Jean asked:
I am a social psychologist preparing an assessment of the popularly proposed program of torture interrogation of terrorists to present to the Joint [Military] Services Conference on Professional Ethics. Advocates of torture interrogation usually run a utilitarian argument starting from the "ticking bomb" scenario. I want to say that unintended effects of a program may be morally acceptable when reasoning from something like virtue ethics or duty, but a utilitarian argument must also attempt to account for all foreseeable effects in its cost-benefits analysis.
My questions: (1) What is the proper philosophical language for making this assertion? (2) Is the principle of double effect relevant when the intended good effect is clearly dwarfed by unintended disastrous effects?
From the perspective of policy studies, I then describe the necessary institutional effects of implementation of an official program of torture interrogation of terrorist suspects. The social breakdown of institutions and the difficulty of social repair then constitute something of a counterargument, I believe, to the simple utilitarian argument based on the "ticking bomb" scenario. However, these unintended effects, e.g., loss of citizen trust of government and compromise of the judiciary, will be minimized if the program operates under a pretense of decency or is chiefly covert. For example, during the dirty war in Argentina military police had a policy of submitting only unimportant interrogees to regular judicial procedures.
My questions: (3) Can utilitarians responsibly argue for a secret or deceptive course of action? That is: "publicly I argue for program X, intending all the while to create program Y under the authorization for X so as to minimize unintended effects." (4) Further, how much exploration of consequences can the utilitarian be required to make? (5) And is it fair to hold utilitarians responsible for a plan of repair or restitution for unavoidable bad effects of the proposed utilitarian program? (6) Or must a better alternative be proposed?
Thank you for helping me out of this muddle. I could send you a draft of my paper, "Torture Interrogation of Terrorists An Impractical Program," but this is probably more than you want to read.
The obvious utilitarian objection to torture is that once you allow it as a practice it is very unlikely that it will be confined to the very small number of cases where it might be justified and that it will become a more or less standard practice human nature, and especially official nature, being what it is, and given how much brutality there is when it's supposedly illegal. This is apart from intrinsic objections, of course. Ought a decent person to get involved in this at all? Also, do we have any evidence that it's effective as a reliable method of interrogation?
Harry Lesser
I would like to answer Jean Maria Arrigo's question with a question. Why should we automatically assume that the only utilitarian benefit gained from torturing a "ticking bomb" terrorist is the short-term avoidance of a particular terror attack, and that all of the long-term societal consequences will be bad? I don't think that is true in all societies and historical situations. Here's an extreme example: Suppose the police catch a well-known terrorist who proudly announces his knowledge of impending terror attacks that will kill hundreds of people. Let us say that the person in question has been found guilty of managing a terrorist organization by a properly conducted court of law, and that a democratically elected legislature has already passed a law that specifically allows for the supervised use of torture as a method of interrogation in precisely such circumstances. Would the use of torture in such a case really lead to "social breakdown of institutions"? It might be argued that in such circumstances, a refusal to torture would lead to a crisis of legitimacy for the government involved especially if many citizens were to die in preventable attacks. Angry citizens would demand to know why the state hadn't done everything in its power to protect them. Wouldn't such a government need to torture the terrorist in order to protect the institutions of society (as well as in order to thwart terror attacks)?
Berel Dov Lerner
I realise you asked people to respond to this question on the appropriate website, but reading the question I think it points to all that is wrong with moral theory and the attempt to apply moral theory. Would anyone with any feeling/ compassion for humanity, seriously bother to defend the torture of another human being, regardless of who they were and what names e.g. 'terrorist' we assigned to them? Do people really care if torture can be justified under a virtue ethics rather than utilitarianism etc? Doesn't this just all miss the point of human cruelty and anthropocentrism? Well, it does to me.
