A frequent criticism of the torture scenario in Should You Kill The Fat Man? is that it is not realistic.The criticism tends to be that torture isn’t effective in the real world, therefore, (a) the scenario is flawed, since it states there’s a 75% chance that torturing the fat man will be effective; and (b) there is no contradiction in claiming that torture is always wrong, and yet thinking the fat man should be tortured, since there could be no real world equivalent of the fat man torture scenario.
This criticism is misplaced for a number of reasons.
The first thing to say is it just isn’t true that thought experiments, such as the torture scenario here, have to be straightforwardly realistic (if this were true, then many of philosophy’s most important thought experiments – for example, Judith Jarvis Thompson’s “famous violinist” thought experiment – just wouldn’t get off the ground). Although thought experiments are designed to tell us something about the nature of things (including, as in this case, our intuitions about moral choices), it isn’t necessary for them to replicate the details of empirical reality. Put simply, thought experiments have to be logically coherent, but they don’t have to describe events and situations that are actually possible.
This means that even if it were the case that the torture scenario in Should You Kill The Fat Man? is unrealistic, this wouldn’t be a problem in principle: it’s entirely possible for us to learn something about the way we see moral choices by seeing how we would react to a hypothetical situation.
The second thing to say, though, is that it isn’t clear that the torture situation is unrealistic in the sense that we can be confident it could never occur. Yes, it’s true that there is plenty of testimony – if not evidence – that torture is ineffective. But it’s also true that there is no consensus on this issue; and also that while it might be true that torture isn’t generally effective, it’s a much harder case to make that it is never effective, or that there will never be circumstances where one might come to the conclusion that torture would be the most effective technique to elicit particular information. There is enough individual variation in the way that people respond to situations to make this kind of blanket claim highly suspect.
The final point to make here is that even if it were true that torture is never the most effective interrogation technique, it doesn’t follow there is no contradiction in claiming that torture is always wrong, and yet thinking the fat man should be tortured (where the argument is that there is no contradiction because de facto one would never come across a situation in the real world that is equivalent to the fat man torture scenario). The reason it doesn’t follow is because the question about torture at the beginning of Should You Kill The Fat Man? doesn’t just ask whether torture is always morally wrong, it asks whether it is always morally wrong in principle. This makes all the difference: if torture is always morally wrong as a matter of principle, then it means that regardless of the consequences it is never morally justified. To put it simply, principles are not contingent upon outcomes. Therefore, anybody who claims that torture is morally wrong as a matter of principle should not think the fat man should be tortured even in a ticking bomb situation.
This is interesting as I find a lot of these scenarios unconvincing and haven’t quite worked out why. My feeling is that a ‘thought experiment’ isn’t really an experiment, as an experiment to me involves interacting with ‘reality’ rather than just your own ideas. But I guess you can reply that ‘ideas’ are a part of ‘reality’ in a broader sense.
Overall though, I find that historical evidence carries more weight with me. The evidence for ‘what would we think if’ has to be of form ‘what did we think when’. But I worry that that makes me a ‘historicist’, which is not reckoned a good thing, though I always thought Collingwood pulled it off quite well.
@Stephen – Well, there is certainly an argument that thought experiments tend to be too divorced from reality to tell us anything very interesting. As you suggest, it’s certainly possible that as we add in the “messiness” of the real world that what we would think might well be different from what it seems we’d think going on our responses to abstracted, imaginary situations.
But actually, if that’s right, if there’s a difference between how we respond to a thought experiment, and real historical experiments, then it seems that we are learning something from a thought experiment – precisely that the messiness of the real world makes a difference.
I just finished a book chapter on this topic, and actually have some experimental data that speaks to it! (The short version of the story is that the idealizations in the standard ticking time-bomb scenario don’t matter; if you change the scenarios so that the idealizations go away–at least as I construe them–the results are the same.) There’s also discussion of some of these methodological issues. Anyway, if interested, see here, and comments welcome!:
http://files.allhoff.org/research/5_Ticking%20Time-Bomb%20Methodology.pdf
Best,
Fritz
Thanks Fritz. I had a quick look at your chapter. It looks extremely interesting. I’ll certainly read it. Thanks again.
