In Terrorism, Ticking Time-Bombs, and Torture, Fritz Allhoff demonstrates the weakness of the case against torture; while allowing that torture constitutes a moral wrong, he nevertheless argues that, in exceptional cases, it represents the ...

The general consensus among philosophers is that the use of torture is never justified. In Terrorism, Ticking Time-Bombs, and Torture, Fritz Allhoff demonstrates the weakness of the case against torture; while allowing that torture constitutes a moral wrong, he nevertheless argues that, in exceptional cases, it represents the lesser of two evils. Allhoff does not take this position lightly. He begins by examining the way terrorism challenges traditional norms, discussing the morality of various practices of torture, and critically (...) exploring the infamous ticking time-bomb scenario. After carefully considering these issues from a purely philosophical perspective, he turns to the empirical ramifications of his arguments, addressing criticisms of torture and analyzing the impact its adoption could have on democracy, institutional structures, and foreign policy. The crucial questions of how to justly authorize torture and how to set limits on its use make up the final section of this timely, provocative, and carefully argued book. (shrink)

Although standard ethical views categorize intentional torture as morally wrong, the ticking time bomb scenario is frequently offered as a legitimate counter-example that justifies the use of torture. In this scenario, a bomb has been placed in a city by a terrorist, and the only way to defuse the bomb in time is to torture a terrorist in custody for information. TTB scenarios appeal to a utilitarian “greater good” justification, yet critics maintain that the (...) utilitarian structure depends on a questionable set of hidden assumptions. Three experiments were conducted to investigate endorsement of torture when these hidden assumptions were violated. In Experiment 1, results indicated that endorsement varied as a function of the success likelihood of torture and its alternatives. In Experiment 2, people found torture to be more acceptable, less wrong, and more obligatory when the suspect in custody was described as a “terrorist” than when he was described simply as an individual, and when he was described as culpable as opposed to innocent. These results are more consistent with retributive justice than utilitarian “greater good” concerns. The results of Experiment 3 indicated that utilitarian decision profiles were not associated with lower levels of empathic concern but were instead associated with personal distress and the ability to transpose oneself into a fictitious character's experience. Across the three experiments, deontologists were more likely to reject torture than utilitarians. (shrink)

I make two arguments in this paper. First, I argue briefly that the ticking time bomb case is unrealistic and as such is liable to mislead us badly on the ground. Second, after conceding that the conditions of the ticking time bomb case might someday be realized, I argue that it may in fact be morally permissible to torture a terrorist in this case on the grounds of self-defense. My reason for making this argument (...) is that rejecting torture in even the ticking time bomb case risks discrediting objections to torture in other, more realistic cases. Yet the principle established by the ticking time bomb case is of extremely limited application. Given the extreme improbability that the conditions of this case could ever be realized, public authorities who sanction torturing someone should have to bear a heavy burden of proof that this decision was justified on the grounds of self-defense. (shrink)

Despite intensive work by human rights organizations to garner global condemnation of torture, in the years since the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay were exposed, support in the United States for the use of torture has increased, and torture also attracts significant support in many other countries. This paper seeks to understand the affective work that the ‘ticking time bomb scenario’ and its imagined dramatization does in shaping how torture is understood. The literature is replete (...) with debates over whether the scenario distorts or accurately describes the actual circumstances in which decisions about torture occur, and the moral criteria that ought to be brought to the decision-making process. In describing the scenario as a “thought experiment,” however, these analyses obscure the work that this imagined scene does in shaping how people evaluate the use of torture – work that takes place at the affective and somatic levels. Induced into a process of racially inflected and affectively laden identifications and aversions, the paper suggests that the “subjects” of this thought experiment do very little thinking and thus fact-based or logical counter-arguments are of little use in shifting evaluations of torture. Rather, we need to understand the affective work that somatically grounded stories do in normalizing and inducing subjects to embrace torture. The paper is particularly interested in how imagined scenarios can be used to institute affects that freeze and immobilize, and how we might construct other narratives to encourage more dynamic and fluid forms of affective experience and identification. Exploring the link between narratives and more dynamic affects may offer more productive strategies for encouraging people to shift positions as they confront new evidence and encounter other experiences and bodies. (shrink)

