Torture Debate Part 3

In the event that a terrorist were to plant a ticking time bomb in a crowded city, and torture emerged as the sole means to compel the terrorist to divulge the bomb's location, is it morally justifiable to resort to torture?

This scenario, commonly known as the ticking time bomb scenario, has been a subject frequently raised by advocates of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT) and torture, including notable figures such as former Vice President Dick Cheney, political pundit Charles Krauthammer, and former CIA officer Jose Rodriguez.

However, the ticking time bomb scenario is often distilled into a simplistic assertion by proponents of torture:

"Torture is justified in cases of a ticking time bomb."

Despite its frequent invocation by defenders of torture and the subsequent criticism it has attracted, this scenario is often presented as a moral argument without a thorough exploration of the underlying moral theory. The ticking time bomb scenario serves as a hypothetical construct designed to pose moral dilemmas and encourage contemplation of various moral and ethical theories. In its various iterations, the ticking time bomb scenario typically includes the following essential elements:

• A threat to human life, which may involve an actual bomb or an impending catastrophe.

• A terrorist who possesses the knowledge necessary to prevent the impending threat.

• The necessity of using torture to extract life-saving information and avert the impending disaster.

In this scenario, the choices are stark: either torture the terrorist to save many lives or refrain from torture and allow many people to perish. I previously introduced the historical and contextual aspects of the ticking time bomb scenario in my earlier video on the U.S. torture debate, but let's briefly recap.

The concept of the ticking time bomb was formulated approximately 200 years ago by the political philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, with the specific aim of challenging the moral prohibition against torture. In essence, the ticking time bomb scenario suggests that torture is the only morally justifiable course of action in such a dire situation. This likely explains why proponents of enhanced interrogation techniques and torture frequently rely on the ticking time bomb as their primary argument:

"Torture is morally justified because it is the preferable option in the ticking time bomb scenario."

However, delving deeper into the ticking time bomb scenario reveals that it rests on a specific moral theory, one that many would recognize as consequentialism. The scenario compels the audience to adopt a consequentialist perspective, which involves the delicate balancing of competing interests. These interests encompass various aspects, such as human lives, human suffering, the consequences of upholding or disregarding moral norms, and more.

Notably, the ticking time bomb scenario prompts us to consider the balance of moral harms, rather than the maximization of moral goods. It compels us to weigh the moral harm of torturing a terrorist against the moral harm of permitting numerous innocent lives to be lost. In both cases, whether torturing the terrorist or allowing innocents to die, significant moral harm is inevitable. We can express this in utilitarian terms, which is a type of consequentialism, as an attempt to minimize the loss of utility rather than to maximize it. Consequentialism aims to minimize overall harm in the final analysis, seeking the option with the least moral harm as the preferable choice—a choice often referred to as the "lesser of two evils" or the "choice of lesser evil."

The moral justification for torture does not argue that torture is inherently moral. No serious defender of torture claims that. Instead, they assert that, within the limited options of the ticking time bomb scenario, choosing to torture to save lives is morally permissible because it results in less harm.

Consequentialist logic does not hinge on the inherent morality of actions. Torture is inherently wrong, but consequentialism does not prohibit or permit torture based solely on that criterion. If the consequences of torture are less harmful than the alternative, then torture can become morally justified or permissible. The ticking time bomb suggests that torture could be morally permissible given its constraints, that choosing to not torture would lead to the deaths of many innocent lives while not challenging the inherent cruelty of torture.

That's the effect of the ticking time bomb scenario. It operates similarly to other hypotheticals in moral philosophy, like the famous trolley problem. The trolley problem, in its standard form, asks individuals to choose between killing one person or more than one person when all are innocent, and there are no alternatives.

Both the ticking time bomb and the trolley problem strongly encourage people to adopt a consequentialist mindset, regardless of how realistic the scenarios may be.

In my previous videos addressing the torture debate, I might have occasionally used certain terms in a less precise manner. It's now essential to ensure clarity and precision in their usage.

The first point to clarify is the claim made by those defending the use of torture.

Typically, those who advocate for the use of torture do not dispute the fundamental immorality of torture itself. Torture is widely acknowledged as inherently immoral, and this consensus is rarely questioned. The central question posed by proponents of torture is not a straightforward "Is torture immoral?" Such a question oversimplifies the matter and can lead to considerable confusion. Instead, they raise the more complex issue of whether torture, which is normally considered immoral and impermissible, can be morally justified or deemed permissible in exceptional circumstances.

