“The plainest reading of your comment suggests the first objection. But I saw nothing in what Reynolds said which entailed that he disagreed with your ‘comparative value’ assessment.”

i) If he regards coercive interrogation of whatever degree or kind as inherently evil, then a comparative value assessment would have no impact on his position.

ii) On the other hand, if he’s concerned with the physical/psychological wellbeing of the terrorist, then the terrorist is not the only party whose wellbeing is at stake.

I’m drawing attention to an apparent inconsistency in his position.

“Mine was a simple request to fill in for us those gaps (i.e. implicit premises) in your argument.”

Since I’ve repeatedly and explicitly introduced the guilt or innocence of the affected parties was one of the differential factors, that is not a gap in my argument. So are you alluding to some other alleged gap in my argument?

“You’ve done some of that: you mentioned the distinction between a wrongdoer and an innocent, for instance, and one’s motives in doing an action.”

I’ve been doing that in multiple replies to JMR. So that’s not an ex post facto response to your objection.

“After all, plenty of other cases come to mind: a terrorist has information about a bomb planted in a mall which would kill 10 people. The harm done to the terrorist if one were to cut off his fingers, one at a time, and then his toes, is outweighed (in some sense of that term) by the good of preventing 20 innocent deaths; that harm is done to a wrongdoer, with the intent of saving innocent lives. Do these facts (outweighing, wrongdoer vs. innocents, motives and purposes, etc.) yield the conclusion that the harm to the terrorist is justified?”

i) We could always discuss the question whether there are some lines we can’t cross, and how to draw them. But that’s premature at this stage of the argument. Until we settle the prior question of whether coercive interrogation of *any* degree or kind is morally permissible, it’s a moot point to debate which coercive techniques fall inside or outside the bounds of moral propriety.

ii) Moreover, objecting to coercive interrogation on the basis of borderline cases is fallacious. For we’re confronted with borderline cases on many ethical issues. But unless you think the existence of borderline cases is an excuse to never act at all (and inaction is, itself, a morally freighted posture), then raising the specter of borderline cases is just a blocking maneuver rather than a principled objection.

“I still don’t know how you’d want to analyze “X (morally) outweighs Y,” or more importantly what you’d add to “X outweighs Y” in order to get a sufficient condition for X being morally permissible”

What are you looking for? A mathematical formula in making moral decisions? That doesn’t exist. We bring certain criteria to bear, and we make a value judgment.

Go back to my hypothetical of the wounded sniper and his gunshot victim. Do you have a priority structure for dealing with that situation?

“Again, my main question to you concerned why you thought that Reynolds was committed to saying that the harm of torture ‘outweighed’ the good of preventing e.g. innocent death.”

Maybe because he’s actually used arguments to that effect. The dehumanizing effect of “torture” on the tormenter outweighs the potential value of the intelligence garnered by that procedure. You can’t be a “gentleman” soldier. Or allowing “torture” leads to “disastrous” consequences. So, on that view, the “disastrous” consequences outweigh the potential value of the intelligence.

Or do you have a problem with stock metaphors like “outweigh,” “override,” &c.?

I took this comment of yours:
“How you [Reynolds] think the harm of “torture” (as you define it) outweighs the good of her physical or emotional wellbeing still eludes me”

to be an attempt to *object* to something Reynolds had argued. I could think of two ways your comment would amount to an objection: first, if Reynolds claimed (or said something which entailed) that the harm of torture outweighed the good of preventing e.g. the death of innocent people; or second, if Reynolds agreed with you that the good of preventing the death of innocent people outweighed the harm of torture, but failed to draw the conclusion that the harm of torture was *thereby* justified. How else would your “precedence” and “outweighing” comments amount to an objection? (But perhaps I’ve overlooked other possibilities…)

The plainest reading of your comment suggests the first objection. But I saw nothing in what Reynolds said which entailed that he disagreed with your “comparative value” assessment. In charity, then, I thought perhaps your comments were intended to convey the second sort of objection. Obviously, though, there is great distance between the premise “the good of X outweighs the harm of Y” and the conclusion “Therefore, Y is justified as a means of securing X.” Mine was a simple request to fill in for us those gaps (i.e. implicit premises) in your argument. After all (and this was the point of my counterexample), denying that Y is justified as a means of securing X does not entail that one takes Y to somehow “outweigh” X, unless one packs quite a lot (of substantial, controversial content) into the notion of “outweighing.” Hence my request for you to say a bit more about it, to clarify it.