This paper analyzes "ticking time bomb" scenarios in the discursive legitimation of torture and other coercive interrogation techniques. Judith Butler proposes a Foucauldian framework to suggest that Adminstration policies can be read as the irruption of sovereignty within governmentality. Rereading Foucault, I suggest that the policies could equally be understood as an exercise of governmentality, i.e., the subordination of juridical law to economy. I then propose as a reconciliation of these readings that time bomb scenarios (...) serve rhetorically to make the exercise of arbitrary power Butler identifies appear as an exercise of governmentality; sanitized of complications, coercive interrogation appears efficient. (shrink)

This article uses the ‘Ticking Bomb Scenario’ as a starting point for a broader discussion of what I term the ‘liberal narrative of speed’, the argument within liberal thought that the accelerating pace of events in the world requires a transition of authority from slow-moving, democratic legislative bodies, to energetic, efficient and unitary executives. However, this article argues that the source of this transfer of power is not because of any structural misfit between democracy and acceleration . Instead, (...) through an investigation of the ontology of speed I argue that speed produces not a functional threat to democratic politics, but an existential one. Acceleration unsettles stable political identities, and produces a time of uncertainty, in which people are wary of engaging in democratic debate and compromise, preferring instead the certainty of unitary executive leadership. In this regards the anti-democratic tendency of acceleration is to be located in the way in which it inculcates a sense of ressentiment against a future that is contingent and uncertainty. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Dershowitz's Argument and the Ticking Bomb Who Tortures? Effectiveness and Time Knowledge and Necessity The Ticking Bomb Scenario: Conclusion.

This timely and passionate book is the first to address itself to Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz’s controversial arguments for the limited use of interrogational torture and its legalisation. Argues that the respectability Dershowitz's arguments confer on the view that torture is a legitimate weapon in the war on terror needs urgently to be countered Takes on the advocates of torture on their own utilitarian grounds Timely and passionately written, in an accessible, jargon-free style Forms part of the provocative and (...) timely _Blackwell Public Philosophy_ series. (shrink)

This timely and passionate book is the first to address itself to Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz’s controversial arguments for the limited use of interrogational torture and its legalisation. Argues that the respectability Dershowitz's arguments confer on the view that torture is a legitimate weapon in the war on terror needs urgently to be countered Takes on the advocates of torture on their own utilitarian grounds Timely and passionately written, in an accessible, jargon-free style Forms part of the provocative and (...) timely _Blackwell Public Philosophy_ series. (shrink)

Ticking time-bomb cases famously—or infamously—invite us to imagine a scenario wherein the torture of one guilty terrorist will lead to the acquisition of information that can be used to save the lives of many innocents. Despite the contemporary focus on such cases, they have a long tradition, dating to the early 1800s. And, throughout their history, they have appeared in various guises, from the literary to the public to the philosophical. The principal moral question suggested by these (...) cases is whether one harm can be effected such that a worse one is not; while there is certainly dissent, most moral philosophers would answer this question in the affirmative. That said, there is substantial doubt as to whether torture would be the lesser harm or, more generally, whether ticking time-bomb cases gain any purchase in the real world or are otherwise relegated to philosophical fiction. But even if they gain such purchase, then what? In other words, even if torture can be morally justified in exceptional cases, should we authorize it? I n the literature—and conceptually—there are three basic approaches to authorizing torture. The first is not to authorize it at all, which is to say that torture—even if justified—requires some sort of punishable civil disobedience . Another approach is to authorize torture ex ante, such as through torture warrants. On this approach, torture remains prohibited except for when a judge grants permission for its application. Torture warrants have been defended by Alan Dershowitz, and we will evaluate that debate . Finally, torture can be legitimized ex post, which is to say that torture remains illegal but can nevertheless be justified or excused; our discussion will focus on the justifications of self-defense and necessity. (shrink)

