdum such that torture hypothetically prevents an infinite amount of pain and suffering, the fact is it is always a dice roll at best.

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Just coz its a dice roll at best doesn't make it wrong in extreme cases.

Avoiding numbers, if its highly likely that a nuclear device is about to explode and very good reason to believe one of a small group of people knows where its hidden and a decent chance that torture will reveal its location then torture it is even though it may include the torture of innocents and may not work.

Its morally okay if the innocents would agree to this course of action before the fact. I sure would, wouldn't you?

chez

[Duke]

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Having laws exist that need to be broken to do the right thing marginalizes the rest of the laws.

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And legalizing torture brings fascism.

There are no clean and clear solutions. Consistency brings its own tyranny. There are simple moral choices only in Sunday school.

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No, there aren't any easy solutions. This is precisely why it's insane to have laws that try to make very gray areas black or white.

It's odd that we both see the same points as being in favor of our arguments. The only difference is that you (and my other opponents here) seem to be in much greater favor of a lot of legislation, where I think that stripping out trouble laws makes more sense. I define a 'trouble law' to be one that will usually be in play when the correct move is to break it.

[tolbiny]

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Because if we constantly just "looked the other way" then we would start ignoring our own laws

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Really? Strange since that didn't happen after cases of jury nullification. The person who breaks the law doesn't get to decide if he gets off, a third party does.
Self defense laws haven't undermined murder laws, yet they allow you, under certain circumstances to kill another person. Of course you have to give evidence that those circumstances existed.

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It would have to be such an outrageous situation that someone would have to willing to step forward and KNOW they are going to be punished for doing the right thing, yet do it anyway.

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Why should they be punished? As long as they expect to be punished if they cannot defend their actions there is no problem with a slippery slope or people routinely ignoring these mandates.
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In this situation maintaining a society that does not sacrifice its principles and doing the right thing

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Principles? What about the principle of protecting the innocent from aggressors?

[tolbiny]

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But the system needs to have in place some sort of mechanism for invalidating that very law in cases like the one set forth by David

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So what's wrong with jury nullification as that mechanism? Pretending that a law can be written perfectly and to cover all situations is naive, and making people afraid to do what they feel they clearly must, and what vast chunks of the population feel that they must, is to put the actual words of the law above the reason that they were written.
Laws are written in an attempt to define protection from aggression of others (well they should be imo), finding a situation where a law is poorly written should lead to the immediate dismissal of the law in that situation.

[Duke]

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But the system needs to have in place some sort of mechanism for invalidating that very law in cases like the one set forth by David

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So what's wrong with jury nullification as that mechanism? Pretending that a law can be written perfectly and to cover all situations is naive, and making people afraid to do what they feel they clearly must, and what vast chunks of the population feel that they must, is to put the actual words of the law above the reason that they were written.
Laws are written in an attempt to define protection from aggression of others (well they should be imo), finding a situation where a law is poorly written should lead to the immediate dismissal of the law in that situation.

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Letting it be known that you even know about jury nullification is a good way to not be on a jury.