Torture and the inhumane

Exposure to cold weather or water is permissible with appropriate medical monitoring. The use of a wet towel to induce the misperception of suffocation would also be permissible if not done with the specific intent to cause prolonged mental harm, and absent medical evidence that it would. --excerpt from "Legal Brief on Proposed Counter-Resistance Strategies." (1) In such circumstances [as the ticking bomb case] interrogators must apply a 'minimum harm' rule by not inflicting more pressure than is necessary to get the desired information. Further, any treatment that causes permanent harm would not be permitted, as this surely constitutes torture. --Final Report of the Independent Panel to Review DoD Detention Operations (August, 2004) (2) This essay presents one conception of torture and gives several reasons why it is better than its rivals. The most important of these reasons is that conceiving torture as a kind of inhumaneness helps to explain why morality--like international law--prohibits torture absolutely. Inhumane conduct is distinct from ordinary moral categories such as killing, maiming, causing pain, and the like. A moral emergency (as in a ticking bomb case) cannot justify any inhumanity, whether torture or something involving less suffering. Though much of what I shall say seemed obvious to me (and perhaps most other people) a few years ago, it no longer seems so to many governments, including some, such as that of the United States, from which we might have expected more. We need to put thinking about torture in better order to make sense of what has become--as the quotations at the head of this essay show--an important public (and not so public) debate. What I will offer here is one "conception" of torture, not the concept or definition of torture. I am not writing as a lexicographer or doing what philosophers used to call "linguistic analysis." What I shall offer is something more useful than a definition or concept; I shall offer advice concerning how best to use a word for the purposes in view. My concern is the use of the word "torture" when we are making or evaluating decisions about when to torture, whom to torture, and how to torture. I shall not stipulate a definition (that is, choose a definition with no defense but convenience); nor shall I ignore usage (even though I shall try to clean it up). What I claim for the conception of torture offered here is that, while staying within the concept, it helps us explain some of our objections to torture better than rival conceptions or the concept itself. I Mental and Physical Torture On December 10, 1984, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the "Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment." For the purposes of that document, the term "torture" was defined as: any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. (3) However useful this definition may be for some purposes (for example, for organizing the prosecution of officials), it does not offer a conception of "torture" likely to help us understand what is morally wrong with torture as such. It leaves too much out. For example, an illegal organization, such as the mafia, is (without official "consent or acquiescence") as capable of torture as any government. Even an individual (such as the Marquis de Sade) can torture. Torture is not even necessarily a relation among humans. …