Peterkin

No, it's exactly one way, the only way it can be, and I'm perfectly clear on it. I've done a great many things in my life that i knew were wrong - and so, I imagine, have we all, not for life-and-death outcomes, but for trivial reasons: anger, avarice, fear, pride, spite, expediency... none of those reasons flip wrong to right and back again. A three-year-old knows when he's doing something wrong, and decides to do it anyway, for reasons that seem to him compelling at the time. Later, when he's being carpeted for it, he looks at the floor a stammers out a semi-coherent excuse. The adult either believes that the temptation was stronger than child could be reasonably expected to resist, and forgives him or doesn't and metes out some punishment she considers appropriate: either way, the wrong is cancelled and the child may go in peace. If he isn't caught, he carries the wrong action on his conscience, even as he's enjoying the ill-gotten gain. Right and wrong don't change. The situation changes your priorities. In some situations, you're convinced that no right action would achieve the desired results, so you have to choose between wrongs. Outweigh. Not wipe out. Here's another thing I don't know: Suppose the city is Wuhan, the bomber is English and the only witness is the bomber's nine-year-old daughter. Obiously, she's not going to rat her daddy out without serious persuasion. Is the right and wrong of torturing her still as readily flippable as it was in the other case?

Well, that's certainly an unequivocal opinion. London is about to be vapourized and it's all my fault. Fair enough.... Oh, wait, no, it isn't fair at all. What I said from the beginning is that I can imagine situations in which I would resort to torture. I maintain that whether and when and in what circumstance I would or could actually carry out, I can't tell you, not even under torture (though, of course I'd tell you something, anything, everything), because I don't know. (I suspect you don't, either, never having been faced with a such a situation, but that's only a suspicion, since I know even less about you and your experience than you know about me and mine.) If I did carry out a wrong and bad act, I hope it would be for a reason I could justify. But I would not pretend that it was right and good. Sorry, I missed the connection between The Impossible Dream and a drowning child.

Don't take that advice, Dimreepr! The best goals are impossible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHVGOp5Usv4

No. I don't know. You already have the answer, many times over.

What!!?? You mean, like they might with an unpaid hooker or like an English lord might have with a milkmaid? Nothing to do with being foreign! Prisoners of war were often enslaved, as were people taken as tithes from subject nations. But foreigners could also join the Roman army and become citizens. No, they didn't. They were usually quite pragmatic in their dealings with subject nations. The co-operative regimes were allowed a wide latitude in self-governance and freedom of religions. The rebellious ones were punished. Many legionnaires married local women and, upon retirement, settled in the occupied territories. That's different "they's" Spanish, French and English, with different approaches. Amerinds made poor slaves, it's true, but they sometimes - that is, some Native nations, in some regions - were relatively easy to convert to Christianity and worked voluntarily for the Spanish missions. Some French (and a few from the British isles) settlers got along so well with Natives that they created a whole new nation of Metis. No, they just wanted the land. All of it. Motive enough. You don't see the contradiction there? Caste and class systems have nothing to do with difference and everything to do with exploitation.

Does it? In war, every leadership makes an effort to dehumanize the enemy -for the same reason: it's easier to kill a ______ (insert national slur of choice) than a farm-boy just like yourself. In slave states, after slavery was ostensibly abolished, why was it necessary for officials to raise artificial barriers between children of different races? Why was it necessary to enact miscegenation laws? Why was it necessary to segregate people on public transport, in recreation areas, in neighbourhoods, even in the army....? If people instinctively don't want to mix, why go to all that trouble to keep them apart? And how come they went and mixed anyway?

Generally, but not invariably. The most common factor today, as it has been many times before in history, is debt. https://scroll.in/article/898862/india-is-home-to-the-worlds-largest-slave-population-yes-slavery-still-exists ; https://nyupress.org/9780814742969/white-cargo/ The masters still need a mechanism of dehumanizing and objectifying their bonded servitors - whether by dressing them differently or denying them specific privileges reserved for the free citizen, or simply branding them like livestock. Why do you think those laws were necessary? And why were they so often broken? It's the intent to commodify that makes the dehumanizing necessary: it's harder to justify benefiting from the subjection of someone like yourself than from the subjection of an inferior creature. It's easier to justify inflicting pain on a criminal or terrorist than on an adolescent. It's easier to deny shelter to a bum than homeless man. (Or, as e say now, "A man experiencing homelessness," as if it were like a cold or other temporary inconvenience) And, of course, the ruling class has to convince the working class that they're different from and better than the slave class, the welfare class, the vagrant class - or else they could unite and form a much more powerful underclass that's harder to exploit.