You’ve done some of that: you mentioned the distinction between a wrongdoer and an innocent, for instance, and one’s motives in doing an action. But this doesn’t fill all the gaps (i.e. it doesn’t show how your “outweighing” comment amounts to a good objection to something Reynolds says). After all, plenty of other cases come to mind: a terrorist has information about a bomb planted in a mall which would kill 10 people. The harm done to the terrorist if one were to cut off his fingers, one at a time, and then his toes, is outweighed (in some sense of that term) by the good of preventing 20 innocent deaths; that harm is done to a wrongdoer, with the intent of saving innocent lives. Do these facts (outweighing, wrongdoer vs. innocents, motives and purposes, etc.) yield the conclusion that the harm to the terrorist is justified? I still don’t know how you’d want to analyze “X (morally) outweighs Y,” or more importantly what you’d add to “X outweighs Y” in order to get a sufficient condition for X being morally permissible. So claiming that Reynolds thinks the harm of torture “outweighs” the good of saving innocent life seemed dialectically dubious, at best.

Again, my main question to you concerned why you thought that Reynolds was committed to saying that the harm of torture “outweighed” the good of preventing e.g. innocent death. It seems obvious that one could agree with your “weights” while still accepting Reynolds’ conclusion; so that made me think you were tacitly assuming some substantial moral principles, ones that Reynolds would not (or need not) accept. And that made me wonder what your objection really amounted to.

“Could you say a bit more about what this talk of ‘taking precedence over’ and of goods ‘outweighing’ harms amounts to? Even if we agreed on a certain theory of value according to which, say, the death of 1000 innocent people ‘outweighs’ the harm done to a victim of torture, I don’t see how that would do much to support the view that torturing someone in order to prevent 1000 deaths is morally justified – probably not even if one accepted a fairly bald consequentialism. After all, it seems likely that the death of 1000 innocent people ‘outweighs’ (in the same sense) the harm done by, say, raping or killing or torturing the innocent daughter of a terrorist we think has relevant information, etc. But surely you agree that raping the innocent daughter of a terrorist in order to prevent 1000 deaths is not morally justified, no?”

i) Your counterexample involves a fatal equivocation. My example involved a contrast between a wrongdoer (i.e. a murderous terrorist) and the innocent victims of a premeditated plot. Your counterexample ignores the distinction between guilt and innocence, malicious intent and noble intent, as if those considerations are irrelevant to moral decisions.

ii) ”Torture” is your choice of words, not mine.

iii) And why would you characterize a terrorist as the “victim”?

“So even if we agreed to a theory that ‘weighed’ harms in the manner your comments suggest, we wouldn’t be any closer to a justification of torture unless we subscribed to a moral principle (‘an action is justified/permissible if the harm it does is “outweighed” by the harm it prevents’) with absurd consequences.”

But that’s a misrepresentation of what I said. Why did you misrepresent my argument?

i) I introduced a qualification involving the distinction between guilt and innocence, malicious intent (i.e., to take innocent life) and noble intent (i.e. to save innocent life).

Why does that disappear from your summary? There can be no distinction between right and wrong without an attendant distinction between innocence and guilt.

Suppose a wounded schoolyard sniper (say, a man in his 30s) is wheeled into the ER along with one of his gunshot victims (say, a 7-year-old student). Suppose both the sniper and student have the same rare blood type. The hospital only has enough of that plasma on hand to treat one of them.

Do you think the needs of the innocent gunshot victim ought to override the needs of the wounded sniper? Or should the surgeon flip a coin?