One potentially morally justified use of torture is found in philanthropic torture of a perpetrator (PTP): scenarios in which a perpetrator has instigated significant pending suffering against innocents and in which the suffering can be prevented by means of the perpetrator’s cooperation. These situations involve a clash of two intuitions: that torture is in some strong and obvious sense absolutely morally wrong, and that torture or harm of an immoral perpetrator may be permissible to prevent equally abhorrent, if not greater, (...) moral wrongs. My view is that a dually grounded view—permissible on theoretical grounds but wrong on practical grounds—can do justice to the conflicting intuitions we have about torture in cases of PTP. Further, I hold that practical “absolutism” will only be “mostly” or “likely” absolute, but that we should accept as adequate this “near absolutism”—it will give us the practical result we seek while also satisfying the intuition that we may act in otherwise untoward ways to prevent horrific moral harms. (shrink)

Biotech Time-Bomb is a probing analysis of the orgins, transformations, and prospects of the Western mentality behind genetic engineering and similar strategies for manipulating the basic elements of life. It is the first media ecology critique of the control paradigm now dominant in developed socities, and a clarion call for a cross-cultural dialogue. Beyond demonstrating how the side-effects of new technologies usually turn out to be their main effects, the book also highlights alternative perspectives from other cultures and (...) urges renewed attention to the inexhaustible resourcefulness of life itself. (shrink)

Although the term "torture lite" is frequently used to distinguish between physically mutilating torture and certain interrogation methods that are supposedly less severe, the distinction is not recognized in international law.

The most common argument in favor of torture in the current literature is the ticking bomb argument. It asks us to imagine a case where only torture can prevent the detonation of a bomb that will kill millions. In this paper, I argue that the seeming effectiveness of this argument rests on two things: 1) the underdetermined semantic content of the term ‘torture,’ and 2) a philosophical attitude that regards the empirical facts about torture as irrelevant. Once (...) we pay attention to the facts about torture, and particularly about the role time plays in actual torture, the ticking bomb argument becomes incoherent, and hence cannot provide a basis for accepting torture. (shrink)

'Overpopulation' is often implicated as a major causative factor of poverty and environmental degradation in the developing world. This review of the population-resource debate focusses on Red, Green and neo-Malthusian ideologies to demonstrate how they have ramified into current economic and development theory. A central hypothesis is that key elements of Marxist analysis, tempered by the best of Green thought, still have much to offer the subject. The contributions of capitalism to 'underdevelopment', and its associated environmental crises, are clarified and (...) reasserted in a contemporary context. The concept of valuation vector is also introduced, and a novel closure of Blaikie's 'Chain of Explanation' is proposed. The Circuit of Capital model thus created is applied to specific case-studies of resource-population conflict so as to overturn the simplistic conventional connection held between population growth and ecological devastation. The model highlights sequential causes of poverty arising from important capital-based factors which might otherwise be overlooked. It can accommodate a variety of Red-Green perspectives and its structural form is suited to the unravelling of complex population-resource pressures in the multi-dimensional space of the modern global political economy. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for the permissibility of torture in idealized cases by application of separation of cases: if torture is permissible given any of the dominant moral theories (and if one of those is correct), then torture is permissible simpliciter and I can discharge the tricky business of trying to adjudicate among conflicting moral views. To be sure, torture is not permissible on all the dominant moral theories as at least Kantianism will prove especially recalcitrant to granting moral (...) license of torture, even in idealized cases. Rather than let the Kantian derail my central argument, I directly argue against Kantianism (and other views with similar commitments) on the grounds that, if they cannot accommodate the intuitions in ticking time-bomb cases, they simply cannot be plausible moral views—these arguments come in both foundationalist and coherentist strains. Finally, I postulate that, even if this paper has dealt with idealized cases, it paves the way for the justification of torture in the real world by removing some candidate theories (e.g., Kantianism) and allowing others that both could and are likely to justify real-world torture. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for the permissibility of torture in idealized cases by application of separation of cases: if torture is permissible given any of the dominant moral theories (and if one of those is correct), then torture is permissible simpliciter and I can discharge the tricky business of trying to adjudicate among conflicting moral views. To be sure, torture is not permissible on all the dominant moral theories as at least Kantianism will prove especially recalcitrant to granting moral (...) license of torture, even in idealized cases. Rather than let the Kantian derail my central argument, I directly argue against Kantianism (and other views with similar commitments) on the grounds that, if they cannot accommodate the intuitions in ticking time-bomb cases, they simply cannot be plausible moral views—these arguments come in both foundationalist and coherentist strains. Finally, I postulate that, even if this paper has dealt with idealized cases, it paves the way for the justification of torture in the real world by removing some candidate theories (e.g., Kantianism) and allowing others that both could and are likely to justify real-world torture. (shrink)