I'm nice enough to avoid eating meat.... But I'm pretty sure that doesn't count much toward my general unworkability. How sweet! So are you.

Faith is nice. Enviable.

That may be so, though i don't see it proven. Or, if it's the same job, they call it something else if a woman does it. Does that mitigate the income gap?

IOW, it's a lot easier to bash in the face of a "pedophile" than of some skinny old man in a grey cardigan. It's a lot easier to attach electrodes to the genitals of "a mad bomber" than to listen to a brainwashed teenager scream. It's a lot easier to make up stories and be sure exactly what you would think, do and feel in a simple, made-up situation than to face a complex set of unknowns. The only people who are sure are people who have never been in the same building with that kind of situation. Yeah. We all are. I happen to be aware of it.

Sure. In the same year that grandmother made her mistake, a few other people made mistakes. No big deal compared to mad bombers, but still.... Do you actually know what those all possible information sources are? Neither do the police when they begin the investigation. In the imaginary two-dimensional scenario, B/W answers work. In reality, they do not. And that's what you don't know when you make the decision you can't ever take back. Yeah, but then, you're sure about everything. I'm not.

They already do. Multiple someones. All the time. I thought the purpose of saving a civilized society was not to become more and more like the enemies that want to bring down a civilized society. But we have failed: with this generally shared notion of "well, we have to do whatever works" and "if they're doing it, we have to do it, too" all societies are sinking toward the Dark Ages.

...except maybe your immortal soul (some people believe they have one) and maybe the civilization you just saved....

That's what Pinochet said, sir.

That may be because none of your interlocutors have actually been on either side of that scenario. As I have said - repeatedly: If. But. Maybe. It depends. I do not know. All of the above. And i still don't know whether I would, or could, carry it out. Not easily. Amnesty International has a lot of stats and case studies, but we can't know how many more they didn't discover. It's easier to get records from the US - this is just law-enforcement agencies, dealing with ordinary citizen criminals, not military or spy agencies.

Better be on the safe side and shoot a few relatives than risk being assaulted by burglar? No, the probability is quite high. In a culture of guns, accidental shooting of family members is common. You can't calculate the probability without collecting the information: that's just guess-work. Criminal investigation and prosecution can't rely on guess-work: you have to take the trouble of collecting all possible information, rather than just beat any old statement out of a prisoner. That depends entirely on who does the justifying and what their moral tenets are. Whether another person - more to the point, 12 other persons - accepts their justification will determine their fate. Whether they convince themselves will determine the quality of their sleep. It will never be unanimous. Some people have more absolute standards of morality - at least in theory - while others are pragmatic on a statistical basis - at least in theory. We have each explained our position. The main problem with any law, code, standard, principle or directive is the people who apply it. Again, it's only in the contrived imaginary example that torturing the prisoner is a guarantee of getting accurate information in time to stop the negative event. The kid might already be dead before your captive was brought in, or while you were exhausting all those other avenues. The member of the terrorist cell you captured may not know where his co-conspirator finally left the bomb, or when it's set to go off, or how to disarm it. He may deliberately been given false information and left as a decoy, or might lie of his own accord for the cause. You might get there just in time to be blown up with the other people, or waste time and resources hunting down false leads. In the very best case, extracting information from such a source in such a manner is chancy. Of course it would be tried in desperation by many, probably most, agencies. But as policy, it sucks. Probably.... That's not guaranteed, either. None of the sequelae or long-term effects are known or knowable when the decision is taken. In Syria, China, Cambodia, Argentina, Ireland.... the Vatican archives....

She heard a noise, thought an intruder was coming in, shot before she looked. I was saying that people make tragic mistakes when they take drastic action without thinking. Isn't exactly detailed information. These "thought-experiments" are made up to have only two facets, instead of the 68 or so a real crime has. I don't make life-and-death decisions on a hunch, or a layman's diagnosis of the mental illness of an anonymous stranger, or a cardboard mock-up. Nobody does. People in the field - any field - deal with the complex, various, messy situations they have to confront, one situation at a time, one decision at a time, based on all the hundreds of facts available to them in that moment, in that situations. The only part of this question anyone can answer truthfully is "What do you believe to be to right/wrong?" The only honest answer to "What would you do if...?" is "I don't know." (Unless, of course, you have actually been in such situations and had to do something - but then you probably wouldn't discuss it in public.)

