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.)Police and other authorities use torture. 5.)Morality is not measured by the actions of police and other authorities. 6.)Liberal democratic governments and security agencies haven"t begun to exhaust the political strategies short of the routine use of torture. 7.)There are other routes that someone can use to get another person to comply with them. 8.)After complying with the torturer the information obtained from the tortured person may not even be true. 9.)Positive duties entail us to commit certain acts while negative duties entail us to avoid certain acts. 10.)Torture, as a positive duty, infringes on the negative duty to avoid excessive harm. 11.)Negative duties are more important than positive duties. 12.)Just because the torturer protects the tortured person, it does not make torture okay. 13.)Therefore, it is not the case that some instances of torture are minimally morally justifiable. The first premise concerning morality proved to be controversial. My opponent found that the definition of morality was subjective. I took that as morality itself was subjective, which led me to include the second premise. If morality proved to be subjective there would be no point in this debate, with this particular conclusion. The definition of torture did not have to be debated, as it would be difficult to proceed with the debate had we had different definitions of torture. If the definitions were to differ the debate would have concerned what actually constituted, or made up, the act of torture. I removed the premises concerning the goal of torture, which was compliance as opposed to just obtaining information. It didn"t seem to help prove that torture was not minimally, morally justifiable. It also seemed to muddle the debate for the same reason. The goal of torture was not being debated. The moral justification of it was. I also removed the premise "torture is unlawful" because that was not what the debate really concerned. The legality was separate from the morality, which I was able to show in the 2nd round. By discussing torture from a legal standpoint I felt that I was providing contrast, which would help make my point. The point was that just because people in authoritative positions use torture that does not make it okay or morally justifiable. I believe that Premises 6 and 7 make a cogent argument for the conclusion that it is not the case that some instances of torture are minimally, morally justifiable. There are definitely other routes like interrogation, which makes the premises true. These premises make the conclusion very likely which demonstrates their strength. Altogether constructing an equation for cogency. The last 4 premises seemed to account for a good portion of the debate. I didn"t think the definitions of positive and negative duties would be so controversial, yet they proved to be. I didn"t mean for the premise concerning the tortured person giving false information to correspond with the premises concerning positive and negative duties. My opponent challenged that Premise 9 was too vague, but I feel it"s completely clear. It provides a definition so that the premises following it are clear, and so they in turn lead to the conclusion. I feel that Premise 8 leads to the conclusion because it is hard to justify something that doesn"t even work, and that possibility exists in torture. I added Premise 12, which concerns the protection of the tortured person. My opponent set out to prove that because the tortured person was protected it was okay or justified. This did not seem to be the case. I believe my argument was made stronger by the analogy that buying your boyfriend a gift after cheating made the cheating okay. Just because you do something admirable, for lack of a better word, doesn"t make what you did beforehand okay or justified.