Since the late nineteenth century, physics has been puzzled by the time-asymmetry of thermodynamic phenomena in the light of the apparent T-symmetry of the underlying laws of mechanics. However, a compelling solution to this puzzle has proved elusive. In part, I argue, this can be attributed to a failure to distinguish two conceptions of the problem. According to one, the main focus of our attention is a time-asymmetric lawlike generalisation. According to the other, it is a particular fact (...) about the early universe. This paper aims (i) to distinguish these two different conceptions of the time-asymmetric explanandum in thermodynamics; (ii) to argue in favour of the latter; and (iii) to show that whichever we choose, our rational expectations about the thermodynamic behaviour of the future must depend on what we know about the past: contrary to the common view, statistical arguments alone do not give us good reason to expect that entropy will always continue to increase. (shrink)

Torture-lite has been advanced as a new form of interrogation that raises the prospect of offering a more ethical way of colleting the intelligence needed to protect the state. However, this paper will argue that there can be no such thing as torture-lite as this misunderstands what interrogational torture is in the first place. Interrogational torture is a form of behavioural modification that relies on breaking the individual and conditioning their responses. Torture-lite would never be able to create the self-betraying (...) effect necessary for cases such as the ticking time bomb scenario without crossing over into the higher harms caused by full torture, and is unable to force the individual to provide the required information to serve as the good in the consequentialist argument. (shrink)

Some imaginary cases lead us to surprising conclusions. Unfortunately, there exists the danger of being so distracted by these conclusions that the imaginary cases themselves escape critical examination. Using the now famous ticking time-bomb scenario as an example, I propose a simple methodology to help us better understand what role a given imaginary case should be playing in ethical discourse. In particular, I hope to show why the ticking time-bomb scenario fails to have any (...) probative value as a counter-example to anti-torture policies. Despite this, I argue that there is still an important role for cases like the ticking time-bomb scenario, as they can motivate study about some of our intuitive moral commitments. This in turn may lead us to a better understanding of what moves us to surprising ethical evaluations in the first place. (shrink)

Analytic just war theorists often attempt to construct ideal theories of military justice on the basis of intuitions about imaginary and sometimes outlandish examples, often taken from non-military contexts. This article argues for a sharp curtailment of this method and defends, instead, an empirically and historically informed approach to the ethical scrutiny of armed conflicts. After critically reviewing general philosophical reasons for being sceptical of the moral-theoretic value of imaginary hypotheticals, the article turns to some of the special problems that (...) this method raises for appraisals of warfare. It examines some of the hypothetical examples employed in the construction of Jeff McMahan’s revisionist just war theory, and finds that they sometimes stipulate incompre- hensible conditions, lead to argumentative impasses of diverging yet uncertain intuitions, and distract attention away from the real problems of war as we empirically know it. In contrast, empirical and historical studies of warfare rein- force the deep connections between facts and values, and compel theorists to face uncomfortable moral ambiguities. Perhaps most importantly, the analytic method of focusing on imaginary hypothetical examples can not only be distracting, but it can also be genuinely dangerous. Hence, the article pays special attention to the way in which a seemingly innocuous fiction like the famous Ticking Time Bomb scenario can come to frame a new paradigm of inhumanity in the treatment of prisoners of war. (shrink)

Arrigo, DeBatto, Rockwood, and Mawe take issue with a number of arguments in our previous article. We respond in four major ways: pointing out that they never really take on, let alone refute, the key argument in our article—that utilitarian, deontic, and virtue ethical theories are not only consistent with the use of enhanced interrogation and torture in the ticking time bomb scenario but these prescribe it; there are numerous other exegetical problems in their article; they make (...) unsubstantiated claims about the ineffectiveness of EITSLs techniques that we argue are much too strong; and they conflate the ethical with the legal and but even in doing so miss many important issues regarding the legality of EITSLs in the war on terrorism. (shrink)

