Torture

How, if after a terrorist does not comply, are the police or authorities forced to torture them? And also just because torture is the fastest and most accurate way it doesn"t mean it is morally justified. You concede that police and other authorities use torture to obtain information and then pose the question "In what way may the authorities use torture for?" Torture being unlawful may be irrelevant, but torture is actually illegal. If it were legal then our democracy would fall apart. There"s no question that police and authorities use torture. If there were a question about whether they actually do it or not, we wouldn"t even be having this debate. But this isn"t even the point. The point is legality and morality are two different things. So when you quote me in saying that morality is not measured by police and authority actions and then say that this "means that no one can actually say what is unlawful" this is false. Even though morality and legality are two distinct things, the point also remains that police and similar authorities use torture, as you state in Premise 8 of your argument, but this doesn"t make it morally permissible or justified. This is so because morality isn"t measured by the authorities" actions. So you can"t say that torture is justified because police use it in a certain way. In your reasoning concerning the second premise of your argument and also in the 2nd round you state that, "morality can be viewed from different points of view". What does this mean? Are you saying that morality is subjective in some way? Couldn"t you then say that torture is okay while I say torture is not okay, and it"s all well and fine? Because the tortured person lied it follows that they will then continue to be tortured. So does this make the torture justified? And how can you say that it is never the case that the victim goes back to be killed and that they"re always given a new identity? Premise 12 of my argument, the one concerning positive and negatives duties, is meant to provide a definition to base the following premises off of. It doesn"t appear that there are two possible meanings for that definition, nor does it appear that two cases of nearly opposite kinds could apply. So this Premise isn"t vague whatsoever. And as stated in the premise that acts as a definition, a negative duty is a responsibility to avoid certain acts. Premise 13 states that harm relates to torture, meaning that the avoided harm is the harm evident in torture. Negative duties concern harm and the avoidance of it. Lying doesn"t necessarily mean harm. You say that "by lying that means they are not having negative duties". A tortured person lying and a tortured person doing nothing (negative duty) is the same thing. Also the premises don"t state that one has to do their negative or positive duties. It"s just an assessment of one being more important than the other. You also say that the victim is "unintentionally asking for more harm" by lying. This would be the case if it was explicitly stated or required that more torture be performed. The torturer does not have to continue the torture. In fact if he didn"t continue the torture he would be asserting his more important negative duty to avoid excessive harm, which then demonstrates how torture is not minimally morally justifiable. Premise 6 in your argument is too specific and a little unclear. Danger encompasses so much more than risking a life. And besides that how does something being dangerous justify torture? Torture is dangerous. In your argument (Premise 11) you state that the tortured person can easily comply with the torturer. So why then can"t the torturer just stop the torture just as easily? It doesn"t seem to follow that just because the tortured person is protected after the torture, as stated in Premise 12 of your argument, that it is justified. It"s almost like cheating on your boyfriend then buying him a gift. You still cheated. It"s not okay because you bought him something. Similarly you still harmed another person. It"s not okay because you protected him after.