I agree with Anon 7:14, and could not agree more. (There can be degrees of agreement just like there can be degrees of belief, right?) The ticking time bomb scenario argument is a joke. I have never heard any philosophically worthy arguments justifying torture and whenever I have seen people attempt them my clear impression is that they are making conceptual space to make it seem that there is some viable position here. There is not, and there never was. The only exception for when it is reasonable to talk about is where someone might be introducing act utilitarianism to students in a classroom, and showing what the reasoning of the act utilitarian is like But as a considered philosophical position, it is a sham to say there is any rational support for torture, much less as a considered policy position. Yes, philosophers have been complicit in this, since we did not speak up and we allowed it to seem like a plausible or at least debatable position. We are as complicit as those psychologists and MDs who participated or who supported those who participated. If philosophers contributed to this by allowing it to happen when we could have resisted, how can we expect other segments of society to do much better.

Excellent that the Daily Nous has started a blog for philosophers to address torture. But I went to RPW’s own blog, to see how he justified claims 3 and 5. Apparently these are just assertions.

Why do we accept this kind of social determinism? Don’t philosophers have a role to play in demanding prosecution and punishment for these crimes?

It is quite true that, for those of us who identify as “Americans,” this who we have become, or what “our group” has been allowed to become, and what it will continue to be until we start setting things right. It may seem daunting to challenge the prevailing culture to this extent, but massive culture change will be required for our human species to deal appropriately with the coming decades no matter what. To put the brakes on climate change, we’re going to have to change our economic systems, level off population growth, and get over the group-on-group competition/conflict that underlies militarism. The US starting to acknowledge and clean up its act regarding the last 13 years could serve as a catalyst for this needed change.

Absolutely no claim about the wrongness of torture or the possibility of justified cases was made. The point is that *even* if there are remotely but logically possible justified cases, the only *practical* consequence of arguing that this is so is to encourage their misidentification.

It’s never going to happen–never–that someone in an actual position to permit or commit torture will say: “Hey, having thought about the ticking time bomb scenario, I’ve decided this isn’t one.” Entertaining possible justified cases will only ever increase unjustified ones.

From a rule utilitarian perspective, we should never entertain debates that try to apply ideal theory torture to real torture, the benefits are probably nil, the costs potentially high.

As someone who has taught something like the ticking time bomb scenario in Intro classes to discuss utilitarianism, I’m not sure it’s best to avoid discussing the question of torture and consequentialist reasons for and against it, as advocated above. After all, it’s not like the consequentialist reasons won’t get brought up by politicians and pundits anyway (Cheney, Fox news, etc.). Rather, why not make sure people aren’t twisting the facts to make the reasons for torture look way better than they really are?

First, explain why torture is unjustified on almost every viable moral theory. Then point out that act utilitarianism is the theory most advocates of torture will try to use to justify it (perhaps implicitly). But then don’t let them forget all the utilitarian reasons against torture. For instance:

-on utilitarian grounds, non-Americans’ lives and suffering count as much as Americans’, so one can’t adjust the tallies to suit one’s purposes. One must count, for instance, the innocent detainees who were tortured (26 according to the Senate report), such as the one who says he tried to kill himself three times, scrawling in his own blood, “this is unjust.” (Same goes for drone bombings.)
-the evidence suggests torture is not an effective way to get reliable information and/or other methods are likely more reliable. (Just like death penalty likely isn’t justified based on empirical arguments that it deters.)
-don’t forget about the long-term calculations that must be included. Torture (just like some drone strikes, etc.) plausibly causes more long-term problems than it solves in the short term. Politicians are especially unlikely to concern themselves with negative effects in 10 years compared to the short-term effects that will get them un- vs. re-elected. And trust in our government agencies is an important long-term consequence too.
-on utilitarian grounds, all the torture and resources we spent hunting down OBL were likely unjustified, given that he was not mastermining much anymore. Instead, the obvious justification used was satisfying our retributive impulses, which only count on utilitarian grounds for the short-term happiness among many Americans sparked by his killing.

