Is Torture Permissible

Is torture ever morally permissible?

Torture is “the action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or to force them to do or say something, or for the pleasure of the person inflicting the pain”(Oxford dictionary). National laws condemn the use of torture techniques, but can it ever be justified? Can torture be alleged as a moral act under certain circumstances?

Before continuing, the act of torture for the sake of punishment or for entertainment or for any other non-humanitarian can never be morally permissible. The only type of torture argued in this paper is the one with the goal of intelligence gathering in order to save an innocent life. All other forms of torture are not morally permissible.

Utilitarianism states that if the torture of one person means that the collective good or happiness is increased, and then torture is justifiable. However from an utilitarian point of view, torture may not always be permissible, as a rule utilitarian would only act if that it follows a rule that will bring the greatest good and torture cannot be that rule however torture under extreme circumstances is an example of these rules.

Also a consequentialist will see if the end justifies the mean thus if the consequence of torture is moral, like saving someone, than the good of these action outweigh its negative traits thus turning it into a moral action.

So in this paper I will argue that torture is sometimes morally permissible only if the act has collective benefits and is regulated by laws.

First I want to define what an extreme situation is like: a terrorist organization planted a ticked thermonuclear bomb in a crowded city where your family lives. The bomb would explode in an hour nevertheless the plot has bee...

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... torturer has a physical control over the tortured and targets his sovereignty to seek control over his decisions. However the tortured will survive and his will and autonomy is temporally broken but will eventually be restored because the torturing is limited in its humiliation however the autonomy of the victims of the terrorist act, if it happened, is damaged.

Forth objection:

The argument is that we are uncertain that torturing a person will result in extracting the information. This is a problem but however not insurmountable. Since the torture can only succeed or fail, its rate of success is higher than its rate of failure because every man has a weakness. Thus even if torture will fail at least we did act. Absence of perfect information is never a good reason not to act; otherwise we would never leave our houses because we might get hit by a car.