Eccy de Jonge
I found it difficult to answer what could have been a straightforward question about the ethical status of torture. I attribute my difficulty and Mr. Arrigo's "muddle" to the complex political and sociological context within which he chose to frame his questions. As a philosopher, I cannot take seriously the pretensions to ethical concern expressed by either the contemporary statesman or his terroristic alter ego. I simply cannot work up interest in how a given policy of interrogation may adversely affect the mystique of a modern state (its "legitimacy" in the popular mind). Modern governments and terrorist organizations are fatefully (and perhaps fatally) linked to each other; leaders of both types of organization seem to have few qualms about sacrificing innocents for "the greater good" as they see it. What qualms they may have about any bloody business are limited to the public relations downside of a misstep. Events in Moscow during the last weekend in October illustrated that rather neatly. ("If the terrorists blow up the theater, everybody dies; but if we gas the theater before storming it, maybe we cut that number in half." "Well, then, obviously we gas the theater!" "Not so fast, tovarisch. Theoretically, we can pull out of Chechnya, you know. After all, we've been oppressing Chechens for two centuries, and for what? Why not cut our losses?" "Because then the terrorists will have won, you idiot!")
As for utilitarianism and torture, we need to distinguish. According to act utilitarianism, an act of harming one or more individuals by torturing them may be morally acceptable if that act benefits more people than it harms, and cannot if it doesn't. According to rule utilitarianism, the act must be brought under a rule: an act of harming one or more individuals by torturing them may be morally acceptable only if we know that, as a rule, torturing leads to a greater number of beneficial than harmful consequences.
The problem with either form is that it presupposes the commensurability of interpersonal benefits and harms. That is, it presupposes that benefits and harms to a great number of persons are translatable into a common unit of measurement (much the way international currencies can be translated into American dollars or Euros). The advertised benefit of this translation is that we can then reckon whether a proposed course of action is likely to result in more of one kind of "stuff" than another (i.e., either more benefits than harms, or more harms than benefits). This fallaciously aggregates benefits and harms while ignoring the concrete persons to whom they accrue. Utilitarianism's inability to tote up all consequences of a proposed course of action (or to non-arbitrarily demarcate a cut-off point for considering further consequences) are side issues compared with utilitarianism's basic fallacy. The principle of double effect stipulates that the undesirable consequences are not intended (not just left unmentioned), not the means to the desired consequences, and not more evil than the intended effect is good. So, for instance, an airline representative has the right to evict a stowaway from one of its passenger planes, but not eject him at 30,000 feet, even if his certain death is not the intended consequence.
Mr. Arrigo asks: "Can utilitarians responsibly argue for a secret or deceptive course of action? That is: 'publicly I argue for program X, intending all the while to create program Y under the authorization for X so as to minimize unintended effects.'" I don't see how such subterfuge minimizes unintended effects, although it might minimize their accurate attribution. Where is even the slightest trace of moral justification?
Mr. Arrigo's question reminds me of another widespread pretext concocted to rationalize the inflicting of harm, namely, the invocation of the principle of double effect to justify abortion. Now, please note, some abortions are not homicides (no homines are at mortal risk in the very early stages of pregnancy). Furthermore, some homicides are justifiable (I'm no pacifist). What is offensive to the moral point of view, however, is the deceptive language. A woman may state that she wishes only to end her state of pregnancy, suggesting that the death of her viable fetus (when it is viable) is a possible secondary effect to which she would be indifferent. The test of her veracity, of course, would be her reaction to the placement in her arms of her healthy baby after the successful abortion, that is, the termination of her pregnancy. Due to advances in medical knowledge and technology, the pregnant woman can be relieved of her unwanted pregnancy without prejudice to the fetus. But her claim that she does not also intend the death of her fetus, in addition to no longer being pregnant, is simply not credible. To use Mr. Arrigo's formula, she is publicly invoking the right to control her body while privately intending also to destroy the living body of another. It may be that she has the right to do the latter. She should make the case. Lying only discredits any case she might have.
As for Arrigo's fifth question, a person is reasonably held responsible for what his freely undertaken actions cause, with his state of mind (e.g., coerced, depressed, etc.) being a possibly a mitigating factor. Whether or not he is a utilitarian or a Kantian is irrelevant to the issue of assigning accountability.