Under what? Where did I say can never know about anyone? The scenario in the example is contrived and very unlikely to occur in real life, where we actually make ethical decisions. The situation you cited where the perpetrator of a crime was caught in the act obviously doesn't apply here. The turnaround for forensic DNA test in Canada is one two three days; in the US, two weeks to six months. Unless the perpetrator had been caught on video actually committing the crime, you'll have to wait for proof. Yes, might choose a lesser wrong. Not this greater one you advocate. You were. I've got competent cops out searching with dogs, questioning witnesses, checking street cam footage, canvassing the neighbourhood, flashing suspect photos at people. Not once. Not ever. Under no circumstances. If I'm running the investigation, the parents are kept in their home, under close scrutiny by sympathetic officers, gently prompted for possibly relevant background information, are given warm beverages and updates whenever some progress is made. They have nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with the police work. The father is too volatile, unpredictable, has no training in interrogation; he would screw it up; we'd lose the kid, the case and the whole shebang. Oh, fer sure! Just as soon as he's out of hospital. It's her 7-year-old grandchild. Better throw away that key! I don't know the details of that one.(At least I don't have to deal with distraught parents with iron bars!) I would do whatever I believed in the circumstances that I needed to do, within my capabilities. But I wouldn't ask, or allow, someone else to carry out any illegal or immoral action that I might decide is necessary.

... without having caught him red-handed, which does not apply in any of these scenarios where the person in custody is required to provide information regarding their crime. Stepping outside the house and crossing the road have different consequences; stepping outside the front door and stepping outside the 15th storey window have different consequences. Exactly why it's the police officer who has to take responsibility: the father can't think straight. A few years ago an old lady in Florida awoke to heard an intruder entering her room. She grabbed her gun and shot her grandson. There are dozens of these. People under the influence of strong emotion are not entirely rational, their actions are unpredictable, the long term consequences of those actions are unforeseeable. There has to be a steady, sober, uninvolved adult in charge.

He's also assuming that the father is "a hulking brute", which most fathers are not; that he's only "slightly emotional, angry", which most fathers in this situation are not; that his temper and his actions are controlled and controllable, which most people in this situation are not; that the damage he inflicts on the prisoner will be relatively bloodless, which is unlikely; that the the prisoner will be rendered willing to divulge accurate information while still conscious and capable of coherent speech, which is not at all certain. OTH, this is no less contrived and unrealistic than the 100% certainty of the suspect's guilt, without having been caught red-handed. What Beecee appears indifferent to is the long-term effect of the interrogation on the father, and the family, particularly if he fails to elicit the information in time to save his child. Also, incidentally, the fact that he's a civilian and legally liable for whatever he breaks -- plus any evidence he acquires against the kidnappers is inadmissible in court, so they'll probably walk, and he'll have to hunt them down, once he's served his aggravated assault conviction, and go up again for double homicide. But maybe he'll be mad as a Hatter by then and serve that term in a medical facility. Still tough on the kiddies.... Decisions have consequences that we can't always predict.

There's your error!

There is always room for improvement in jurisprudence and corrections. Complaints should be investigated - many have merit. That may be considered under the "cruel and unusual" clause. Anyway, torture is generally defined in law, just as it's clear to each individual. As The Vat said early on: We know what it is!

No. According to the laws of several lands, as written, the definition of torture is general regarding physical or mental suffering, deliberately inflicted by an official on a prisoner - but they explicitly exclude standard criminal proceedings and punishments. Canada subscribes to the UN International Convention, which is broad and general - inevitably, given the wide variance of the nations' legal codes. It's not a matter of what you don't like; it's a matter of what the majority voting population of a country considers abhorrent. It's a constantly negotiated legal process.

But that order of priorities only works -and it's not a given that it works all the time - from a specific personal POV. As such, it's subject to change with age, needs and circumstance, and cannot be applied to the polity at large. From the legislative POV, "what's best" can't ever apply to everybody, so it must be restricted according some other order of priorities: the majority by number, the wealthiest X%, the most exalted individual, the bluest bloodline, the most privileged ethnic group, the dominant religious group, the most powerful gender, the most valued skill-set --- some kind of class system. Usually, the stated priority is greatest number, but that's never how laws really affect the population.