In essence, the crux of their argument revolves around the idea that, in extraordinary situations, there may exist a moral framework that justifies or permits an otherwise immoral act like torture.

The second point we need to clarify is whether the debate revolves around the use of torture by individuals or governments.

The moral debate concerning torture primarily focuses on its utilization as a policy tool. Typically, this refers to a government's use of torture in the pursuit of public interests, such as security or law enforcement. In the United States, the public discourse surrounding torture is largely situated within the context of counterterrorism. While the moral arguments presented by both advocates and opponents of torture may have relevance to cases involving individual instances of torture, the public discourse on this issue is, and will continue to be, predominantly framed within the sphere of national security. Therefore, the debate centers on torture as a government policy.

Moving on to our third point of clarification, let's consider the use of the term "innocent" in the ticking time bomb scenario.

In the ticking time bomb scenario, the term "innocent" typically refers to individuals who have no connection to the impending attack. It's important to note that this designation of "innocent" doesn't refer to the moral character of the potential victims of the anticipated attack.

For example, we could alter the ticking time bomb scenario by imagining a situation where a terrorist has planted a ticking time bomb at a prisoner of war camp detaining hundreds of former terrorists. Despite their past involvement, those hundreds of former terrorists are still considered "innocents" under threat of the attack.

The ticking time bomb scenario isn't about justifying torture as a means of seeking vengeance; rather, it's about employing it as a means to prevent even greater harm. Although the desire for vengeance may implicitly motivate some individuals who seek to justify and employ torture against those who have perpetrated or threaten violence against "innocents," the issue of vengeance is not a focal point in the ticking time bomb scenario or in the broader debate on torture. Instead, the central concern is minimizing moral harm.

Let’s quickly recap what we have examined so far:

• The ticking time bomb is a hypothetical scenario designed to induce consequentialist logic.

• Consequentialism is the underlying moral theory of the ticking time bomb, and it is primarily about the balancing of interests.

• In the case of the ticking time bomb, the balance is that of relative moral harms between torture and death.

• Consequentialism does not prohibit or permit actions based on its moral qualities. Instead, it looks at the resulting balance of moral benefits or harms to determine permissibility.

• Torture is, by most sane people including defenders of torture, inherently cruel and morally wrong. However, because of the previous point, defenders of torture argue that torture could become morally permissible under specific circumstances.

Now that we have some understanding of the basic premises of the ticking time bomb scenario and the consequentialist framework, we can start to understand the normative argument for the use of torture as a form of policy.

“Under exceptional circumstances, torture can be morally permissible or justified.”

Exceptionality is an important part of the moral defense of torture because it affects several elements of consequentialist logic.

Without exceptionality, an argument that defends the use of torture would inadvertently justify the normalized use of torture. Normalized use of torture would mean that torture could be used in a wide range of circumstances. As most proponents of torture agree, torture is inherently morally harmful, and not a desirable action on its own. Most proponents of torture agree with the prohibition of torture for domestic law enforcement and the military, a position best exemplified by people such Jose Rodriguez. However, the need to prohibit the use of torture for law enforcement and the military while permitting torture only for the CIA does not rest on any consistent logic. This was one of my main criticisms of Jose Rodriguez in my last video.

How exceptionality is conveyed in the standard ticking time bomb lies with the key phrasing: “torture the terrorist to extract life-saving information”. The condition of exceptionality is satisfied by the terrorist (or person) having life-saving information. The information sought after must be directly linked to saving lives.

The need for life-saving information is explained in the consequentialist framework. As we have covered, consequentialism is about the balancing of interests, and in the case of torture and the ticking time bomb, the balancing of moral harms. As long as torture poses the least amount of moral harm done, it could be justified. We are talking about a relative scale here.

Consider this scenario.

Imagine a modification of the ticking time bomb scenario that has a ticking time bomb planted in a high value property with no one in it. The only harm is that of economic loss for the property owner. Would you find torture to be justified in preventing the loss of property? The balance of moral harms between torture and property damage does not swing in the favor of torture by any reasonable person.

Most people would not consider property damage to a greater moral harm than torture no matter how great the monetary value the property was. Relative to torture, economic loss from property damage poses a lesser moral harm. So generally speaking, torturing a person to prevent property damage would not be morally permissible for most consequentialists, although I can imagine some misguided soul on reddit making such an attempt.

