Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
In a thread yesterday on "enhanced interrogation techniques," Mollie linked to an article by philosopher Christopher Tollefsen. Tollefsen's argument is that a) torture is intrinsically wrong, and therefore never justified, and, b) that "enhanced interrogation," as defined by the Bush administration, represents torture.
This struck me as worth pondering. Tollefsen is a serious figure, and of course I respect Mollie's judgment. But on what argument, I wondered, could anyone wish we had never gathered the information that led to the slaying of Osama bin Laden?
Now that I've read and re-read it, the answer, I think, is on no good argument. I'm scarcely a trained philosopher, and it's quite possible that I'm dropping a logical stitch or two, but could anyone here at Ricochet who enjoys close argument take a moment to go through this with me?
"I begin," Tollefsen writes, "with the following normative claim:
human life and health is an intrinsic, and indeed, a basic, human good. That is to say, life and health constitute a fundamental aspect of human well-being; the possibility of the promotion of either provides not just a possibility but an opportunity, an offer of benefit. And the possibility of damage or destruction of either provides not just a possibility, but an evil to be avoided and, insofar as such damage or destruction is willed, a wrong not to be done. The normative principle that can be drawn from this practical truth is that in willing, one should never intend the damage or destruction of the life or health of another human being.
People shouldn't hurt other people. So far, so good. Tollefsen continues:
This principle is compatible with acts that will, in fact, damage or destroy human life: the use of force in self-defense, the decay of the body brought about by intense study, or the possibility of ill health consequent upon incarceration as punishment for one’s crimes. For none of these forms of damage need be intended; they are, if willed appropriately, willed only as side effects of some other reasonable activity.
Nothing there to raise any eyebrows, either. But then, in my judgment anyway, Tollefsen steps on a logical banana peel:
[T]he range of enhanced interrogation techniques looks very much like a strategy for breaking down hardened characters bit by bit; standing naked, shackled, deprived of sleep, kept awake with cold water and loud noise, prevented from cleaning oneself after defecation, and subject to painful (though not physically damaging) slaps and disorienting smacks against a wall—and then subject to repeated waterboarding over a course of weeks or months: this looks like precisely…the choice to disrupt an agent’s capacities for personal integrity by disrupting his control over his emotions, choices, self-awareness and self-image, connection to other human beings, and judgments.
If so, then neither legal distinctions between this and the infliction of severe pain and suffering, nor consequentialist judgments about national security, nor even reasonable awareness that these terrorists were bad people, and that the US was in a very difficult situation, making hard choices under considerable stress with, in most cases, the good of the country in view, should obscure the judgment that these approaches involved torture.
To call such techniques torture is, of course, to call them everywhere and always wrong. To which I respond, Hey, wait a minute, professor! Up there at the beginning of your argument you said that all kinds of nasty things are permissible as long as they're not willed as ends in themselves. In self-defense, you said, we may "damage or destroy" human life, just as long as what we're after isn't the damage or destruction for its own sake but for the sake of our self-defense.
Why should enhanced interrogation techniques--including, yes, the hard case, waterboarding--be any different? Does anyone suppose the CIA subjected Sheikh Mohammed Khalid to rough treatment, including waterboarding, just to get their jollies? Of course not. The CIA did what it did in the interest of national defense, and was, therefore, perfectly justified.
Doesn't taking Tollefsen on his own terms lead to an absurd result? Namely, that whereas it's quite all right to kill terrorists by firing rockets at them from unmanned drones, activating their gag reflexes by dripping water into their nostrils, under carefully controlled circumstances with trained medical personnel on hand, and causing them no permanent physical harm whatsoever, represents a crime that cries out to heaven. And doesn't any argument that produces an absurd result have to have slipped up somewhere?
Someone--anyone--help me out here. What am I missing?
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Jun '10
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
Little known fact: IF you could control your panic response, you can defeat waterboarding. The defense is to completely relax, as if meditating, breathing slowly, evenly. Easier said than done. It's because you panic that it feels like drowning.
Dec '10
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
There are many ways to blow apart the case against waterboarding, which you've successfully done here, Peter. I would only add,
- given the choice between waterboarding (performed on 3 people) and the death of multitudes of innocents, Tollefsen would choose death.
- if it is torture (an act of willful permanent harm), why do we do it to thousands of servicemen?
And I'm sure there are more arguments, but they're only effective with rational people. People who are intoxicated by their virtue (David Horowitz's phrase) are unable to be rational.
May '10
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
Philosophers have a real world disconnect and Tollefsen is no different.
