this person should be tortured

Dear Voters, I came to this debate knowing that it was not in any way balanced, as a debate should be. Pro put forward an argument that tried to eliminate all possible situations where torture could produce information that is wrong, and claims a very simple causality - 'If we torture Bob, then all these people are saved'. I have argued that this simple causality is never, ever the case in the real world, in any real case where torture takes place. Pro wishes to argue something akin to Phillipa Foot's Trolley Problem. [1] For those unfamiliar, this takes a similar extreme case, where by some evildoing, 5 people have been tied to a railroad track and there is a trolley hurtling towards them, that will crush and kill all 5 of them. However, there is also a lever, which if pulled, will divert the trolley onto a different track, saving the 5. However, this different track itself has 1 person tied to it, who will then be killed by the trolley. If there is a true situation where this lever can be pulled and the 1 may be sacrificed in order to save the 5, then from a utilitarian standpoint, the choice is clear - one should pull the lever. My argument is this though : torture is not a lever. It is never certain that torture will produce clear information, and in many circumstances will produce so much false information, the true information is lost. Pro may continue to hold in their head this scenario where one can do something apparently apprehensible in order to prevent more injury, but I will continue to argue in the real world. Pro claims that if a person states that he knows things about an attack, then they are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Let me present an alternative scenario. I am Bob, and I have schitzophrenia. I lost my medication, and I've just had an episode where I honestly and truly believed that I was part of a terrorist ring planning to rape and murder women every 2 days until the US leaves Iraq. After coming out of this episode, I feel immense guilt, and immediately go to the police, turning myself in. There is no other evidence to suggest that any of what I (as Bob) stated is true, nor that I am linked to any past or future crime. However, the US takes me into custody anyway, and as they start to press me for further information, I go into another episode and become unresponsive. The US government decides to responde to that by torturing me, making my episode much, much worse, and producing a stream of incoherent information unrelated to the case I stated. Pro cannot deny that the above case is one that can fit within their 'facts'. Pro also cannot deny that torture, in the above case, would be morally apprehensible and wrong. Pro instead chooses to continue to insist that Bob has the information, and that torture is the only way of acquiring it, and does not want to bring this debate into the real world. If Pro wants to debate whether it is better for one person to be beaten up than for hundreds of people to be killed, then Pro could perhaps propose a different form of the Trolley Problem - one where instead of a lever, there is a man tied to a chair, with you in front of him, and someone watches through a surveillance camera. The only way to get the person watching to apply the breaks is by torturing the man in front of you for 20 minutes. In that case, I would not argue with Pro. I would say that it is absolutely justifiable to cause that man 20 minutes of pain to save the lives of innocent people. I am sure that the man would in fact understand, and would perhaps ask you to do it himself, if he were morally good. No-one would be able to debate Pro on this point, and Pro would always win, as they clearly want to. What Pro does not want to do is acknowledge the whole reason torture is wrong - because it is not a simple dichotomy. It is not known whether torturing Bob will produce any useful information - although Pro keeps insisting the odds are ' there will very possibly eventually begood info', and dismisses my arguments that it likely that no useful information will be produced. To conclude, my points are: In the real world, torture does not produce reliable information; any situation where one knows that someone has the information is also a situation where one already knows the information; torture is not a Trolley Problem lever, ever. I thank my opponent for this interesting, yet one-sided, debate. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org...