“At the very least, you’d want to stipulate that the harm caused by torture is outweighed by the harm that the torture prevents *and* that there are no available alternatives that do less harm. But even this principle seems open to the type of counterexample I’ve mentioned above (not to mention the reasons to think that real-world cases rarely if ever satisfy the second conjunct).”

That builds on your previous misrepresentation.

“Perhaps your language of “precedence” and “weighing” wasn’t intended to suggest a consequentialist view of the sort I’ve questioned, or you have a more refined sort of consequentialist view in mind.”

i) To begin with, I’m not the only one who’s introducing consequentialist considerations into this discussion.

Both JMR and Joe Carter have also been introducing consequentialist considerations into their opposition to “torture.”

If you disapprove of any consideration to the probability or magnitude of the consequences of a given policy, then why aren’t you more evenhanded in your objections?

ii) Any well-rounded value theory will need to integrate a number of criteria in decision-making, viz. motives, moral norms, circumstances, consequences.

iii) It’s not an all-or-nothing choice between treating consequences as either all-important or wholly unimportant.

iv) I don’t know why you’re so disturbed by the idea of comparing the tradeoffs between one action and another.

In treating a patient, a doctor has to take a wide variety of issues into consideration. He will take greater risks in case the patient is at greater risk of death unless a high-risk procedure is performed. He will consider the probable success or failure of different procedures. One procedure might have both a greater upside (superior potential benefits) as well as a greater downside (be more hazardous). Another procedure might have both a lesser upside as well as a lesser downside.

and

“Or let’s say it’s just one 5-year-old girl. Say she’d be horribly burned in a terrorist attack. Or lose her mother. How you think the harm of “torture” (as you define it) outweighs the good of her physical or emotional wellbeing still eludes me.”

Could you say a bit more about what this talk of “taking precedence over” and of goods “outweighing” harms amounts to? Even if we agreed on a certain theory of value according to which, say, the death of 1000 innocent people “outweighs” the harm done to a victim of torture, I don’t see how that would do much to support the view that torturing someone in order to prevent 1000 deaths is morally justified – probably not even if one accepted a fairly bald consequentialism. After all, it seems likely that the death of 1000 innocent people “outweighs” (in the same sense) the harm done by, say, raping or killing or torturing the innocent daughter of a terrorist we think has relevant information, etc. But surely you agree that raping the innocent daughter of a terrorist in order to prevent 1000 deaths is not morally justified, no?

So even if we agreed to a theory that “weighed” harms in the manner your comments suggest, we wouldn’t be any closer to a justification of torture unless we subscribed to a moral principle (“an action is justified/permissible if the harm it does is “outweighed” by the harm it prevents”) with absurd consequences. At the very least, you’d want to stipulate that the harm caused by torture is outweighed by the harm that the torture prevents *and* that there are no available alternatives that do less harm. But even this principle seems open to the type of counterexample I’ve mentioned above (not to mention the reasons to think that real-world cases rarely if ever satisfy the second conjunct).

Perhaps your language of “precedence” and “weighing” wasn’t intended to suggest a consequentialist view of the sort I’ve questioned, or you have a more refined sort of consequentialist view in mind. But I didn’t understand why you thought that Reynolds’ view either (1) committed him to the position that the harm caused by torture “outweighs” the harm done by terrorists, or (2) should accept a moral principle or view according to which one’s actions should be guided (solely? primarily? defeasibly?) by the “weights” we give various outcomes. Could you clarify?

However, in context, my question pertained to the *historic* position of the Orthodox church. Back when, say, the Byzantines and Romanians were having to fend off Muslims armies. Or back when the Orthodox church had the temporal power to suppress heretics.

How did those measure line up with the Orthodox anthropology of Orthodox theologians or prelates back *then*?

You will note that I am mostly “off line” the rest of week end. I found your replies great fun, however, whatever the merits of your argument. I hope you can understand the limits of my time to respond.

I enjoyed your irony and got a good laugh from one of your examples. Thanks!

