PHIL 3000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Moral Evil, Lifesaving, Negative And Positive Rights
Document Summary
Problems w/ interrogational torture: torturers might not know whether victim has desired info, torturers might not know whether they have received all of the desired info. It"s easy for torturers to go too far . It may be morally impermissible to demand a victim to betray his/her cause, even if that cause is morally abhorrent: once one begins program of torture, it"s difficult to stop. Torture : there are conceivable cases where interrogational torture is morally permissible, but in reality, such cases arise rarely, if ever. Interrogational torture permissible only in cases where the harm that could be prevented by a rare instance of pure interrogational torture would be so enormous as to outweigh the cruelty of the torture itself (shue, torture ) Summary: even if torture is on rare occasions morally permissible, torture should remain in all circumstances illegal, only the gravest threats could ever justify the use of torture.