Deliberately to inflict excruciating suffering on a human being in the hope (it is by no means a certainty) that he will prefer to reveal certain information than to continue to suffer is to aggravate the offense of utilitarianism. Instead of merely treating him as collateral damage on the way to securing a desirable end, the torturer degrades his captive, treating him as less than human, as an egg that must be broken if it is to yield an omelet. Even if the victim of torture himself would inflict suffering on innocents, he is still a person, a self-transcender and seeker after a good life, however criminally mistaken he may be. To torture in order to extract information is to create one unit of the very horror that the terrorist threatens, thereby rendering meaningless one's own anti-terrorism. How we treat him reflects well or poorly on our own handling of the task our natures have set for us, namely, to realize a great diversity of values regularly and harmoniously, that is, to create good lives for ourselves. There is no good life without respect for persons as such. That drive to actualize the good life is a priori, if you will, prior to, underpinning, and penetrating any particular good we may seek. It is the source of duty, which ultimately is justified by certain consequences: lives worth living, but not reducible or restricted to a particular consequence or type of consequence. The prospect of the good life, however explicitly or implicitly grasped, is the intelligible unity of all our different desires that we must sort out, rank, and attempt to achieve. It is the standard by which we do those things. The achievement of any other values, however, is a function of the appreciation of the value of truth. Only he who can deceive himself about the nature of another human being can implement a policy of torture.
Tony Flood
Around 19745 during my penultimate year as an undergraduate at Birkbeck College, London University, I had the honour, as President of the Philosophical Society, of entertaining the philosopher H.J. McCloskey who had been invited to read a paper to the assembled staff and students. McCloskey, author of John Stuart Mill: A Critical Study is well known as a writer on utilitarianism.
Over dinner at a local Italian restaurant, McCloskey told me that he had recently completed a lecture tour in Chile, one of few academic philosophers or possibly the only academic philosopher to be invited during the reign of the military Junta. Surprised at first by the invitation, he was disquieted to learn during his visit that the Junta were keenly interested in the question whether utilitarian moral theory could be used to justify torture.
Not long before this meeting, I had seen a film about Chile, which included the brief image of an electrode being applied to a woman's nipple. The film makers knew their craft. To this day, whenever I think of torture, that image irresistibly obtrudes.
On that memorable evening, as my guest and I twirled our spaghetti, I pictured McCloskey sitting round a dinner table with the Chilean Generals and their clinking medals, smoking cigars and drinking fine wine. 'A toast to John Stuart Mill!'
I would like to ask who are going to be the torturers. Is it going to be like the doctors trained in the correct surgical procedures for removing the hand, as prescribed by Islamic Law as a punishment for theft? The charge on the electrode is to be 2000 volts, not a volt more. Enough to produce excruciating pain, but not enough to cause permanent injury. Perhaps scientific research will lead to new, ever more efficient methods of torture which effect the mind, but not the body. Suitably chastened, but in the best of physical health, the terrorist (or criminal) can return to a worthwhile job and be a productive member of society.
Geoffrey Klempner
It seems as though the questions asked by the author of this letter strike at some of the classic objections to Utilitarianism:
2)How can we be sure that the "effects" we observe are effects of one particular act or another?
3)Consider the classic example, a man who acts from a desire to kill a religious leader misfires his rifle, and instead strikes oil (an unlikely example, but one used in objection to Utilitarianism); whereas a man who intends no evil misfires his rifle and wounds or kills a religious leader. In the first case, the man clearly intended evil, but good resulted from his action. In the second case, the man intended no evil, but--nevertheless evil did result. Can we fail to hold the first man responsible for his actions? May we condemn the second man? Clearly (some have argued) our intentions figure into the normative status of our actions.
I would also like to ask whether the author of the original letter is asking about act or rule Utilitarianism, or both. This, it seems to me, would alter a possible response.
Gerald Marsh
To begin with a game-theoretical scenario, we have two parties fighting for some conflicting goals. Then the natural question for each party will be, if the means it uses are effective and where to stop if the costs become unbearable.
The terrorist is no lamb. Even if we concede that his aims are just (as he claims always of course), he is bringing much suffering on the victims of his "ticking bomb". If he is faced with torture he has a choice. He could tell how to find and de-activate the bomb. If he decides not to, this is his decision for killing other people for his cause. In this respect a suicide-terrorist is at least honest setting value against value. From this derives a right of the offended to use torture as a means for defence. It's a game.
War is war and terrorism is war of a special sort but not principally different. From a philosophical point of view most if not all arguments to justify war are invalid. But the churches always have up to this day justified war, e.g. on communism or on islam. I will not enter this extended discussion now, since it is not asked for. I only mention it.