I am perfectly willing to pass on clown torture on the clown-phobic since I can relate. Is there anything more horrifying than clowns?

In any case, we don’t agree, but that is not the point of this post.

I am responding due to your question about Eastern Orthodoxy. As with the Catholic hierarchy, so with my own, they are nearly universal (I personally know of no exceptions) in rejecting torture or enhanced interrogation techniques as incompatible with the Faith.

See this statement:

“Torture violates the basic dignity of the human person that all religions, in their highest ideals, hold dear. It degrades everyone involved – policymakers, perpetrators and victims. It contradicts our nation’s most cherished values. Any policies that permit torture and inhumane treatment are shocking and morally intolerable. Nothing less is at stake in the torture abuse crisis than the soul of our nation. What does it signify if torture is condemned in word but allowed in deed? Let America abolish torture now – without exceptions.”

It was signed by:

Most Rev. Metropolitan Christopher
Serbian Orthodox Church in the USA and Canada

Archbishop Nicolae Condrea
Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese in America and Canada

Archbishop Demetrios
Primate, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

Metropolitan Philip
Primate, The Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America.

I will try to say more on this topic next week!

Meanwhile, I would be curious how many Catholic or Orthodox bishops who find “ends/means” argument persuasive or who favor “enhanced interrogation.”

This is nothing more than a caricature of men and women on our side doing what it takes, within the guidelines and boundaries of applicable laws, to keep our country safe.
It is a true shame JMR has been talking past those with whom he disagrees in the vain effort to advance his assertions instead of a complete argument.

“I am sorry for them and will help them as much as I can…”

You’re “sorry” for them? That’s it?

Feeling sorry for them is hardly a moral substitute for taking precautionary measures which would forestall their unjust loss in the first place.

Feeling sorry is appropriate if that’s the most we can do. But it’s not something we should do in lieu of taking reasonable measures to avoid tragic, foreseeable outcome.

“…but not at the cost of adding to the wrong.”

Which begs the question of whether we’d be adding to the wrong.

“I am not calling the prospective victim, the terrorist is.”

I think you must have used the wrong verb. Did you mean “harming” rather than “calling”?

If so, then it’s quite possible for a third party to harm someone through negligence. If a hospital administrator knows that one of his surgeons is an alcoholic, but takes no preemptive action, and the surgeon butchers a patient, the administrator is morally complicit.

However, it’s possible that I misread your sentence.

“We may execute him for his greater crimes.”

The question at issue is not what we can do after the fact, but what we can do in advance to avert a foreseeable atrocity.

We can also stand by as we watch a man beat his 5-year-old to death, then execute him for murder. But is that a substitute for timely intervention?

“There are simply some things we cannot do (surely you agree?) to save the innocent.”

I agree. And thus far you haven’t come anywhere near crossing that threshold.

“The fact that he is a threat does not justify doing anything to stop that threat. Right?”

Agreed. But these fact-free abstractions do nothing to resolve the concrete issue.

“We can stop the sniper by killing him. Nobody disagrees (in this thread with that).”

But killing the sniper isn’t loving to the sniper. It’s loving to his potential victims, but not to the sniper.

“I don’t think all punitive actions wrong, but I also don’t think all good ends (hopefully stopping a future harm) justify all actions.”

Agreed. But that’s another airy-fairy abstraction. To set an abstract boundary says nothing about what lies on either side of the boundary.

“The harm I do in torture is certain and the good I will get from it less so. Much less so.”

That’s a tendentious claim. One the one hand you “traumatize” the terrorist. So maybe he has nightmares for the rest of his life. Big deal. Why should terrorism be a risk-free occupation?

On the other hand, you save the lives of, let’s say, dozens of innocent men, women, and children.

Or let’s say it’s just one 5-year-old girl. Say she’d be horribly burned in a terrorist attack. Or lose her mother. How you think the harm of “torture” (as you define it) outweighs the good of her physical or emotional wellbeing still eludes me.