Peter calls Tollefsen "serious," I guess, because he is a Catholic scholar. But here's a guy that rejects Lila Rose and her group Live Action because they rely on sting operations to reveal truths about Planned Parenthood and sting operations are "lying" and St. Augustine and St. Aquinas said all lies were bad (Running the whole gamut of Saints from A to A).
What would Tollefsen say about military intelligence deceptions? (God, we lied to Hitler! Resurrect the Third Reich so we can surrender!) or sting operations that brought down crime syndicates (Free the Gottis! Free the Gambinos!)?
Sorry, Tolly. There ain't no perfect and clean life. Sometimes you gotta play dirty to win and preserve the greater good.
Jan '11
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
Pre-note: This topic is a prime candidate for philosophical conversation; it’s better to do philosophy through interactive conversation than by offering fixed “verdicts.” Unlike the law, which requires fixed judgments, philosophy will evolve and modify as it goes along.
In other words, this could be fun.
----------------------------
It would seem absurd that we can kill a soldier but we’re not allowed to cause him discomfort once he’s captured. That presumes that killing is the worst thing we could do to someone, and so if we’re justified in doing the worst, we must also be justified to do everything short of the worst. But it isn’t that simple.
The distinction is that we’re permitted to kill a soldier on the battlefield, because on the battlefield he’s trying to kill us. Once he’s captured, however, our justification to use ultimate force no longer applies. We make a moral distinction between the battlefield and custody.
After all, Josef Mengele took captured soldiers and performed experiments on them, which we consider an atrocity. Just because we were justified in killing on the battlefield doesn’t mean that it’s open season, and that anything goes.
May '10
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
Peter,
You are spot on. Logically, he takes a leap. There is no chain of reasoning of if-this-than-that to lead to his conclusion. He doesn't really define torture and then show that enhanced techniques fit in to his definition, he just states his conviction that it is torture. I don't buy it either.
Of course there are things we know without doubt to be torture. Pulling out fingernails, burning, rape, electrocution, etc.--things that cause permanent damage, as IIRC it is defined in the Geneva Conventions. Then there are things most of us don't consider torture, like imprisonment, maybe even with hard labor. In between is a vast gray area, with a possibly moving dividing line.
It seems to me that people making the argument that enhanced interrogation techniques constitute torture are merely making a statement of opinion. If we define torture, as they want to, as psychological pain or damage, instead of strictly physical, we're on that similar slippery slope that allows abortions up to the point of delivery because of the wide definition of "health of the mother" to include psychological distress at being pregnant.
Make of that what you may.
May '10
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
Agreed, all.
Sep '10
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
I see a definition and thus a false premise problem in the first sentence quoted--how does Tollefsen define "human" and are terrorists not merely inhumane, but also inhuman, given that they, like, say, a serial killer, have used up their "human rights quotient," if you will.
Let's have some more fun with definitions, shall we?
Waterboarding -- Not torture. In fact, used as a demonstrative training technique for our own armed services.
Sharia Law--e.g., Raping a woman, then physically further punishing her severely, often publicly and to death or near-death -- Torture.
Aug '10
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
His logical leap -- based on what you have here, I'll have to read his full comment -- is the addition of additional standards regarding what constitutes the ethical violation "the choice to disrupt an agent’s capacities for personal integrity by disrupting his control over his emotions, choices, self-awareness and self-image, connection to other human beings, and judgments."
It is likely that his initial description of the sanctity of life includes the above quote for all of his arguments, but he didn't include it earlier so it feels like "base stealing." If one agrees that violating a person's "control over his emotions, choices, self-awareness and self-image" etc. is an ethical violation than the enhanced interrogation techniques are indeed torture. KSM wasn't waterboarded every time we wanted information from him, he was subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques until he "broke." He later gave valid intelligence in order to receive rewards like "fish filet's." We was broken and reprogrammed by the process.
Given that the indoctrination process into the cult of terrorism potentially included a similar reprogramming of his initial psyche it is possible our work was "deprogramming," but it is still disturbing.
Aug '10
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
The question is whether the destruction of a person's individual will and sense of self is torture. I think this is a question worth asking. It then puts into the question whether such actions are situational, whether there are higher moral imperatives to the Kantian one etc.
One need not accept the universal imperative offered. One can accept that the actions were torture and also necessary.
May '10
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
I think his argument hinges on this idea that some actions, although resulting in an objectively worse outcome than water boarding (i.e, killing, or even imprisoning for indefinite periods of time) do not insult a person's mental integrity. He's saying we must never mess with people's heads.
I think this absolute prohibition is morally hypersensitive, but if we don't address that point, we'll be forever talking past him.
