Torture

1.)Morality concerns the distinction between acceptable and unacceptable actions in respect to harm. 2.)Morality is not subjective. 3.)Torture is the intentional infliction of extreme physical suffering on some non-consenting, defenseless, other person for the purpose of breaking their will. 4.)Torture doesn"t necessarily have to concern getting information by way of harm. 5.)Torture does necessarily concern compliance with the torturer by way of harm. 6.)Torture is unlawful. 7.)Police and other authorities use torture. 8.)Morality is not measured by the actions of police and other authorities. 9.)Liberal democratic governments and security agencies haven"t begun to exhaust the political strategies short of the routine use of torture. 10.)There are other routes that someone can use to get another person to comply with them. 11.)After complying with the torturer the information obtained from the tortured person may not even be true. 12.)Positive duties entail us to commit certain acts while negative duties entail us to avoid certain acts. 13.)Torture, as a positive duty, infringes on the negative duty to avoid excessive harm. 14.)Negative duties are more important than positive duties. 15.)Therefore, it is not the case that some instances of torture are minimally morally justifiable. The definitions in premises 1, 3, and 12 are minimally controversial, meaning there is no need to argue them. Premise 2 may be controversial in that an opponent could say morality is subjective, but if that were the case torture would not even be debated because it wouldn"t matter that some people think it is okay while others do not. Premises 4 and 5 are true because torture can be used for many different things, but overall the goal is compliance on behalf of the tortured person. It doesn"t matter if the torturer is trying to get information or trying to get the tortured person to clean his house. And the question remains whether it is justifiable or not. The act of torture is not justifiable given that harm is used for the ultimate goal of compliance. An opponent may find that police and other types of authorities use torture, so maybe it"s right even though it"s illegal, as stated in Premise 6. Legality doesn"t even matter. But morality does. So it doesn"t necessarily follow because as stated in Premise 8, we don"t judge moral rightness by the actions of police and related authorities. Just because they do some types of actions doesn"t mean they are the right or even justified types of actions. Premises 9 and 10 may be controversial because an opponent may say that other routes have proven useless or ineffective, but these statements are still plausible in that government or security agencies may use blackmail, or come up with other interrogation tactics that in no way harm another person the way torture does. Also, more effort on the part of the security agencies may be expended on intelligence tactics so harming a person would not even have to be an option. Throughout the course of the argument it is assumed that the information retrieved from torture will prevent greater harm. But by causing someone pain they may say anything to make it stop, as referenced in Premise 11. If the torture doesn"t produce the desired outcome, then it is not justified. An opponent could argue that Premises 13 and 14 are implausible because positive duties may be more important than negative duties, which basically means that doing something is more important than doing nothing. But this isn"t the case because the whole debate centers on harm and the avoidance of it. The conclusion, in part, reads that torture is not morally justifiable. And Premise 1 indicates how morality concerns harm. By torture not being morally justifiable it would likely follow that an amount of harm is being used unacceptably. So instead of doing something that would unacceptably utilize harm it would be more significant to do nothing and not even add harm into the mix, avoiding it altogether.