Even if we bump up the scales from property damage to theft or even physical assault, the balance of moral harms would be not close enough for people to consider the exceptional use of torture. Only with the condition of potential death that can be prevented by life-saving information, would the consequentialist balance between torture and death start to become persuasive for some people.

Because anything lesser than death is by most common sense so inadequate of a comparison to the moral harms of torture, the ticking time bomb scenario and normative arguments for the justification of torture only compare the moral harms between torture and death. That lives hang in the balance is one part of what exceptionality means for those arguing for the justification of torture under exceptional circumstances.

This may seem like an obvious point but then again, as someone who believes in the absolute prohibition of torture to be obvious, this entire series on torture feels like stating the obvious. Which is why it’s important to remind everyone, including myself, that roughly half of Americans support the use of torture under exceptional circumstances by the government.

Those familiar with consequentialist arguments would have already spotted the problem here. To even consider the balancing of moral harms, we would need to assume that it is possible to measure comparative harms of immoral actions. The assumption itself is troubling. Instinctively, some people might believe it is possible to measure moral harms between torture and death, just as we did between torture and property damage in the example before. But it would be next to impossible to agree on a common unit of measure or a common methodology of measurement for any consequentialist calculation to make moral or logical sense, other than relying on the good old concept of “common sense”. But there is nothing common or sensible about comparing the moral harms of torture and death.

Does the torturing of one person pose an equal, lesser, or greater amount of moral harm than the death of a person? The problem isn’t that you can instinctively find an answer, the problem is that it is nothing more than instinct. Consider the following example.

Baby in the Car Scenario

On a hot summer day, a car thief stole a vehicle, drove it across town, and ditched the vehicle at a location only he knows. The thief was found by the local police and arrested. Unbeknownst to the car thief, there was a sleeping baby in the back seat, and, given the temperature of the day, it was reasonable to expect that the baby would die of dehydration and heat. The police, running against the clock to extract the life-saving information about the location of the vehicle, tortured the car thief during the interrogation. In the end, the thief talked and the police were able to find the vehicle and the baby in time.

This is a hypothetical case that asks if torture can be justified in cases where the ratio of tortured to lives saved is 1:1. There is of course, no clear answer to this problem, and one that consequentialists cannot satisfyingly answer. Even Fritz Allhoff, a professor of philosophy, author of “Terrorism, ticking time bombs, and torture”, and a proponent of justified torture, said:

“Maybe torture is worse than killing, or maybe not; regardless, the point is that some sort of moral costs are allowable in the pursuit of the moral good.”

Yes, to make a decision on whether torture is morally justified, we need to have a clear idea of whether torture is worse than lives lost or not so that we can determine when some sort of moral costs are allowable in the pursuit of the moral good. The entire consequentialist framework that Fritz Allhoff and almost every other proponent of torture relies on, rests on the claim that it is possible to calculate the moral costs of torture and death and other considerable factors through theoretically sound and convincing method. In my opinion, Professor Fritz Allhoff offers the most substantive argument for the moral justification of torture that I found. In fact, his book is the main inspiration for this video. But that statement from his concluding chapter of his book on justifying torture is, to put it politely, confusing. If we cannot have a clear idea of which is worse, torture or letting innocent people die, we cannot make a consequentialist calculus on the moral justification of torture. How useful is consequentialism if there is no clear way to calculate the consequences of actions?

I will return to this issue after I finish talking about exceptionality.

Now, the exceptional circumstances in which torture could be morally justified requires, at a minimum, that there are lives on the line. But there could be circumstances in which lives are at risk and yet torture is not necessary. Necessity of torture is the other element of exceptionality.

This may sound simple but it is a bit more complicated. The standard ticking time bomb scenario strongly suggests imminence, rather than necessity. Fritz Allhoff explains this well, and I am not being sarcastic here:

“What matters is, not imminence, but necessity. Ticking time bomb cases are often formulated in terms of imminence, but that is misleading insofar as imminence and necessity come together in those cases. In other words, a threat would lead to its abrogation; torture is necessary to prevent the threat.”

Allhoff even offers two variations of the ticking time bomb scenario to demonstrate the difference between imminence and necessity.

Imminence

A bomb will go off in the near future and kill thousands; the torture of a detainee will ensure the deactivation of the bomb and the preservation of all lives. Aside from torture, there is some other act, X, that will also ensure the preservation of all the lives. Unlike torture, X has no moral hazards.

