Torture Essay Ideas
Posted on November 21, 2006 - Filed Under Philosophy, Politics |
I’m considering doing an essay on torture for a philosophy module, and I’d like to put this blog to a useful for once. Without getting bogged down too much in the issue of morality (of course, a brief mention of it is fine; the whole argument turns on this point after all), can anyone suggest a situation where torture by state officials may be justified? I’m aware of the ticking time-bomb scenario, so if you can come up with something else I’d be most interested to hear it.
As for myself, I’m inclined at the moment to believe that justifying it is extremely difficult, but I feel that there must be some scenario in which it would be worth a shot, as a last resort, to avert a disaster. Formulating such a scenario is difficult though, so I’ll welcome your ideas.
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6 Responses to “Torture Essay Ideas”
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I don’t see how torture could be justified. Though then again there are many different forms of torture: physical, psychological etc. Do you mean a specific kind (eg. Guantanamo Bay) or torture in general?
On another note, I’ve been/am writing my state and civ essay. Hence I won’t be in actual class today. Got too much work to do before I leave (I have to go to England for the rest of the week in case I haven’t told you. The philosophy wedding.) Making good progress, I’m happy. What about you?
the problem is other than the ‘ticking time-bomb’ arguement, its been pretty well shown that your better off befriending someone if you want info.
there was a case in germany where a paedophile who had the bodies in his house of some missing girls was arrested. there was one girl still missing and so the officers tourtured him to try and find where the last girl was. its kinda ticking timebomb but not exactly. plus the guys guilt was unargueable. in that case you could say that in an effort to save the child (who it turned out was dead already) and given that the guy was trying to stall the police - the torture WAS justified…
The thing is, people wouldn’t use torture if it didn’t work.
People wouldn’t use torture to extract infromation if it didn’t work. It’d still be used by dictators, etc.
Are there drugs that will break a person’s spirit/make them more complient, or are these just fiction?
People use torture for lots of reasons - mostly political. Its a handy way of breaking the spirit of people, but the thing is as an information gathering method rather than a as punishment its not very efficient unless you are trying to get something confirmed (the earlier example i used - they knew what they were looking for, torture got the info quicker is all)
Bit late I suppose, but I think torture could be justified if you take a utilitarian approach and consider the use of torture as a deterrant. The only major difficulty with this view as I see it, is the question of how one is to determine the effectiveness of such a method.