“The usefulness of torture depends on: a. having the right man, b. knowing he has good information, c. be willing to do whatever it takes to get that information. Nobody I know believes that ‘c’ is moral.”

Richard Posner might demur.

However, I’m happy to keep this within the confines of Christian ethics–since that’s my own frame of reference.

Incidentally, you’re a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, aren’t you? To my knowledge, and I’m no expert, the Eastern Orthodox could be pretty ruthless in suppressing heretics, not to mention what they had to do to fend of Muslims armies for as long as they could.

How does your opposition to any form of coercive interrogation correlate with the anthropology of Eastern Orthodox theologians?

“Everyone I know argues that waterboarding is NOT torture, because ‘c’ is obviously a problem.”

i) Depends, in part, on how you define “torture.” If you define torture as anything coercive, anything designed to break the resistance of the terrorist, then, yes, waterboarding would qualify as torture.

ii) However, I think that trivializes the definition of torture.

iii) Moreover, you’re equivocating. Waterboarding a terrorist is hardly a case of “doing whatever it takes.”

From what I’ve read and seen, waterboarding is very unpleasant. It triggers an involuntary gag reflex. Unbearable.

But there are far worse things you can do to a human being, both physically, emotionally, or both.

iv) Even more to the point, you’re fallaciously arguing that because forms of “torture” or coercion at the far end of the spectrum are illicit, then any form of “torture” or coercion is illicit even if it’s far milder. But it’s hardly valid to extrapolate from the most extreme cases conceivable to far more moderate forms of coercion, like, say, sleep deprivation.

“On examining what effective waterboarding is I think it is torture and so cannot be done.”

You define it as torture because you define any coercive technique as torture. You posit such a low threshold for what constitutes torture that by definition, waterboarding is torture–just as various techniques well short of waterboarding are torture under your definition.

“If you believe “c” then we have too little in common to talk.”

I agree with you that “c” goes too far. However, your test-case (waterboarding) fails to illustrate “c.”

“We might foil the plot, but only by becoming like them.”

I always find it intriguing that opponents of “torture” like yourself presume to raise moralistic objections to “torture,” but in the process you erase all moral distinctions.

Coercing a terrorist to divulge actionable intel doesn’t make us just like him. Aims and motives are hardly irrelevant to the moral valuation of a deed.

On the one hand we have a malicious terrorist who uses any means whatsoever to kill the innocent for no good reason. On the other hand we have a conscientious interrogator who uses some, by not all means, to protect the innocent from unjust harm.

If you refuse to draw necessary ethical distinctions, then you have no right to make moral pronouncements.

“I would not buy victory at that price and I hope that my innocent fellow citizens would be willing to die for the ideals of our nation.”

You’re welcome to speak for yourself, but I’d like to think our national ideals include the duty to take reasonable precautions in safeguarding innocent men, women, and children from mass murder.

“We fight to defend a way of life and must not destroy it or undermine it in our way of defending it.”

A way of life is a luxury of the living. How does allowing jihadis to kill us preserve our way of life?

“Otherwise, we could save all the lives by merely giving up and letting the first set of terrorists win. We could give them what they want (power) and nobody would die.”

You have defined “torture” in such minimalistic terms that if we captured a terrorist with foreknowledge of an impending attack on a sold-out football stadium, and if we knew that he suffered from coulrophobia (due to some childhood trauma), it would be morally preferable to let 100,000 spectators die in a conflagration rather than violate his “soul liberty” by bringing a circus clown into the interrogation room to perform a skit in his presence.

i) And what about your disposition towards his prospective victims?

I am sorry for them and will help them as much as I can, but not at the cost of adding to the wrong.

I am not calling the prospective victim, the terrorist is. We may execute him for his greater crimes.

There are simply some things we cannot do (surely you agree?) to save the innocent.

Hays asks me:

ii) Moreover, it’s not a question of whether he’s my personal enemy. He may be no threat to me personally. But he’s a threat to others.

The fact that he is a threat does not justify doing anything to stop that threat. Right?

