When do the ends justify the means?

[Bob Kelso]

This whole debate comes from the fact that we want to hurt certain people who we think deserve it. So we go to clearly hypothetical lengths to justify our abhorrent fantasies.

What if they genuinely know nothing? Would you be happy to be tortured if someone else honestly believed you were the one with important information? Anything is justifiable until it happens to you.

I know myself, and more to the point, my emotional state well enough to have provided an honest answer based on a hypothetical. 

I am not a violent man, but if violence held the key to my children's cage then I could travel that road if given no other recourse. If that suggests to you that I hold "abhorrent fantasies" then you're welcome to make that statement. You'd just be wrong, at least in my case.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

There's now very little doubt that torture fails. The person subjected to torture is going to tell the torturer ANYthing in order to make the torture stop.

Take the scenario of the abducted child: The sick fuck who took the kid is going to get an even bigger kick out of watching you run round, going to some phony location, while the child slowly starves to death or dies of exposure.

The irony is that people who have information 'worth' eliciting via torture are also the sort of people least likely to tell you anything you seriously need to know as a result of being tortured.

Boru

[pocaracas]

Just to lighten the mood!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmeF2rzsZSU

[Chad32]

Personally, I would torture the shit out of someone whom I knew was involved in the disappearance of a missing child and had knowledge of the their whereabouts. Moral? Maybe not....wouldn't even be my concern. Upholding my sense of morality wouldn't be the objective. The goal would be to get it done...and find the kid. People that abduct and rape children forfeit any and all moral consideration in my opinion.

If someone kidnapped my nieces, and I caught him, you'd be sure I'd make him regret touching them. It would be wrong, but I can't say I would never do it.

Messing with kids, I believe, is something that will get you killed in jail too. even other convicts don't want you around.

[pocaracas]

That's why you let the police handle it.
And if it's the family of an officer that's involved, then that officer doesn't work on that case.

Hollywood is not real life!
Sheesh! I learned this after about a year after watching the nightmare on elm street, when I was 9.

[robvalue]

Trying to construct a scenario in which I would find torture acceptable is very difficult.

To even consider it, I would need to be sure beyond all reasonable doubt that:

1) This person definitely knows something vital and time dependent regarding a life or death situation
2) This person won't give me the information any other way
3) The torture will produce accurate information

Even if I did somehow have assurances about all three of these, I still wouldn't simply say it is acceptable. Understandable, more like. But this is too contrived to be in any way realistic.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Well, that's a very specific hypothetical, and perhaps designed to elicit a particular answer? I mean: how could you know the child is alive if you have his captor in your power? If your prisoner was only a henchman, how can your guarantee that his information is up-to-date? What if his cohorts move the child while you're bashing his face in?

No, torture doesn't admit those possibilities. It should be abjured.

I only answered the hypothetical as it was presented in the OP. The child is alive, but soon to die and I have  the perpetrator with me. You've added several other factors to this hypothetical, enough to change it into a completely different scenario.

No I haven't, I've only extracted the logical conclusions.

If there is only one captor, you cannot know if the child is alive or not.

If there is more than one captor, and you only have one under torture, you cannot know whether the child is still in the same spot, as one of the henchmen may have moved the hostage.

I haven't added anything, but I have adduced a couple of things.

I can't imagine that most people wouldn't be willing to fuck up some guy, in order to find out where he stashed a missing kid. If it were there own child, even more so. The innate drive to protect their child would be all-encompassing, even as they knew what they were doing was wrong.

I'm a father, myself. While I would obviously do whatever I could to save my son, I wouldn't use torture to do so. It gives misleading information as often as it gives accurate information, and in a hostage situation, that would make torture counterproductive.

I'm against torture on moral grounds, but not on moral grounds alone.

I'm sorry if you take this to mean that I'm saying that torture is okay, because I'm not.

[Athene]

I only answered the hypothetical as it was presented in the OP. The child is alive, but soon to die and I have  the perpetrator with me. You've added several other factors to this hypothetical, enough to change it into a completely different scenario.

No I haven't, I've only extracted the logical conclusions.

If there is only one captor, you cannot know if the child is alive or not.

If there is more than one captor, and you only have one under torture, you cannot know whether the child is still in the same spot, as one of the henchmen may have moved the hostage.

I haven't added anything, but I have adduced a couple of things.

I can't imagine that most people wouldn't be willing to fuck up some guy, in order to find out where he stashed a missing kid. If it were there own child, even more so. The innate drive to protect their child would be all-encompassing, even as they knew what they were doing was wrong.

I'm a father, myself. While I would obviously do whatever I could to save my son, I wouldn't use torture to do so. It gives misleading information as often as it gives accurate information, and in a hostage situation, that would make torture counterproductive.

I'm against torture on moral grounds, but not on moral grounds alone.

I'm sorry if you take this to mean that I'm saying that torture is okay, because I'm not.

[Athene]

I only answered the hypothetical as it was presented in the OP. The child is alive, but soon to die and I have  the perpetrator with me. You've added several other factors to this hypothetical, enough to change it into a completely different scenario.

No I haven't, I've only extracted the logical conclusions.

If there is only one captor, you cannot know if the child is alive or not.

If there is more than one captor, and you only have one under torture, you cannot know whether the child is still in the same spot, as one of the henchmen may have moved the hostage.

I haven't added anything, but I have adduced a couple of things.

I can't imagine that most people wouldn't be willing to fuck up some guy, in order to find out where he stashed a missing kid. If it were there own child, even more so. The innate drive to protect their child would be all-encompassing, even as they knew what they were doing was wrong.

I'm a father, myself. While I would obviously do whatever I could to save my son, I wouldn't use torture to do so. It gives misleading information as often as it gives accurate information, and in a hostage situation, that would make torture counterproductive.

I'm against torture on moral grounds, but not on moral grounds alone.

I'm sorry if you take this to mean that I'm saying that torture is okay, because I'm not.

Not sure what happened here. I think your post may have been cut off. I'm not certain.

NOTE: Crap. This keeps posting as a reply to myself. I'm not going to try and post it again.

[brewer]

My position would change based on the specifics of each case.