Morgan Poston
Professor Wilson
PHI 220 01 DT Ethics
20 November, 2015
We Tortured Some Folks…. Is it morally right to torture people? In a recent poll taken in over a half dozen countries it was found that there was a large amount of support for “justified torture” (Petersen). What this means is that a large portion of the worlds countries believe torture is acceptable in extreme situations. The ticking time bomb scenario is one of the most used arguments for torture (McCoy). Torture one person to save the lives of thousands? Or don’t torture the person, and thousands die. I would argue against the torture, but for now let’s look at what famous philosopher Jeremy Bentham might do. To begin with Bentham was an act-utilitarian (Russ, “Fundamentals of Ethics”). Which means he believes in bringing about the maximum amount of pleasure to everyone as whole. The idea is to find out how much pain or pleasure a situation causes and the extent at which it reaches, this is done with something called Hedonic calculus (Russ, “Ethical Life”). This is
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The only known instance that this happened and supposedly was averted due to torture was in Manila in 1995 when Abdul Hakim Murad was apprehended and then tortured (McCoy). This turned out to be totally fabricated, and it was later revealed that they learned all the information necessary within minutes of seizing him and his laptop, which coincidently had the entire plot for the bombing on it (McCoy). This man was held for 67 days, beaten repeatedly, and it’s reported that they put cigarettes out on his genitals (McCoy). For me this points out the obvious issue for abusing the power given to someone who is allowed to torture people. If you allow someone to commit harm to someone else or even worse, pay them to do it, they will likely become good at it. This could ruin their sense of morality. Then how can you trust them to the exact thing you wanted them to