IDEAS

When talking about torture and whether the practice could be morally justified the most common scenario that is offered is the example of the “ticking time bomb.” As the example goes, a number of bombs have been planted in a few populous areas. The authorities have the bomber in custody. They are certain about the facts that the bombs have been planted, the person in custody knows where the locations are, they have limited time before the bombs go off, and there is no possible way to find the locations of the bombs other than torturing him. The question now is whether in such circumstances, where the lives of thousands or (in the case of nuclear bombs) millions of people are in immanent danger torture could be a morally justified method for stopping this catastrophe?

If every aspect of this scenario is certain it appears that there would be little moral objection to torture. In fact, many schools of thought would claim, in such case, what is perceived to be a preventative torture is a moral necessity. With the limits of the ticking time bomb in mind, this paper will review the position of three schools of thought, namely utilitarian, liberal and Kantian, in regards to morality of torture. After it is established that all three schools are vulnerable to the scenario of a ticking time bomb, this paper will examine whether, accordingly, torture could be morally justifiable in urgent cases.

From the utilitarian perspective the certainties that exist in the ticking time bomb example, and the knowledge that without torture the bombs will not be located and many innocent people will die necessitate torture. According to this view there need not be thousands of potential victims. As long as the harm caused by torture is smaller than the harm prevented by this practice, one is morally obligated to torture. Thus, even the knowledge that only two people will die as the result of the blasts, would make the practice of torture in this case necessary. Utilitarians might stresses that due to possible secondary consequences of torture, such as people’s undue fear of authorities, the torture of the bomber creates more harm than the death of one or even two people and should be calculated in our assessments of the harm caused. However, since every aspect of the ticking bomb is certain, secondary consequences of torture would not be too great and, in fact, should not be calculate, at most, as more than a few lives. However, one thing that is certain, utilitarianism, at some point, requires us to torture.

From the traditional liberal perspective, in comparisons to the utilitarian stance, there seems to be more barriers against torture. In general, torture is inconsistence with liberal ideals. Indeed, as David Luban has argued “liberals abhor torture”. In Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb, Luban argues that from the liberal perspective, there is no moral justification for four out the five possible purposes of torture. First, in torture as a “victor’s pleasure” liberals see the “living embodiment of their worst nightmare: tyrannical ruler”. Thus, torture for the pleasure of the victor is fundamentally rejected. The second purpose for torture, terror, is also inherently inconsistence with liberal principles. Terror is used as a mean to control and tyrannize people. Such a practice clearly limits the liberal ideals of autonomous and rational beings.

The third motive for torture is punishment. Some liberal philosophers, such as Beccaria stress that torture as punishment “would … be contrary to justice and the nature of the social contract itself”. Furthermore, Foucault has argued that public torture was a symbolic demonstration of how a crime has offended the personal prerogatives of the absolute monarch. With the establishment of liberal democracies, in which people rule, the responsibility of torture falls on people thus the need for a “spectacle of suffering by which the people could impress themselves” disappears . The fourth purpose of torture is extracting confessions. Luban emphasizes once criminal justice systems in liberal democracies accepted that various types of evidence, beside confession, could establish a suspect’s guilt a conviction was no longer dependent on torture. Moreover, the only offenses for which the main evidence is the suspect’s own word are crimes of “heretical or seditious belief- and liberalism rejects the criminalization of belief”.

The fifth and last aim for torture is intelligence gathering. It is separate from confession due to the fact that is meant to be preventative or forward-looking. Luban argues that this is the only scenario in which liberalism does not reject torture out right and accepts there is a possibility of a legitimate purpose to torture. In the case of the ticking bomb, because of the grave and certain danger that is present, liberals for the first time are able to separate torture form cruelty. In fact the torturer could be a kind or even gentle hearted person. It is the circumstances, the urgency and necessity of preventing a catastrophe, that he is certain it would happen, that force him to do what he abhors. Thus, in exceptional circumstance in whish one could claim with reasonable certainty that the purpose for torture is reasonably separated from cruelty liberal theory becomes vulnerable to the practice of torture.

