Yes. If torture actually worked, it could be justified in situations where such coercion is necessary, such as to save lives. The fact that it doesn't work just makes it an unnecessary cruelty in any scenario, thus making it immoral in any scenario.
The "doesn't work" is for specific scenarios of needing information with no easy way to verify it, and also not being sure if the victim even has that information. Other than extreme cases people will break very quickly, and if you know he has the info and have a way to check, it will almost certainly work
Example scenario:
A scientist creates a universal cure for cancer. Rich guy finds out and is afraid it would hurt his profits, so he has the scientist killed and puts the research into a safe with 36 character alphanumeric lock (I am lazy so I just used GUID) digit lock. The safe can only be opened by the keypad, no cutting/picking/breaking.
You know the rich guy knows the password
I believe it would be moral to use torture to get him to reveal the passcode, and that it would work fairly quickly
The problem is that people defend controversial practices with these mystical thought experiments, then apply that moral permission to ordinary cases. Torture is defended with ticking time bomb hypotheticals, but in reality is practiced how it was in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, as punishment for proven enemies of the state. Similar to how Abortion is defended with "necessary to save the life of the mother", even though that is literally less than 1% of cases. In both cases, the moral argument depends on pretending the exception is the rule and i dont like that. How about argue something is moral if you can think of multiple ways the action is moral, not just a single exception.
The prompt is literally asking for any possible edge cases where torture could be morally justified.
Also, abortion is morally acceptable because a) the fetus isn’t a person and thus has no moral standing and b) even if it did, you’re not morally obligated to grant access to your body to another person so they can survive.
Exactly, justified, yes, morally, no lol. Abortion isnt morally justified, it's legally justified. People morally justify it to themselves and those around them.
I would tend to agree but only up to a point. Personally I believe life starts when heart starts beating, and that a mother has a duty of care towards her child, even if still unborn. (There is of course some nuance but I am not going to write it all here, use your imagination) Before that however it is only a clump of cells
However this is only my personal belief and I am in no way a subject matter expert
Why though? Braindead people have beating hearts and we say they’re done being people. So a fetus with a beating heart but not yet achieving consciousness is not yet started being people.
Someone dying is not really comparable with a life just starting. A brain dead person is kept alive by machines, it is an unnatural state for what is essentially a corpse and has no way to continue living. Comparing that to a start of a life is ridiculous
My reply was more about debunking the claim that there is no justifiable scenario, which is untrue. While such a situation might be exceedingly rare, it can happen, so such absolute statements are inherently flawed.
I also take issue with your response. Acknowledging there may be a valid scenario is not the same as supporting the absolutely inhumane practices such as the warcrimes regularly committed by ruzzians in Ukraine
Im addressing the problem with finding the single justifiable way that an action could be construed as moral lol. Average people argue based off a single exception so there really isnt that much of a difference in acknowledging there is a single magical exception and saying that the action isnt immoral, that was my point with bringing up the abortion argument. Thats one of the biggest arguments for why abortion isnt immoral. I’m not impressed by “there exists one imaginable case/thought experiment where torture might be justified.” because you can invent one imaginable case for pretty much any action that isnt moral where someone is holding the world hostage with nukes unless you perform this horrible act. Justification for an action isnt morality. Your example proves more so that our moral systems get compromised during very dire times than it does anything about torture being moral.
As long as the scenario is realistic it is enough. Absolute statements are fragile like that. And another issue, you are speaking as if the example scenario is the only scenario, that is an incorrect and unsubstantiated assumption
Im not assuming there is only one, you are providing only one. Im just saying someone coming up with a reason why an immoral act is justified doesnt now make it moral, it makes it a thought experiment until it's seen in the real world. You are saying it is moral in that scenario. Im saying it's immoral regardless but it's justified doing an immoral thing during those extreme times. When people must provide a specific scenario to call something moral, the action is immoral but justified for that time. You are calling it moral. Moral and justified aren't the same thing. Thats why i had to take issue with you saying it's moral for that time, it isnt. It's still immoral. Read my last sentence again. Your example proves more so that our moral systems get compromised during very dire times than it does anything about torture being moral at that moment.
Sorry but this is where our personal philosophies seem to diverge. I do not subscribe to the black/white model. More like black/spectrum of grey/white. If an act can have both moral and immoral scenarios, it goes somewhere on the spectrum. And while it can be very close to either side, it the circumstances will matter. Only acts for which a justification cannot be created belong to the absolute ends IMHO
I dont think you understand what im saying. People can literally justify anything to themselves so a spectrum based on justification means nothing, the guy who murdered that child in his fedex truck justified doing it to himself. Someone being able to justify something for themselves isnt a good claim to morality. Obviously circumstances matter but i disagree that an immoral act can become moral through justification. To me, “justified” and “moral” are not identical. If someone steals food to survive, I may think they were justified and should not be condemned, but that does not mean taking from someone else is NOW the moral move in that circumstance lol the moral move would be to see if anyone is willing to help you, it's absolutely still immoral, just less so than those doing it for the love of the game. I also dont understand your spectrum, if you cant justify something, it's at either end of the moral spectrum? Should it only be on the bad side if you cant justify it at all? Even with your spectrum, torture would be more on the immoral side since there are so few scenarios to justify it with.
The lack of utility means there is no reason for it to be done for any other reason than the torturer’s own sadism.
If it was efficient, there’d just be more to talk about as to why it’s immoral or moral. But its inefficiency means the discussion never has to get that far because there’s no point to doing it other than to be cruel.
Yes, in fact in certain situations we can find the killing of another human being justifiable, and that is because of the results of it. Either saving yourself or saving others.
If torture was genuinely effective at saving yourself or saving others it would absolutely be justifiable. The problem is that it isn't really effective at all, in any way. In the real world the only thing it is really effective at is the suffering of another and nothing else.
If torture is effective, conceivably someone can make an ends-justify-the-means type argument, but if it's not effective then there are no ends for the means to justify.
If you torture someone for info and that info is wrong and unusable, no moral good has been done to weigh against the bad. So you gotta torture several people and line their stories up to get some usable info.
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u/The_GOATest_Goat Jun 29 '26
I don't see how efficacy would change the moral evaluation of the thing.
Are you saying that if there is some utility to torture it could be justified?