Jul '10
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
Is "welfare" on the list?
May '10
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
Try out this scenario: a prosecutor offers a defendant a reduced sentence if he rats on his partner. A defendant may have bad motives for not wanting to rat (fear of retribution, hatred of the police) but also a genuine sense of personal loyalty, which is admirable. If the defendant yields to pressure, he may be haunted for the rest of his life by a sense of guilt--by a sense that his moral integrity was violated by external pressure.
That coercion is a far cry from waterboarding, but is it qualitatively different from what Tollefsen says we must never, ever do?
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
Post 1
Peter, I read this piece many many months ago and came away unpersuaded. I didn't like the way it began by refering to "torture memos." This is a disservice, and precludes an honest argument: you may not agree with the conclusions, but anyone who reads those memos can see that the people who wrote them were wrestling with serious moral issues and trying to draw lines. And they did draw in fact draw lines.
There are many specifics here that can be disputed. I also think he skirts over, like almost all the critics do, a serious argument by suggesting that all opposition is consequentialist: end justifies the means. Certainly as a Catholic I don't believe that. As a Catholic who has inherited a long just-war tradition, however, I know that ends are not irrelevant to means. In fact one of the questions asked is likelihood of success. That is not consequentialist to ask or argue that: it is serious moral philosophy.
There are a few other things. Yes, the Army Field Manual proscribes it. That's because we don't want some 2nd lieutenant doing it on the field of battle.
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
Post 2
It seems to me that the professor would benefit from reading Marc Thiessen's book on how waterboarding was actually administered. There are many myths and falsehoods. We except that there are some things that are always wrong: cutting off a body part, for example. But that doesn't mean that a captured terrorist gets full rights. We used to make distinctions between, say, a spy caught out of uniform and a prisoner of war. These are valuable.
I have much more to add but will await the comments. But one huge common sense thing seems to loom: If this is torture, we do it to our own troops as part of their training, and many journalists volunteered to undergo it themselves. If waterboarding is intrinsically evil -- ie., in every case, regardless of circumstances -- so would its application in military training or a journalistic endeavor.
In short, I'm highly skeptical of moral reasoning that is supposed to help people make careful distinctions in real-life circumstances that proceeds from almost all abstractions and not the actual facts and circumstances of life.
Sep '10
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
You may find this page 2 discussion in which I hairsplit with John Yoo over Tollefson's Kantian proclivities helpful to the cause.
Oct '10
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
I always find this conversation about what is and isn't torture amusing. I prefer to think of it it terms of surviving or being wiped off the earth by a group of caliphate seeking lunatics. I'm pretty sure we'll get our dignity back or learn to live with the shame if we survive. It reminds me of the Nicholson/Cruise court confrontation in 'A Few Good Men'. Split all the hairs you want but I want that Marine Colonel pulling out fingernails if it means we don't have another 9/11. I'll pull if needs be.
Jun '10
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
Torture for one might be pleasure for another. How many poeple would choose short term intense pain over long periods of easier discomfort? Do we not torture people when we take away their freedom with a jail sentance. Does jail not affect "the choice to disrupt an agent’s capacities for personal integrity by disrupting his control over his emotions, choices, self-awareness and self-image, connection to other human beings, and judgments"? Philosophy works well on campus or in the serenity of a mountaintop retreat. These are hard men who wish to kill, by any vile means, our wives, children, parents, and friends. I thank God for the John Yoo's and the CIA and the Elite forces who work through terrible (might I say torturous) conditions to protect us.
Jan '11
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
So does that mean, philosophy is nice, but when important matters are at stake, anything and everything goes?
Philosophy isn't about mountaintop retreats. It's about the logic of how to answer real life situations where values are in conflict.
Oct '10
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
KC Mulville
So does that mean, philosophy is nice, but when important matters are at stake, anything and everything goes?
Philosophy isn't about mountaintop retreats. It's about the logic of how to answer real life situations where values are in conflict. · Jun 3 at 11:38am
when survival is at stake, yes, anything and everything goes. Apart from that then we can haggle.
Apr '11
Re: Tollefsen on Torture. Huh?
I would argue that enhanced interrogation with regard to the War on Terror is, in essence, self-defense, and therefore justifiable under Mr. Tollefsen's own logical foundations. We were using these techniques because we were being directly threatened. This leads into another argument about what level of force, etc is prudent when you're defending yourself, but I don't think water-boarding was over the line. Almost any action could be considered torture if done to the extreme. Leave it to the Left to muddy the term so it essentially loses it's meaning.