The admonition of Jesus to love your enemy, and the conclusion of Socrates 400 years before that suffering injustice is better than committing it, are meant for personal conduct, not for policy. Even Socrates was an active soldier when required to be one by the laws of Athens. Jesus nowhere condemned the soldier as such.
One main question of the questioner is, if procedures of torture interrogation cause bad side-effects to the defender itself. Argentina under the junta in the 70s is cited here. But I remember another example : There was a fascinating film (of 1971) that showed protesters against the Vietnam war in the USA fighting against "upright citizens" that found the war against communism justified and took the "peace people" as traitors to a just cause. The film was made by a protester and presented the supporters of the war as being either neurotics or uninformed or mislead or as misleading fascists. But the "upright citizens" had an argument : The presidents leading the USA into the Vietnam war were no Hitlers or Saddams but they were the Democrats Kennedy and Johnson elected by due democratic procedures which not even the opposition ever denied. Thus to follow up and supporting the war could justly be seen as a patriotic duty as long as there were no proven lies and hidden interests showing up.
Everybody has a right to oppose, but opposing an evidently undemocratic regime as that of Videla in Argentina or of Castro in Cuba or of Saddam in Iraq is not the same as opposing a democratic regime as that of the USA today at least as long as you cannot prove a misuse of power or to be lied to. Thus one has to request democratic procedures and the functioning of the institutions of "checks and balance", but one cannot request from a democratically installed and controlled government to lay open all its measures to everybody. You cannot top a democratic process and order by some super-democratic process and order of your own choice. Where will you stop then? There will always be different opinions on any topic. Democracy is a compromise. Even if Colin Powell or Kofi Annan or Nelson Mandela were presidents of the USA today, there would be some people around to hate them or to call them stupids and madmen. Thus is the nature of the world.
Thus my verdict: As long as results come up and strict and controlled procedures are observed, and freedom of the press and the judiciary is not endangered, there may be torture interrogations. The danger that "loss of citizen trust of government and compromise of the judiciary" may ensue has to be seen in relation to the danger inherent in a fundamental distrust against a government functioning by due process of law. Even the GW Bush Government is not a Hitler- or Videla- or Saddam-Government and should not be taken to be one without the greatest offence to the American voters and political institutions.
A final word on question Nr. 5 : "Is it fair to hold utilitarians responsible for a plan of repair or restitution for unavoidable bad effects of the proposed utilitarian program?"
How should that be? The whole American People had to bear the consequences of the Vietnam war, not only "the utilitarians". But as I said above : The Vietnam War was NOT brought about by some supervillains or madmen but by two Democratic Presidents correctly elected. We simply have to accept this unavoidable rest of tragedy in all human endeavors.
Hubertus Fremerey
The following remarks are meant as a backdrop against which to orient your ideas. The argument against torture is already half lost, in my view, because you argue your case on the opposition's grounds, that makes your case all the more hard to win.
To the question 'Can torture be justified?' the answer is yes even with the best will in the world. We can exemplify this from history e.g. the Inquisition. The discussion needs to be carried on within the question of whether torture should be justified. And the answer is no. The reason being that torture is perverse. Justification for torture, therefore, in this context, is perverse, and as such, contrary to reason. If we abstract torture from this context, we are left with open-ended or closed arguments for or against torture, but the presupposition is the same on both sides, namely, that perversity (torture) can be a rational starting place for arguments (for or against it) or a rationally coherent object of thought; this latter assumes that torture, in itself, is no more or less perverse than our arguments contrive to make it. Your questions to Ask a Philosopher show you already subscribe to this in principle, if not in fact. Whether one is 'for' or 'against' the instrumental argument for torture, there is tacit agreement between both sides that torture is itself neutral, like an object in the natural world. The arguments then become tortured on both sides of the equation.
The death penalty may seem an analogous case, but it is not, because death in itself is natural, death is not something that happens to one person (the condemned) and no-one else. Death belongs to the human condition, and in the case of the death penalty, those conditions are severely straitened for a greater good (atonement for despicable crimes, safety of others, freedom from fear etc.). This is not to justify the death penalty, but to say that you cannot argue about torture as if the presuppositions are the same.
It may be objected that there are different kinds of torture that imprisonment is a torture, that solitary confinement is. But convention rules that they are punishments in lieu of something worse (the death penalty, historically). Real torture in the context of common law and convention (of 'should', again) is a perverting of these things, and as we would say, of justice.