What still bothers me about the final point is that while torture may always be morally wrong, allowing a million innocents to die when there’s a chance you can prevent it is morally worse. I see it as a lesser-of-two-evils scenario. I’m curious how many people would agree to the statement, “It is always morally wrong in principal to allow harm to come to someone through inaction.” That would also apply to the first scenario, where inaction would lead to four more deaths than diverting the train.
Kyle – With regards to your lesser of two evils point have a look at the blog post preceding this one: “Morally wrong, but still obligatory?”
I’m sure a lot of people would agree with the statement that it is always morally wrong in principle to allow harm to come to someone through inaction (though, of course, there are all sorts of nasty complications here in that one could argue this would oblige each one of us to take positive steps to eradicate poverty, etc).
There is a simpler problem with the faux-contradiction about finding torture to be morally wrong and the fat man torture experiment: I, and I suspect many others who have answered that torture is wrong, find it to be always wrong *because* it does not lead to life-saving answers.
In other words, the fictitious universe described in the final question (where torture can gain information that cannot be acquired otherwise) would be one where I would likely feel that torture is occasionally justifiable rather than always immoral.
@Marc – It’s not a “faux-contradiction”. If you’re against torture *in principle*, then you’re not against it *because* of any x, unless this x is logically necessitated by torture. Therefore, if you’re against it because it “does not lead to life-saving answers”, you’re not against it in principle, and you shouldn’t have responded that you are against it in principle.
I handled this objection in the blog post. You just seem to have ignored the argument.
The only way to make this argument work is to claim that somehow torture logically necessitates its own failure. But, if that were the case, the ticking bomb scenario would be literally nonsensical, and it isn’t.
I don’t think that’s right; or we don’t agree on what “in principle” means.
The operating principle that causes me to object to torture is that causing harm without necessity is wrong; the same principle that drives the distinction between sticking a needle in someone to inject you with a life-saving medication vs sticking a needle in for no result other than to cause pain.
Your basing your reasoning on the premise that the /result/ of an act do not affect its morality. I base mine on the premise that the results are the /only/ basis of its morality.
Sorry, but that is just a bad argument, Marc.
If the principle is *causing harm without necessity is wrong”, then it demonstrates that you’re not against torture in principle, since there is nothing in the nature (or concept) of torture that necessitates that its harm is unnecessary.
The very fact that you’re looking at results means you’re not against torture in and of itself.
This argument is a little daft, really. If it’s results, it ain’t a matter of principle (unless the results are logically necessitated by whatever it is that causes them). What’s more, it is precisely this sort of moral calculus that people who are opposed to torture as a matter of principle want to avoid. If you look at some of the anti-torture writing on the internet, you’ll find that this point is made very strongly. These people are against torture regardless of the results, which is what makes it a principled objection.
I’m more than a little disappointed that you would chose to resort to ad hominem attacks rather than engage the fundamental difference here.
You’re stating “If it’s results, it ain’t a matter of principle” as though this was an observation not open to question. You might want to read up on consequentialism, particularly about teleological ethics which poses interesting and valid arguments why that assertion would be exactly wrong.
When you say “to put it simply, principles are not contingent upon outcomes”, you are begging the question of millenia of valid philosophical enquiry by fiat.
I think it’s more than a little insulting that you would dismiss a perfectly valid and considered ethical position as inconsistent simply because it isn’t based on deontology, or criticism as “daft” because it doesn’t reach your conclusions.
Marc
1. Saying an argument is bad is *precisely* not an ad hominem. Please look up the meaning of the expression, and then retract your accusation;
2. I’m not begging the question of millennia of philosophical enquiry by fiat.
Consequentialism exactly doesn’t hold that acts are right or wrong as a matter of principle, but rather that they are right or wrong in terms of their outcomes. Of course, there is a principle involved in that calculation (e.g., maximise happiness, or whatever), but it isn’t a matter of acts *themselves* being right or wrong (in principle).
You seem to be arguing that because there is some principle involved in determining whether torture is right or wrong; and because de facto it is always wrong in terms of this principle, then it is wrong in principle.
But that is a *bad* argument (and that’s not an ad hominem). So, for example, if I say:
“Lying is morally wrong as a matter of principle.”