Necessity

A bomb will go off in two years and will kill thousands; the torture of a detainee will ensure the deactivation of the bomb and preservation of all the lives. The detainee has acted alone and is the only one who knows the bomb’s location. The bomb is undetectable and will not be found without his testimony. Unfortunately, the detainee is dying of an aggressive form of cancer; while he is still strong enough to undergo torture, he will assuredly die in the near future, thus severing any hope of deactivating the bomb.

Allhoff does not consider torture in the imminence scenario to be justified. Since consequentialism is about the balance of moral harms, the option with the least amount of moral harm, which in the imminence scenario is some act, X, that is not torture and has no moral harm, would be the only justifiable option.

Now that we covered both elements of the exceptionality, let’s review the main normative argument again.

“Under exceptional circumstances, torture can be morally permissible or justified.”

We can expand upon what exceptional means to be more precise.

“Under exceptional circumstances in which torture is necessary to save lives, torture can be morally permissible or justified.”

This simple sentence is the quintessential normative claim made by proponents of torture. To get to this position we went over the standard ticking time bomb, the underlying consequentialist theory, and the exceptionality clause. But why was it necessary to do all of that just to arrive at such a simple conclusion? Because we can have a better understanding of what follows from such a claim, or as I like to describe it, understand the consequences of consequentialism.

So what follows from this normative claim?

For the purpose of this section, Let’s assume that we agree with this principle normative claim.

The justified use of torture depends on satisfying the conditions of exceptionality: that lives are at stake and torture is necessary to save those lives. So, the justified use of torture cannot be arbitrarily limited to a specific government agency like the CIA. Domestic law enforcement and especially the military have and will encounter cases which may satisfy the condition of exceptionality, and it makes no sense for the use of torture by the police or the military to be prohibited while the use of torture by the CIA is permitted. This is what Fritz Allhoff argues and what I also find to be more logically consistent compared to the arguments made by other proponents of torture such as Jose Rodriguez, who claimed that only the CIA could torture detainees. As long as the exceptionality condition is satisfied, torture is justified regardless of the identity of those doing the torturing.

Assuming that we agree with the principle normative claim, domestic law enforcement agencies and the military can also use torture as long as the cases they encounter satisfy the conditions of exceptionality. This leads me to the next point.

The justified use of torture would now extend to domestic citizens. Specifically in the context of the US, torture was exclusively reserved for foreign terrorists, but there is no moral reason for doing so, in fact arbitrarily limiting the use of justified torture undermines the principle normative arguement. If lives are at stake, why would the nationality of the terrorist matter? It shouldn’t matter.

In fact, the justified use of torture should not be limited to cases of terrorism, but as we have seen with the hypothetical scenario about the car thief and the baby, cases of kidnapping and abductions may also satisfy the conditions of exceptionality. If we assume we agree with the principle normative claim, there is no reason to limit the use of torture to counter only terrorism.

We have already diverged considerably from the normative claims made by most American proponents of torture. But we are not done yet, and neither is Fritz Allhoff.

If we assume that we again agree with the principle normative claim, what follows is that torturing innocent people can be morally justified.

Remember our definition of innocent in the ticking time bomb scenario? The innocent means someone who has no knowledge nor involvement in the planning or carrying out of the impending threat.

Consider these variations of the ticking time bomb scenario

The Terrorists Daughter Scenario

A terrorist has planted a ticking time bomb in a city. The bomb will kill tens of thousands of people. You torture the terrorist but the terrorist has been trained to resist torture, so he refuses to give up the location of the bomb. However, you know that the terrorist loves his daughter, and you manage to detain the daughter of the terrorist. The daughter is innocent. Torturing the innocent daughter of the terrorist is the only way to stop the bomb. Is torturing the innocent daughter of the terrorist morally justified?

Red Sweatshirt Scenario

A terrorist planted a bomb in a crowded mall. Latest intelligence says the terrorist is wearing a red sweatshirt. The police surround the building and catch 2 people wearing red sweatshirts. One of them is the terrorist responsible and the other is an innocent person who just happened to wear the same color as the terrorist that day. Because there is no time, the police must torture both suspects, fully knowing that one of them is innocent.

According to the consequentialist framework that we used to understand the standard ticking time bomb, torturing the innocent in both scenarios is morally justified. Because why wouldn’t it be? Fritz Allhoff also agrees that his normative argument permits the use of torture against innocent people in such cases. There is no reason within the consequentialist framework to prohibit the use of torture against innocent people by the criterion of innocence alone. Of course, torturing an innocent person poses a greater moral harm than torturing the guilty. But against the potential deaths of many lives, it's all relative.