Matthew Del Nevo
www.sicetnon.com
I wonder how much there is of philosophical interest in this question. It seems trivially true that the course of action suggested, like any pretty much any other course of action whose description doesn't itself imply net utility loss, might be utility-maximizing. It then remains to be asked how this implication is to be applied. (I don't see the relevance of double effect in a utilitarian context.)
Here I would suggest that state programs, as opposed to personal actions, rarely remain concealed; too many people know about them. Sooner or later the truth comes out. Even if it is later, we don't know how much later, and bad spinoff effects are likely. (Admittedly, so is the good spinoff effect of revulsion.)
Moreover, I question how often torture is needed to extract information. The problem is not the usual question about whether such information is reliable, but rather the question of whether it is needed at all. Put it this way: either you're torturing for fairly insubstantial reasons, or you're not. If you are, then certainly the fear of discovery and the spinoff effects, to say nothing of the direct effects, have great negative utility. If you're not, then consider the post-mortem analysis of 911, which indicates that the US government already had plenty of relevant information: they just didn't know how to use it or correlate it. This is a very common difficulty with intelligence services. Given such background conditions, it seems likely that, if you're know enough to have substantial reasons for torturing somebody, the information you want is very likely obtainable through a combination of the information already in your possession and other, less drastic means. These background conditions also make it unlikely that torturing for light reasons will be utility-maximizing.
Michael Neumann
For what it's worth, I would answer these questions as follows:
1. The language already used is quite properly philosophical, although any plausible theory of virtue ethics or deontological (duty) ethics would surely require agents to try to foresee unintended consequences and take these into consideration. An agent who did not do so would lack the virtues of prudence and wisdom, and would be failing in her duty to promote the well-being of others and respect their rights, etc..
2. I think the principle of double effect is always worth bearing in mind (although Jonathan Glover gives good reason to have reservations about in in his book "Humanity"). This principle says that you should not do an act the disastrousness of whose unintended but foreseeable effects dwarfs the intended good effects. On this the principle strikes me as being quite right.
3. Not publicly, since this would give the game away. It might be responsible to intend such deception privately, but the consequences of such deception would have to be taken into account. Politicians and military leaders might have to lie sometimes, but their doing so is hardly likely to strengthen public faith in democracy or their own private commitment to doing the right thing (virtue).
4. This depends on how easy it is to do so and how serious the consequences are likely to be. The consequences of many acts are easy to predict, but of course the future is obscure to us and what might happen if we start routinely torturing people is hard to predict. Again I think Glover is good on this, as he traces the spread of torture from Nazi Germany to a host of other countries as the Nazi torturers moved around the world and passed on their techniques. Torture is hard to keep isolated and under control (in the hands of 'good' regimes, for instance). Given the horror of it, I would think you would have to be very sure of yourself to recommend using torture, even in a ticking bomb case. Bear in mind also, of course, the high chance of the torture victim lying to end the torture.
5. If it's practicable it seems fair that everyone responsible should repair the damage they have done. I would not hold utilitarians in general responsible for the consequences of utilitarian policies, but government advisers, for instance, might be held responsible for the consequences of any policy they explicitly and directly advised.
6. I would think so, but the whole point of imaginary ticking bomb scenarios and some real life terrorist acts is to thwart our attempts to make sense of them and respond rationally. It is hard, if not impossible, to predict and solve these riddles in advance or in general.
Duncan Richter
It might be worth noting that, abstract theoretical commitments aside, nobody takes the doctrine of double effect at all seriously that is it is never applied consistently, but only in an ad hoc fashion concerning otherwise embarrassing or tricky issues. Peter Singer gives the nice illustration of Catholic Theologians who invoke double-effect in order to justify abortions in those cases where the mother's life is endangered by pregnancy. The death of the fetus is claimed to be an unintended side-effect of the (laudable) action that is saving the life of the mother. But, as I say, these same theologians would flinch if a double-effect justification was attempted elsewhere: If a company dumps toxic waste into a city's water supply, it is no excuse for them to say "we too believe in the doctrine of double-effect our intention was to get rid of this awful toxic waste (again laudable), and an unintended side-effect of this was poisoning the water." Likewise it might be convenient for authorities to invoke double-effect in regards to torturing people, but nobody would take that logic seriously as a principle of right-conduct in general.