Despite the fact that torture of prisoners has been condemned by every major document in international law, it has seemed to some, especially those in the Bush Administration, that terrorism creates a special case for how prisoners are to be treated. The prisoner may belong to a “cell” of those who have committed themselves to the use of tactics that risk horrible consequences for many innocent people. The prisoner may have information about future attacks on civilian populations that could, if (...) learned, be instrumental in the prevention of these attacks. Nonetheless, I will argue that normally even suspected international terrorists should be treated humanely in that they are not subject to torture when captured and imprisoned. Our humanity demands as much.I will ask what it is about humanity that might restrict or prohibit the use of torture and other forms of physical coercion in the treatment of prisoners. I will attempt to explain why torture has been so roundly condemned and yet why torture, especially in ticking time-bomb cases, has been seen as justifiable. In section 1, I argue that humane treatment should be seen as the centerpiece of international humanitarian law. In section 2, I discuss a 1999 case from Israel concerning soldiers who committed torture to obtain information from suspected terrorists in the Occupied Territories. In section 3, I discuss how the principle of proportionality complicates the picture, and end with some conclusions about what restrictions should be recognized in times of war, concerning what are sometimes called “the laws of humanity.”. (shrink)

One of the questions raised by this important and thought-provoking collection of essays on torture is how and why the consensus that torture is wrong - a consensus enshrined in international law for decade - has become so fragile. As Scott Anderson writes in the introduction to this volume, "how did abusing and torturing prisoners suddenly become so popular?” The chapters in this volume offer insights into this question from the perspectives of history, psychology, law, philosophy, and sociology. This interdisciplinary (...) approach highlights important and often overlooked aspects of the torture debate. Yet, the questions that the authors take to be important (for example, about whether the justification of torture should even be contemplated) reflect different and sometimes incompatible normative assumptions about what torture is and about what matters in the torture debate. These assumptions, I shall argue, are shaped by, and play a role in shaping, the moral, political, and social narratives that contribute to or resist the toleration of torture in the US and elsewhere. Thus, while the disparate nature of the contributions (perhaps inevitably) undermine the cohesiveness of the volume as a whole, it illuminates, even if it does not resolve, larger questions about the place and function of academic debate in the history and use of torture. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTorture requires careful definition, because of the degree to which its definition often entails its moral condemnation. Torture involves the deliberate infliction of pain for coe...

In this paper, I take up the task of further examining the ticking bomb argument in favor of the use of torture. In doing so, I will focus on some recent scholarship regarding ticking bomb methodology introduced by Fritz Allhoff. I will then propose a set of ticking bomb variations which, I believe, call into question some of Allhoff's conclusions. My goal is to show that ticking bomb methodology is misguided in its (...) attempt to justify torture insofar as its proponents seem to ignore certain nonconsequentialist factors that are latent in the various types of uncertainty in real-world ticking bomb cases. Once this fact is recognized, I claim, the normative claims about torture that follow can be denied by appealing to it. I then argue that, even if we grant a certain level of uncertainty within the ticking bomb argument, torture is not justified. Rather, the implementation of torture, even if it yields positive results, is nothing more than a case of moral luck. In other words, the supposed "success" of torture in the ticking bomb cases lies entirely outside the agent's control. Thus, if the outcome of the use of torture is in no way controlled by the agent, then the agent's actions cannot be justified by appealing to that outcome. (shrink)

The so-called ticking bomb is invoked by philosophers and lawyers trying to justify, on behalf of their political masters, the use of torture in extremis. I show that the scenario is spurious; and that the likely consequences of the use of interrogational torture in such cases are disastrous. Finally, I test the argument against a real case.