And then someone asks whether it is okay to lie in order to spare somebody’s feelings, and I say:
“Oh yes, that’s fine”.
I’m saying something contradictory.
If I then say – “Ah, but what I meant is that lying is wrong if and only if it has outcome x’ – it is true that my claim that lying is wrong refers to a principle on any particular occasion, but it isn’t true that lying in and of itself is wrong as a matter of principle.
Presumably, your counterargument here would be something to the effect – “Ah yes, but torture always violates principle x”.
Yes, that might be true (even though, for the reasons I mentioned in my blog post, it’s actually extremely implausible that it’s always true of torture), but it’s not relevant. It remains only a contingent fact about torture that it violates some principle x. It isn’t logically entailed by the nature of torture. Therefore, torture, in and of itself, isn’t ruled out in principle (it just so happens that it is contingently the case – arguably – that it always violates a principle).
If you don’t see the argument here, imagine this scenario:
Marc says: Torture is wrong if and only if it causes unnecessary suffering (which is your position);
Mark says: Torture is wrong regardless of whether it causes unnecessary suffering.
Now which of these people is against torture as a matter of principle? I think it is absolutely obvious that it’s Mark and not you (Marc).
So, I repeat, your argument is bad. And I repeat again, that is not an ad hominem.
Marc, I don’t think I’ve got much else to say about this, but you’re welcome to have the last word.
I think the primary problem is one of clarity. You’re relying on politically charged situations that many people have already made their minds up about. Ordinarily when asked about the morality of torture, people are precisely determining whether your premises are correct- i.e. whether the torture is likely to prevent terrorist attacks. It’s possible for someone to let go of that prior belief and accept your premises, but you’re asking a whole lot of intellectual discipline for them to do so. I think your results in this case are determined, not by moral intuitions, but on the ability of people to accept premises which they believe to be untrue and reason from there. Which, presumably, is not what you’re trying to test.
I think this differs from the other thought experiments. It’s easy enough to accept premises when the whole of the thought experiment is novel to us. When we’re asked to accept premises that we’ve already thought about, and possibly rejected as factors in our thinking, it’s much more difficult. It’s why your abortion questions ask about people spores and window screens and being hooked up to a soccer player rather than fetuses and condoms an pregnancy.
I can’t think of one, but I think it would be possible to bring up the torture angle in a less politically charged context, which will improve the accuracy of the test.
For me, I selected that torture is always wrong in major part because it is ineffective. I guess I misread the question. I don’t believe it would be wrong in all situations if it was actually effective. But since I don’t believe it is effective, I think it is wrong. I have other reasons too, but that’s a main one.
Otherwise, I would have been consistent.
Also, your test said I had “new found consistency” on the answer to the second question, although I had not been inconsistent on the first question and that annoyed me a little.
Anyway, thanks for the quiz!
If I remember right, the question asks whether Torture is wrong as a matter of principle. The very fact you say you don’t believe it would be wrong if it were effective means you don’t think it’s wrong as a matter of principle. (So you can contrast your position to that of somebody who thinks that torture would be wrong in all circumstances even if it were effective.)
“However, there is a complication here: notwithstanding your previous responses, you claimed (right at the beginning of this activity) that if it is possible to save the lives of innocent people without reducing the sum total of human happiness, and without putting your own life at risk, then there is a moral obligation to do so. It is certainly possible to argue that torturing the fat man is justified in these terms if it prevents, or there is good reason to think that it might prevent, the detonation of a nuclear device. If this is the case, then perhaps you need to revisit your blanket opposition to torture.”
Just interested as to why torturing the fat guy doesn’t reduce the sum total of human happiness? Is he not human? Or does torture not constitute an attack on happiness? Or something else I’m missing…? If it’s the case that the million-humans’ vs one fat man’s happiness then we’re back to the earlier moral relativism and I might as well have chucked the heifer in front of the train!
@Leigh – Yes, it’s the sum total thing that’s crucial. You’ll certainly reduce his happiness, but overall – assuming it prevents the nuclear device being detonated – it’ll increase the sum total of happiness. This is the standard classical utilitarian position (i.e., Jeremy Bentham et al).