In short, double-effect seems to leave the non-Utilitarian in a very uncomfortable position. For the utilitarian, the doctrine of double-effect seems indefensible, if not incoherent: it is the consequences, after all, that matter and not whether or not they were intended. Consequences that are merely likely to follow from a course of action can indeed be used to evaluate the act's rightness or wrongness.
Question (3) is more difficult. In theory the "act" or "critical" Utilitarian can countenance secret violations of rules which generally enhance happiness, but in practice this will be very difficult to pull off.
Besides the risk of the secret getting out and leading to a climate of anxiety and fear is the risk that the government will more readily set aside civil liberties the next time. A temporary restrained policy might, given time and excuses, be expanded in terms of its scope or permanence by officials who see the suspension of civil liberties as instrumentally useful. One needs to remember that the policy will not be a secret to the authorities who are party to the deception: there is a very great risk that THEIR respect for autonomy and individual security will be eroded by the experiment. Is it wise to encourage those officials to see themselves as living outside of the moral constraints expected of everybody else? This suggests a very powerful argument for never allowing civil liberties to be compromised. As it happens, the torture victim, unless silenced by death, will presumably ensure that her treatment does not remain a secret forever. Again, this could lead to fear, mistrust, and perhaps even panic.
Notice finally that the reasoning behind these compromises is exactly parallel to the logic of terrorism itself: we should do horrendous things in order to fulfill some greater objective. But perhaps amongst the greater objectives worth defending just are civil liberties.
Prof. Sean Allen-Hermanson
Oklahoma University
This question really highlights some of utilitarianism's trickiest problems. Some of your questions I can help with, but 'answers' are hard to come by in this area. Anyway, here goes: 1. "I want to say that unintended effects of a program may be morally acceptable when reasoning from something like virtue ethics or duty, but a utilitarian argument must also attempt to account for all foreseeable effects in its cost-benefits analysis. My questions:(1) What is the proper philosophical language for making this assertion?"
Perhaps something like this: "While virtue ethics, and Kantian theories based on duty, may be able to exclude unintended consequences on the grounds that morality must be based upon intentions, consequentialist theories such as utilitarianism make judgements based upon states of affairs. Therefore, an action which was intended to be good, is nonetheless the wrong action where it produces worse consequences (i.e. a worse state of affairs) than another possible action. In this way, all consequences must be taken into account when making utilitarian judgements, no matter what the intentions."
However, it is useful to note that Robert Adams has argued that utilitarianism can be used to judge motives, as the best motives are those which are likely to produce the most utility. See, Robert Adams, 'Motive Utilitarianism', in, The Journal of Philosophy, LXXII, 14, (12th August, 1976).
2. Is the principle of double effect relevant when the intended good is clearly dwarfed by unintended disastrous effects?
In principle, the utilitarian must answer 'no' to this question it is the consequences of an act which are important, not the intentions. However, we should perhaps make a distinction between making an assessment of whether an act will be, or has turned out to be, a good one, and blaming those who have committed bad acts from good motives. As a great deal of the evidence we have for assessing the future consequences of an action is either in short supply, or based upon probabilistic judgements, it is difficult to see how we can blame someone for consequences they could not foresee. Note that this is very different from claiming that we should not blame someone for consequences they did not intend. For the utilitarian, if you can see that there is a reasonable chance of bad consequence x following from action y, then you are as responsible for this as you are for the intended consequence. If you could not reasonable foresee this, or if there was only a very slim probability of such a consequence occurring at the time of making the decision, then blame is perhaps inappropriate. In this way you can commit an act which has bad consequences, and this will be judged to be a bad act, but this does not necessarily imply that you should be blamed for what you have caused. You can imagine lots of 'domino-effect' examples of this occurring.