Torture is like slavery (and unlike murder and genocide) in that it is not inconceivable that torture might be justifiable. But the circumstances that would make it tolerable are unrealistic in philosophically interesting ways. It is unrealistic to think we can predict when torture will be effective and containable; unwarranted to suppose that humane alternatives are impossible; disastrous to remove motivations to create alternatives; unacceptable to be satisfied with available evidence regarding suspects’ identity, knowledge of critical detail, ability to recall (...) it, or reasons for not providing it. Most importantly, the costs of even successful interrogational torture would negate the gains sought. Or so this essay argues. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to re-evaluate the manner in which the Ticking Bomb Scenario (TBS), a thought experiment in philosophical enquiry, has been used in the discussion of the justifiability or otherwise of forward-looking interrogational torture (FLIT). The paper argues that criticisms commonly raised against the thought experiment are often inappropriate or irrelevant. A great many criticisms misunderstand the way in which thought experiments in general, and the TBS in particular, are supposed to work in philosophical (...) (and for that matter scientific) inquiry. The paper is not about the acceptability or otherwise of FLIT per se but rather an attempt to show that thought experiments such as the TBS are useful analytic tools and ought not to be rejected due to their inappropriate use by those engaged in the justifiability or otherwise of FLIT. By rescuing the TBS from its erroneous use the paper seeks to show its proper worth as part of an argumentative device in uncovering conflicting moral intuitions in our search for ethical truths. (shrink)

Is torturing innocent people ever morally required? I rebut responses to the ticking-bomb dilemma by Slote, Williams, Walzer, and others. I argue that torturing is morally required and should be performed when it is the only way to avert disasters. In such situations, torturers act with dirty hands because torture, though required, is vicious. Conversely, refusers act wrongly, yet virtuously, thus displaying admirable immorality. Vicious, morally required acts and virtuous, morally wrong acts are odd, yet necessary to preserve (...) the ticking-bomb dilemma’s phenomenology, the role of habituation in moral development, the virtue/continence distinction, and morality’s overridingness, consistency, and plausibility. (shrink)

Torture used to be incompatible with American values. Our Bill of Rights forbids cruel and unusual punishment, and that has come to include all forms of corporal punishment except prison and death by methods purported to be painless. Americans and our government have historically condemned states that torture; we have granted asylum or refuge to those who fear it. The Senate ratified the Convention Against Torture, Congress enacted antitorture legislation, and judicial opinions spoke of "the dastardly and totally inhuman act (...) of torture.” Then came September 11. (shrink)

The paper examines narrative operations involved in the temporal configuration of experience within a general framework of the phenomenological treatment of temporality. Taking as its point of departure a most basic instantiation of temporal experience, namely that of a ticking clock, it argues that the narrative dynamics which give form and charge the interval between tick and tock with significant duration are directly derived from the time-constituting operations of the embodied mind and, as such, are independent of their (...) linguistic articulations. Thus, it critically invokes Husserl’s account of time-consciousness, more specifically his model of retention-primary impression-protention, first in the context of Francisco J. Varela’s account of the neurodynamics of lived time, and then with reference to David Carr’s argument for continuity between narrative and the world of our experiences and actions. Building on these critical trajectories, the paper outlines how proto-narrative elements of lived time form a basis for the properly narrative operation of emplotment and, in its final section, discusses some of the complex relations between lived time and narrative time by contrasting Carr’s account of narrative with Paul Ricoeur’s model of triple mimesis. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to demonstrate that the recent anti-Ticking Bomb argument offered by Bufacchi and Arrigo is unsuccessful. To adequately refute the Ticking Bomb strategy, I claim, requires carefully addressing both policy questions and questions involving exceptional conduct.

abstract Much of the literature on torture in recent years takes the position of denouncing the barbarity of torture, while allowing for exceptions to this veto in extreme circumstances. The ticking‐bomb argument, where a terrorist is tortured in order to extract information of a primed bomb located in a civilian area, is often invoked as one of those extreme circumstances where torture becomes justified. As the War on Terrorism intensifies, the ticking‐bomb argument has become the (...) dominant line of reasoning used by both academics and policy advisers to justify a legalized, state‐sponsored program of torture. This paper argues for the unconditional refutation of any attempt to justify torture, without exceptions. We argue against the consequentialist reasoning of the ticking‐bomb argument not from a deontological position, but on consequentialist grounds. Empirical evidence suggests that the institutionalization of torture practices creates serious problems. Torture interrogation fails to fulfil its initial purpose as a low‐cost life saver, while its long‐term potential is the devastation of democratic institutions. (shrink)