And so on. Of course, trying to do the calculations (esp. long-term) described above indicates one of the weaknesses of act utilitarianism and one of the reasons to move towards, at a minimum, rule utilitarianism, or any one of the other theories that delivers an unequivocal NO answer to torture.

I wrote a book on this topic, if interested, see *Terrorism, Ticking Time-Bombs, and Torture* (University of Chicago Press).

I’m a bit confused by many of the comments, especially comments 4 and 5. If act consequentialism is true, then loads of torture might be morally justified, indeed obligatory. (There are ways to torture that do not do not cause much long term pain or harm, after all.) I myself am happy to say that (any typical variety of) act consequentialism is clearly false, partially because it makes torture so easy to justify, but these commentators don’t seem to want their claims about torture to hinge on that claim. The debate about torture is a sham debate iff the debate about act consequentialism is a sham debate. Pick your side.

I think the question needs to be posed, is there any chance of the _Philosophical_ APA, in contradistinction to the Psychiatric and Psychological APAs, which have already done so (the latter after a lengthy debate), taking a stand against torture? (Or perhaps this has already been done, by an APA committee, or some other body of philosophers? My apologies if I’m simply ignorant of what has happened.) Can the issue of attaining a kind of moral closure with respect to torture, and taking action so as to affirm it publicly–not just armchair speculation about whether or not “theory” can be bent to support it–at least be subject to a debate in philosophical circles?

David Sussman, “What’s Wrong With Torture?”, Philosophy and Public Affairs 33 (1):1–33 (2005) — an absolutely brilliant piece.

My .02 is in “One View of the Dungeon: The Ticking Time Bomb between Governmentality and Sovereignty”. It’s from 2008; the basic claim is that the time bomb argument serves to make torture appear efficient or otherwise justified on utilitarian grounds, by constructing an (impossible) scenario where all the epistemic and other difficulties in real life go away. In other words, the use of the TTB scenario is itself a significant part of the problem.

I don’t think anybody’s mentioned Kim Lane Scheppele’s critique of the TTB, which I found really helpful. I’ll also second the endorsements of Luban and of Sussman.

Good for you, Adam. The apologetics of Walzer and Posner are shameful.

A correction to a comment I made above:
Nathaniel Raymond, researcher at Harvard School of Public Health and research ethics adviser for Physicians for Human Rights, noted today in an interview “In 2006, the AMA and the little APA, American Psychiatric, passed clear bans on participation. And those bans on participation are now being echoed by The New York Times. The American Psychological Association is, of the big three, the only association that still permits involvement in interrogations.” (http://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/23/weaponizing_health_workers_how_medical_professionals#) A significant percentage of the membership of the latter organization has been pushing for such a ban for many years, however.

Interesting that the American Psychological Association is “the big APA” and the American Psychiatric Association is “the little APA.” Apparently the American Philosophical Association is, in this context, “the irrelevant APA,” or perhaps “the nonexistent APA.” Of course, the former two APAs have members that actually DO things in the world, and hence can be “banned” from certain practices. But we do things too–we teach, we formulate positions, sometimes we even advise those who DO do things in the world. How many of us teach medical ethics, for example? Raymond also says, “This is a five-alarm fire in American medical ethics, up there with Tuskegee. . . . It appears that there were changes to both the interpretation of the Code of Federal Regulations related to human subjects research—the Wolfowitz memorandum—and changes to U.S. interpretation of the Geneva Conventions related to biomedical experimentation during the Bush administration. . . . And we have a responsibility, underneath the precedents of Nuremberg, under the precedents of the Tokyo trials, to hold the chain of command accountable.”

On the same program, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Colin Powell, referred to “the ticking time bomb argument, which is a fallacious and stupid argument if you really parse it well.” Apparently he didn’t need a philosopher to guide him to this conclusion. Maybe, with respect to the general opinion in the US, the tide is finally turning: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/opinion/prosecute-torturers-and-their-bosses.html?_r=0