Before your next questions, I should say a bit about the ticking bomb example you use. This is a common example, and one which has massive intuitive appeal in such a situation, the loss of one life seems to be preferable to the loss of many lives. Deontologists (rule-based theorists) such as Rawls argue though that the person sacrificed does not get some overriding benefit, and to aggregate good and bad interpersonally is to fail to take account of the "separateness of persons" (See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 5) You might make a distinction here between act- and rule-utilitarianism. J.J.C. Smart makes the distinction as follows: "Act-utilitarianism is the view that the rightness or the wrongness of an action is to be judged by the consequences, good or bad, of the action itself. Rule-utilitarianism is the view that the rightness or wrongness of an action is to be judged by the goodness and badness of the consequences of a rule that everyone should perform the action in like circumstances." (J.J.C. Smart, 'An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics', in, J.J.C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism For and Against. 1963 [Cambridge University Press, 1993] p.9) If it is accepted that this is a reasonable distinction, then we move from arguing about individual acts of torture, to arguing about the general practice of torture. From the rule utilitarian perspective, it is far easier to argue that torture as a practice should be outlawed, even though it may have good consequences in certain cases. In effect then, the price of torture becoming an accepted and legally ratified form of interrogation is so great that it is worth refusing to use it even in the few cases where it may be justifiable. This is an especially compelling argument in political terms, as politics is to some degree 'about' making rules, rather than adjudicating in specific circumstances.
3. Can utilitarians responsibly argue for a secret or deceptive course of action? That is: "publicly I argue for program X, intending all the while to create program Y under the authorization for X so as to minimize unintended effects."
This is one of the trickiest problems for utilitarianism as a political theory. The simple answer to the first question is that it appears that they could argue for a deceptive course of action on the grounds that it will produce better consequences overall. Lying is not the taboo for utilitarians that it is for Kantians. Rawls argues that principles must be "publicly accepted and followed as the fundamental charter of society "('the publicity condition') and therefore that elite cannot attempt to maximise utilitarian consequences by promoting non-utilitarian principles. (See Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 29)
On the other hand, perhaps it could be argued that the consequences overall (and we are talking in the largest sense here) of having deceit at the heart of law-making could be catastrophic. Law itself could be utterly undermined. The other tack the utilitarian can take here is to argue that there could never be sufficient guarantees that the deceit would not be broken. Although the chances may be slim, the consequences could be so awful that any possibility of them happening would be sufficient to rule out the deceit as a viable option.
There are however more benign examples where the deceit is sanctioned, or required by utilitarians suppose a recession, or a run on the currency is forecast by a government. Surely it is irresponsible to publicise this and thus intensify the problem? Once we admit exceptions though, the idea of rule-utilitarianism appears to collapse, as R.M. Hare has argued, into act-utilitarianism. If one case merits an act-utilitarian consideration to override rule-utilitarian considerations, why don't we just go back to judging all acts individually? The rule is undermined anyway.
1.How much exploration of consequences can the utilitarian be required to make? Difficult to say. In terms of assessing past actions, we can go as far as the chain of causality allows. In terms of individuals when they make the decision, they can only act upon the information that they have. If we could never act without full information regarding consequences, then we could never act. Perhaps then, you can formulate the answer to this question as "as much exploration of reasonably likely consequences as we reasonably can make." Unfortunately, this is a bit of a fudge. Obviously, my lighting a cigarette now could lead, through a complex chain of causality, to the downfall of a government, but it is extremely unlikely. The definition of 'reasonable' is always a problem for philosophers.
5 & 6. See answer to question 2 above
A final thought Some utilitarians (possibly including myself) would argue that genuine suffering is worthy of far greater moral consideration than 'mere' happiness. Also, the needs of someone suffering outweigh the needs of someone not suffering. The later might want our help, but he does not need it in the same way as the sufferer. I would therefore argue against torture in the following way. The consequences for a person being tortured are so bad that virtually no potential, uncertain, future good for others could justify them. Torture to prevent further ills may be justifiable, but due to the extreme horror of torture, there must be an extremely high degree of certainty that this will occur. Furthermore, the onus would be on the torturer to demonstrate this. Upon reflection, it is clear that this would certainly eliminate torture as a legally sanctioned practice, as the instances in which the necessary level of consequential certainty existed would be extremely rare.
I should warn you though, that this form of 'negative utilitarianism' has met severe criticisms, and is not widely accepted. However, the idea that the elimination of bad is more important than the promotion of good has something going for it.
Perhaps your best route is, after all, to argue that the bad consequences of torture overall outweigh the benefits? This is by no means a reliable argument though.
Incidentally, have you looked at, Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985) This has an excellent account of the consequences of torture.
