PHIL 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Alan Dershowitz
23 Dec 2015
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Two perspectives: agree to ticking bomb scenarios vs disagree to all use of torture. Henry shue: disagrees to all use of torture (purist approach) Terroristic torture: used by regimes to strike fear in dissidents/opponents; morally wrong. Interrogational torture: torture for the extraction of information. To kill is worse than torture; if killing is allowed, hurting should be devil"s advocate. Amount of harm: not the sole consideration (if a quantitative measure is possible) Jus in bello: harm of non-combatants must be minimal; defenseless. Soldiers can kill each other because both are armed, fair fight. Under torture, one is defenseless as a civilian; violates fair fight principle. Torture within constraints objection: in many cases there is more than surrender that is wanted from the victim; victim has a choice to comply. The wrong person could be chosen as the ticking bomb terrorist. An innocent cannot do anything to make the torture stop! There is no way to distinguish btwn someone pretending/genuine^