In caparison to utilitarian and liberal philosophy the Kantian school presents the most moral barriers to torture. Kant stresses that every individual, in every case ought to be treated as an end in himself and “never as means only”. Preventative torture is clearly an example of using individuals as means for other ends. In the ticking time bomb, the very purpose of torture is intelligence gathering and, in fact, from the perspective of the torturer and interrogator the suspect is very much a mean to another end, namely preventing a catastrophe. As Sussman has pointed out for the orthodox Kantian, the issue with torture is not our horrifying reaction to the pain and agony that the torture victim goes through, it’s the lack of consent. Kantian’s fundamental objection rises from the fact that the “victim, and the victims agency, is put to use in ways to which she does not or could no reasonably consent”.

However, as strong as the Kantian position is in regards to torture, this school of thought, like liberalism, is not completely protected from offering a moral justification for the practice. The torture of bomber in the ticking time bomb scenario could be morally justified to Kantians. The “loophole” originates from the Kantian position on punishment. It has been famously declared “Even if a civil society resolved to dissolve itself with the consent of all its members-as might be supposed in the case of a people inhabiting an island resolving to separate and scatter themselves throughout the world-the last murderer lying in prison ought to be executed before the resolution was carried out. Thus, in order to keep the scale of justice in balance each and every crime must be punished. The society at large has a responsibility to victims of crimes to make sure the criminal has been properly punished. Furthermore, it appears that the punishment should not necessarily be in line with “an eye for an eye,” especially in cases in which such a practice would problematic (e.g. rape, robbery, drunk driving and etc.). Thus as long as the punishment is proportional, the moral requirement is satisfied.

From many aspects, the case of a ticking time bomb is similar to Kant’s example of the population that is leaving the Island. Thus, from the angle of punishment, the authorities might be morally required to torture the bomber before the bomb goes off. Since the authorities are not aware of where the bombs are planted it would be reasonable for them to assume that there is a bomb close to where they are. Even if the bomber himself dies as the result of one the blasts, his death might not be an adequate or a proportional punishment. In such a case, the bombers death could not be considered punishment, per se, because it was not carried out by the authorities as such. Furthermore, because the authorities are certain about the guilt of the person they have in custody and the fact that he has conspired to take the lives of many innocent people, arguably, his death wouldn’t be a proportional punishment. In the limited times that the authorities have before the bombs go off, it could be morally permissible for them to torture him to make sure that he receive a proportional punishment. If meanwhile the bomber confesses, it could be simply viewed as a bonus advantage that has no barring on the torture that he has already receive since that was meant as punishment for his conspiracy.

Thus, utilitarian, liberalism and Kantianism could all disarmed by the ticking time bomb. The question that arises here is that if torture is permissible in such a case in what other circumstance one could morally justify torture. As it was previously argued, the utilitarian stance is clear in this regard: as long as the harm caused (including the secondary consequences) is less than the harm prevented, torture is necessary. But how about from the liberal or Kantian perspective. What if a few aspects of the scenario are changed. The person in custody is no longer the actual person who planted the bomb but is an associate who, one could reasonably assume, has knowledge of the bombs location. What if it is not a “ticking” time bomb and in fact there is no actual time limit on when the bombs go off. What if there is only one bomb planted and the number of victims is far less. Who many victims do we need in order to justify a torture? What if instead of being certain that he would offer the information under torture, we are certain that he would not confess if we torture his loved ones?

The biggest moral issue with the ticking time bomb is that it is an, almost certainly, impossible scenario. Arguably, if there is even one fact that is not certain in the example, torture would not only be morally unjustifiable but reprehensible. The moral justification of torture in such a case quickly leads us to a very slippery slope; after all there is a reason why the example is brought up. The purpose of giving such an unlikely example is finding a moral justification for torture in other, more likely, scenarios. Like torturing suspects with little connection to terrorist networks and little legal rights in Abu Gharib and Guantanamo bay. The ticking time bomb ultimately asks us to make a rule, based on an exception and that is the foundation for injustice.

Mahdiyeh Javid is a senior in Gender Studies at American University, Washington, DC. This paper was an assignment for class.

SOURCES
* PBS: The Torture Question
* Byron C. Bangert: The Tortured Logic of Torture
* Immanuel Kant: Fundamental Principles Of The Metaphysic Of Morals
* Immanuel Kant: The Philosophy of Law