We can stop the sniper by killing him. Nobody disagrees (in this thread with that).

Hays notes that I have said:

“The mental well being of a terrorist is not the issue.”

Is isn’t? I thought you made that a central issue. We mustn’t psychologically wound the terrorist.

I confess:

I misspoke. I should have said: “The mental well being of the terrorist is not the only issue.”

Hays claims I make a category mistake because: “coercive interrogation isn’t punitive.”

Let me assume this is true ideally. (One could argue that it could never be true in practice, but I will not.)

I don’t think all punitive actions wrong, but I also don’t think all good ends (hopefully stopping a future harm) justify all actions. The harm I do in torture is certain and the good I will get from it less so. Much less so.

The usefulness of torture depends on: a. having the right man, b. knowing he has good information, c. be willing to do whatever it takes to get that information.

Nobody I know believes that “c” is moral. Everyone I know argues that waterboarding is NOT torture, because “c” is obviously a problem.

On examining what effective waterboarding is I think it is torture and so cannot be done.

If you believe “c,” then we have too little in common to talk.

Hays concludes by saying:

“Oh, please! We certainly help potential victims by preventing their victimizing by a terrorist if we can foil the plot through effective interrogation.”

We might foil the plot, but only by becoming like them. I would not buy victory at that price and I hope that my innocent fellow citizens would be willing to die for the ideals of our nation.

We fight to defend a way of life and must not destroy it or undermine it in our way of defending it.

Otherwise, we could save all the lives by merely giving up and letting the first set of terrorists win. We could give them what they want (power) and nobody would die.

Why defeat them by creating a group of government sanctioned brutes who will do what it takes? Many will have died and bluntly I find home grown barbarians and tyrants no more appealing than foreign born.

If this is my last post today on this topic, it is not due to lack of interest but the need to work on other writing projects!

Whether it’s wrong to break the will of a terrorist begs the question.

“The terrorist is a man and my enemy. As a Christian my basic disposition toward him is love.”

i) And what about your disposition towards his prospective victims?

ii) Moreover, it’s not a question of whether he’s my personal enemy. He may be no threat to me personally. But he’s a threat to others.

Do you think one can be equally loving to everyone? What about a schoolyard sniper? If it’s a choice between the life of the sniper and the life of the next victim in the crosshairs, should the police sharpshooter be more loving towards the sniper than the students he has pinned down in the schoolyard?

“The mental well being of a terrorist is not the issue.”

Is isn’t? I thought you made that a central issue. We mustn’t psychologically wound the terrorist.

“His crimes have harmed his own soul and God will judge him. I can punish him for his crimes, but there are limits to what a man can do.”

That’s a category mistake. Coercive interrogation isn’t punitive.

“He broke individuals, but (in a Christian ethic) that does not mean I can break him. It is not eye for an eye in our faith.”

That commits the same category mistake.

“We do not help the victims of terror by terrorizing the terrorist.”

Oh, please! We certainly help potential victims by preventing their victimizing by a terrorist if we can foil the plot through effective interrogation.

The terrorist is a man and my enemy. As a Christian my basic disposition toward him is love.

The mental well being of a terrorist is not the issue. His crimes have harmed his own soul and God will judge him. I can punish him for his crimes, but there are limits to what a man can do.

He broke individuals, but (in a Christian ethic) that does not mean I can break him. It is not eye for an eye in our faith.

We do not help the victims of terror by terrorizing the terrorist.

i) Whether the mental wellbeing of the terrorist is all-important begs the very question at issue.

ii) But beyond that, this objection is problematic on its own grounds. For innocent survivors of a terrorist attack also suffer “psychological wounds.” Their mental wellbeing may be shattered for life as they suffer the inconsolable loss of their loved ones in the attack.

So either way, you’ll be left with “broken” individuals. That being the case, why should the mental wellbeing of the terrorist take precedence over the mental wellbeing of his victims?

Even on his own terms, I’ve unclear about the coherence of JMR’s moral priorities at this juncture.