ii. The context of torture With this clarification of torture in mind, let us suppose from here on that survey respondents have been told that the word torture refers to an interrogation technique that will make the victim experience extreme suffering. Assume, in words, that the respondent thinks he/she is being asked about acts that he/she considers torture. The issue to which we now move is how survey results could measure respondents’ actual moral positions with regard to that act. Let us begin with a question that would not tell us very much: “Do you approve of torture?” The problem with this question is that it lacks a context; it does not tell us anything about the circumstances under which torture is to be used. Without such a context – without knowing the reason for the torture – there is no actual way for respondents to have a meaningful judgment. Virtually no one, for instance, would approve of torture to satisfy the sadistic pleasures of interrogators – or so we hope. Torture is, after all, a moral wrong. The only issue is whether there exists a context – some countervailing moral consideration(s) – that might render that moral wrong morally justifiable. In this sense, torture is no different from punishment: everything from spanking to incarceration to execution is a moral wrong in the sense that there needs to be a justification in order to do it. Unlike other acts, such as smiling or greeting someone, a reason is required. What we want to know if we are truly to get a handle on people’s judgments about torture is: What reasons count? What context would make this presumptive moral wrong permissible? In order, therefore, to provide a meaningful measure of people’s acceptance of torture, we need a question in the form of “Would torture be acceptable in the following context…?” In responding, people would in effect be revealing the relative weight they give to the moral wrong of torture and the moral right presented by “the following context.” It is this relative weight that reveals the perceived permissibility of torture.
The key words here – as with the earlier questions – are “suspected terrorists” and “prisoners.” By definition, neither group are terrorists. They may be terrorists, but the question reveals their status to be ‘suspected of it’ or ‘imprisoned awaiting that adjudication.’ As such, respondents will need information about the case against these individuals in order to judge whether they would be the sort of people who might have information. Of course, in that event, the question will have drifted a long way from being about just torture, as the respondents’ moral judgments will have been muddied by considerations of a penal system in which due process is nonexistent and guilt rather than innocence is assumed. In other words, against the moral good of preventing future attacks, they now must weigh not just the moral wrong of torturing “bad guys,” but also the possible moral wrong of torturing good guys and the certain moral wrong of subverting the rule of law (beyond the subversion that torture itself implies), not to mention the presumption of innocence. Thus far, then, we see that even if we assume that torture techniques are effective, there are still two conditions that need to be met before a survey question would actually tell us much about the acceptance of torture: we need to know the degree of certainty (on the part of officials) that the suspected terrorists/prisoners are terrorists, and we need to know how likely it is that torturing these individuals will yield information. In other words, we need to know whether they are terrorists with the information we want and terrorists who might provide it under torture. Unfortunately, clarifying those issues will only take us so far, for there is still the matter of the information to be extracted. There are at least two issues here. To illustrate the first, consider how this question from a CBS News/New York Times Poll differs from the preceding one: