Defusing the ‘ticking bomb’: why the argument for torture fails

In fact there is a great deal of scholarly research into torture in the real world that shows all sorts of interesting things. It indicates that there is a substantial difference in the behaviour of ordinary criminals and people with ideological commitments, that the innocent are much more likely to confess than the guilty, and that the pool of potential torture victims tends to expand.

Overwhelmingly, the conclusion of this research is that torture is not an effective means of gaining information. Indeed, in some cases torture is even less effective, “than flipping coins or shooting randomly into crowds”.

This may appear counter-intuitive to people who have no actual experience of torture. But intuition applied outside the realm of immediate experience is often seriously misleading.

Leaving aside the false premise: if we were to accept, for the sake of argument, torture reliably produces truthful information, even so, the argument will only work if in fact torture generates a net benefit.

In the case of the ticking bomb we are invited to consider only the immediate interests of the principle parties, namely the bomber and the victims of the bomb. The net gain in “benefit” may seem obvious in these cases. We simply count up the number of lives on each side of the equation.

But this interpretation of the consequentialist principle is known to be implausible. It has the implication that we are justified in killing individuals whenever doing so produces a greater gain to others. So, a la Monty Python, we would be justified in killing healthy individuals to harvest their organs. Individual deaths would be outweighed by the greater number of lives saved with the organs harvested.

Similarly, governments would be justified in lacing drinking water with Ecstasy. The increase in the amount of happiness produced would outweigh the loss of benefit to those who suffer psychotic effects.

Consequentialism is only plausible when it operates over reasonably foreseeable consequences when measuring benefits against losses.

Under this reasoning we should measure (a) the evil caused by the murders of bomb victims against (b) the corruption of key social institutions including the practice of law and medicine; the evil of mistakenly torturing people who are innocent; the ruination of torturers; the likelihood that torture will generate still further bombings and the number of lives likely to be lost in such bombings; the corruption of international laws and treaties; and so on.

Strictly, we should also count the loss of benefit to those who support the actions of the bomber. Utilitarianism does not distinguish between persons. The loss of benefit is a loss no matter who suffers it. Thus, even if tens of thousands of lives were at stake in the “ticking bomb” case, this would not outweigh the foreseeable loss of benefit to literally millions of other lives.

Finally, pro-torture advocates frequently insist that they are not in favour of the wide-spread use of torture but only seek to justify torture in “emergency” situations. This is meant to forestall some of the adverse consequences to legal institutions. However, the only way of avoiding such adverse implications is keep the practice of torture secret. In other words, they seek to provide a public justification for a practice that they claim is privately justified only when it is publicly denied. The contradiction should be obvious.

In any case, the “emergency” claim is simply risible. Who could forget that prior to the invasion of Iraq, Prime Minister Blair declared that England was a mere three minutes away from destruction. Every politician, every inept bureaucrat and police officer wants us to think that their situation is unique. They want us to think that they, and they alone, are justified in doing what would otherwise be impermissible. The “emergency” nature of these arguments is simply case of special pleading. No moral theory, not even utilitarianism, countenances this.

In short, pro-torture advocates wield a principle they do not really understand. They engage in flawed reasoning, emotive rhetoric and appeals to popular prejudices. They fail to offer any verifiable evidence to support their claims. They play upon the fears of people whose only knowledge of torture is restricted to Hollywood’s fantasies.

Pro-torture proponents serve someone’s interests but they do not serve the cause of moral philosophy. No one should believe that torture can be justified by such arguments. It cannot.