{"id":2055,"date":"2007-11-15T11:10:02","date_gmt":"2007-11-15T15:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=2055"},"modified":"2007-11-15T11:10:02","modified_gmt":"2007-11-15T15:10:02","slug":"hypothetical-of-the-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=2055","title":{"rendered":"Hypothetical Of The Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a comment over at Obsidian Wings, 'Katherine' comes up with just about the best counter-hypothetical to the \"ticking bomb\" justification for torture (ie. would you torture someone to stop a ticking bomb and you knew your victim knew where it was and how to stop it) that I've ever seen. <\/p>\n

I'll post the first sentence, and assume you can figure out the rest:<\/p>\n

Stipulate that in 2002, Dick Cheney's cardiologist was deeply opposed to the coming invasion of Iraq.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

...though you should go read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My biggest problem with the hypothetical ticking bomb scenario is that it's worthless as a guide to tell you what you should do in an arbitrary situation: it is a post-mortem analysis of a situation which was chosen so that it\u2019s easy to reach the conclusion the torture supporter wants you to reach. It's an artificial moral dilemma: you know the past, present and future and you're asked what was the morally-best decision to make in the past. In reality, of course, you can\u2019t see the future so you can\u2019t say \u201cyes, a couple of minutes of torture is justified here because it will save X lives.\u201d In reality, you don\u2019t know what information the suspect has (if any); and you certainly don\u2019t know if he will give it up with X minutes of torture. You might think you know, but unless you can both read minds and tell the future, you actually don\u2019t know. <\/p>\n

And here's something I've never seen these ticking-bomb torture-supporters ask: when you\u2019ve secretly and extra-legally (as the US currently does it) tortured the wrong guy to death, even though you were so sure (!)<\/i> he had the information you thought you knew he had, what happens ? You bet his pain, suffering and life against your gut feeling - and he lost. What does your moral reasoning tell you to do when you\u2019ve brutally killed an innocent man but will not suffer any legal penalties ?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a comment over at Obsidian Wings, 'Katherine' comes up with just about the best counter-hypothetical to the \"ticking bomb\" justification for torture (ie. would you torture someone to stop a ticking bomb and you knew your victim knew where it was and how to stop it) that I've ever seen. I'll post the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}