[Discussion] Do you believe torture is ever justifiable?

[BlacLord™]

Yes certainly, torture is justifiable in many situations like when Joel tortured those people to get Ellie's location in the Last of us, they were kidnappers and were keeping something from Joel deserved for their own greed, my point is when small people get in a way of a big cause for their own greed or a wrong reasons, given the cause it's totally justifiable to torture the heck out of them to get the info or even revenge, if that's the case, the way I see it ,torture is no different then beating some bullies up, only at a greater degree,

That being said I didn't read all the previous posts in this thread and this is my opinion as if what I would do or decide how far the torture should go, so there's that.

Never even played that game. xD

 

[NaNaNaaaaa]

Yes certainly, torture is justifiable in many situations like when Joel tortured those people to get Ellie's location in the Last of us, they were kidnappers and were keeping something from Joel deserved for their own greed, my point is when small people get in a way of a big cause for their own greed or a wrong reasons, given the cause it's totally justifiable to torture the heck out of them to get the info or even revenge, if that's the case, the way I see it ,torture is no different then beating some bullies up, only at a greater degree,

That being said I didn't read all the previous posts in this thread and this is my opinion as if what I would do or decide how far the torture should go, so there's that.

Life is not a game and torturing a real human being is far different in real life that on a pixel character, when I get frustrated, sometimes its fun to go and torture my prisoners at the dark brotherhood hide out or the vampire thralls in Skyrim but thats a game, the pain isn't real, the people are not real, there is a big different when its a real, begging, bleeding, suffering human being, no matter how scummy they are, in front of you.

I couldn't do it and I wonder just how many of you shouting about how it is justifiable could really do it in anything but a game.

Games are not reality not do they represent reality

 

[Prometheus Beta]

I am a utilitarian and basically believe, among any set of ethical choices, whatever outcome is likely to minimize human suffering ought to be pursued (well I do reserve some qualifications but thats a story for another day). Yes, determining that outcome in the first place is not an easy or exact process in the first place. On the other hand, people in this debate, usually sentimental folk, often seem to think that this means that the trade-off between possible suffering inflicted (say an innocent but nevertheless radical Muslim gets tortured) and suffering avoided (e.g. you torture a jihadist and get crucial information regarding some other jihadist plot) is therefore automatically too great for torture to be worth it.

The problem with this tacit assumption is that one can easily argue the same for the prosecution system in general: determining whether someone has committed murder or not and consequently giving them life imprisonment or worse isn't an exact judgement either, and inflicts possibly far more suffering (innocent people have their entire lives wasted in prison vs a few months torture). Of course the argument seems silly here because most people understand very well that in a competent judicial system, innocent people do not get framed and prosecuted for murder very often.

Absolute certainty is not a requisite for prosecution because we still have this very neat thing called evidence which makes it possible to have this other neat process called making a decision based on a (pretty accurate) probability, most of the time anyway. And we accept that the trade-off between possible suffering inflicted and suffering avoided in the case of prosecuting murderers is worth it because it is very small -that is, most of the time you prosecute murderers and not framed innocents etc.

Now the question is: when governments torture, to what extent are their suspicions evidentially based? I believe that competent governments as in the west, for example, do not go about torturing random people with no evidential suspicion. Now there is one other issue here, how effective is torture anyway? But thats an empirical question and not an ethical one.

 

[Xlad]

If it leads to intelligence that can save lives or other important things, then sure. Otherwise, no.

Honestly, this.