For those who agreed with the original ticking time bomb scenario and the underlying consequentialist thinking in it to justify the use of torture against terrorists, they do owe everyone an honest answer to the issue of torturing the innocent. Presumably, this is why proponents of torture in the public debate rarely deal with consequentialist philosophy directly: they probably don’t want to admit that their theoretical framework can justify the torture of innocents. To his credit, Fritz Allhoff is one of the rare few people among the proponents of torture to explicitly state the full consequences of consequentialism. Allhoff admits he finds his own conclusions regarding the torture of innocents to be troubling as he wrote in the concluding chapter of his book:

“The critic could press that nothing in my account precludes the torture of the innocent daughter, and this could presumably be held up as a defect of the account. So, first, let me acknowledge that my account allows for the torture of innocents when such torture could reasonably be thought the least morally offensive way to prevent a greater harm.”

Allhoff’s defense is that the scenario concerning the torture of the terrorists innocent daughter is empirically unlikely to happen, which directly undermines his previous defense of the standard ticking time bomb scenario against criticisms that it’s empirically unlikely to happen. I’m going to move past this point because I wanted to deal with the issue of empirical relevance of the ticking time bomb scenario in my next video on moral arguments against torture.

But I should just let Allhoff explain the moral dilemma he imposed on himself:

“Terrorists simply do not travel with their young daughters, and, even were there some independent way to apprehend the daughter, we might expect a dedicated terrorists to remain true to his cause despite her torture. Now it just seems that I am evading the question, all the worse since that was the same allegation I hurled at the opponents of the ticking time bomb methodology back in Ch.5.2. But, as I already said above, I think such torture could be justified, but I just deny that it ever would be.”

He reiterates his position by examining the Red Sweatshirt scenario:

“Empirically, this sort of case is far more likely than the daughter case, so I see it as more of a worry. That said, my strategy is still the same: to deny that it is very likely to happen or else to say that, if it does, then torture is justified.”

To me, this seems like an incredible admission that his defense of the ticking time bomb scenario, the consequentialist framework, and his normative argument for justifying torture is fundamentally flawed. But he just brushes off those concerns and doesn't address them.

Conclusion

The agenda for this video was to explore consequentialism, the moral theory behind the ticking time bomb scenario, and the quintessential normative claim for the justification of torture. I made this video hoping that it would help people understand the deeper theoretical commitments within the normative claim that “torture can be justified under exceptional circumstances.”

We dove deeper into what constitutes exceptionality, and how that informs the consequentialist framework. We also looked at the uncomfortable consequences that is often overlooked by proponents of torture, that the consequentialist framework and the ticking time bomb can also justify torture against innocent people. There are other theoretical problems that I wanted to explore within the consequentialist framework, such as the inability to actually calculate relative moral harms between torture and death. That we cannot find a simple unit of measurement to actually perform moral calculus in circumstances of torture within the consequentialist framework should make people think twice about committing to consequentialism. But it doesn’t.

Half of Americans believe torture can be justified under exceptional circumstances. And I would bet my entire life savings that the primary reason people support the justification of torture is because they were convinced by the ticking time bomb scenario alone and not by examining the underlying theory of consequentialism or dissecting the normative claim for justifying torture.

People like Fritz Allhoff are rare among those arguing for the justification of torture for explicitly explaining and dealing with the theoretical questions posed by the standard ticking time bomb scenario. However, I do not find his normative claims about the justification of torture to be convincing. I have covered some of my objections to his claim in this video and I will also cover the rest in my future videos on the debate on torture.

But I don’t believe it will be necessary for me to make a second video on the moral arguments and theories that try to justify torture because there really isn’t anything else other than consequentialism and the normative claim of “under exceptional circumstances, torture can be morally permissible or justified.”

As I have mentioned in all my previous videos on torture, I am an absolute prohibitionist. It means that I do not believe there are any circumstances in which torture could ever be justified. But what would I do, if I were ever to find myself facing a situation like the ticking time bomb as an absolute prohibitionist? Does it mean that I would not torture the terrorist and let many innocent people die? That is a topic for the next video, which will be about exploring the main moral arguments prohibiting the use of torture. So, thank you for watching and I will see you next time.