Steve Bullock
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Jenny asked:
Can you please help me to understand the subjective and objective views about fox hunting, whether it be for or against it?
Jenny, this is certainly a topical question!
Fox hunting is part of a wider question of human's treatment of animals, though it also seems to have some extra baggage; these relate to questions of tradition and the way of life of those in the countryside. Of course, whose lifestyle we are talking about is another matter; not everyone in the countryside has a tradition of foxhunting.
Taking the first question about human treatment of animals, we can link this to other similar questions that pop up on the TV or in the newspapers, issues like whether or not people wear leather or use rabbits for the testing of cosmetics.
We could start by talking about rights, since we hear a lot of talk about rights in the media, and it seems that people are prepared to go to extremes in the defence of certain rights, including so-called 'animal rights'. It's worth asking what is a right, where does it derive from, and do 'rights' apply only to humans or to animals as well?
What are rights based on?
This is an important question for those who make major decisions based on the 'right' of some group or people. Think how often you hear a group or individual lay claim to some right or other...the right to life, the right to choose, the right to clean water... The list is long.
One approach to this, but by no means the only one, comes from the tradition of philosophers like Immanuel Kant, and continued by John Rawls. This founds the idea of a right in the capacity of a person to reflect on and think about an issue, before making a choice. And on the basis of this rational capacity his or her choice is to be respected.
Well, if you accept this argument about rights for people based on their capacity to reflect on their situation and make a choice that is best for them, do you think it also applies to animals?
Do they also reflect and make choices in a similar manner? There are arguments that the higher primates show something like this kind of capacity.
Another way of looking at this question is to consider animals' and people's capacity to feel pain and to suffer. This is a separate tradition but one which has been hugely influential. It seems that in 'a nation of animal lovers', many people's attitude towards animals is based on their feelings of sympathy for them; that is, to treat them in such a way so as not to cause pain to them. Or, at least (for those who eat meat, for example), to treat them in a humane manner, presumably by giving them a comfortable life followed by a swift and painless death.
On this account, we can see why some people oppose fox hunting, since they allege it causes needless suffering.
Just from these two accounts of how people should regard animals, we can get two different accounts of how we should regard the fox. You could call these two views objective, because they identify main features of animals and people, rather than looking at individual cases. They suggest to us that reasoned debate, leading to a solution, is possible.
Now, just to focus a bit more on the particular problem of fox hunting....
Presumably drawing on some kind of argument that a fox itself doesn't have any great value (it's not like a person, etc), the pro-hunting lobby often present their case as one of freedom. That is, not so much a issue of the treatment of animals but one of having the freedom to do what one wants, as long as it doesn't interfere with other people.
Here, you could say that they are asking for the freedom to do what they want to do, just as many groups in society do. The issue becomes a political one, that of the issues of one group in society, rather than a question about cruelty to animals.
You also hear arguments based on tradition, that fox-hunting has a long history. But do you think that, just because you have done something in the past, you should be allowed to keep on doing it? It's easy to think of traditions that have died out and nobody wants to bring them back; having a monarch with absolute power would be one example. At the same time, some people would argue that we shouldn't be too quick to do away with our traditions, because of their educational value and formative role in our identity. After all, there's now a big market catering to those who want to define their 'Britishness'- just look at all the history programmes on TV!
There's also a practical argument made in favour of fox-hunting, that it kills 'vermin'. Unfortunately, I don't know much about this- I guess you'd have to ask a scientist to check whether this claim is true or not!
One last 'objective' approach to fox-hunting is to ask about the character, the personality, of someone who takes part in fox-hunting. If you think that the killing of foxes in this way is cruel, then does that make someone who enjoys the hunt cruel? If someone enjoys taking part in a practice that leads to the death of a fox, does that raise doubts about their attitude towards people? Are they more likely to be, simply, 'a mean person'?
To come back to your question about subjective views of fox-hunting....
Of course, you could say that none of the above abstract 'tools' for deciding whether fox hunting is reprehensible are as relevant to what you think and feel now. Despite the very eloquent development of the two opposing views outlined above, we don't seem to have solved the issue. No argument has been produced such that it wins over one side completely- we still don't have any consensus. Although we don't have agreement, we might soon have legislation prohibiting it. But that's another matter.
Andy Lambert
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