(Continued)
The admonition of Jesus to love your enemy, and the conclusion of Socrates 400 years before that
suffering injustice is better than committing it, are meant for personal conduct, not for policy. Even
Socrates was an active soldier when required to be one by the laws of Athens. Jesus nowhere
condemned the soldier as such.

One main question of the questioner is, if procedures of torture interrogation cause bad side-effects to
the defender itself. Argentina under the junta in the 70s is cited here. But I remember another
example : There was a fascinating film (of 1971) that showed protesters against the Vietnam war in
the USA fighting against "upright citizens" that found the war against communism justified and took
the "peace people" as traitors to a just cause. The film was made by a protester and presented the
supporters of the war as being either neurotics or uninformed or mislead or as misleading fascists.
But the "upright citizens" had an argument : The presidents leading the USA into the Vietnam war
were no Hitlers or Saddams but they were the Democrats Kennedy and Johnson elected by due
democratic procedures — which not even the opposition ever denied. Thus to follow up and
supporting the war could justly be seen as a patriotic duty as long as there were no proven lies and
hidden interests showing up.

Everybody has a right to oppose, but opposing an evidently undemocratic regime as that of Videla in
Argentina or of Castro in Cuba or of Saddam in Iraq is not the same as opposing a democratic regime
as that of the USA today — at least as long as you cannot prove a misuse of power or to be lied to.
Thus one has to request democratic procedures and the functioning of the institutions of "checks and
balance", but one cannot request from a democratically installed and controlled government to lay
open all its measures to everybody. You cannot top a democratic process and order by some
super-democratic process and order of your own choice. Where will you stop then? There will always
be different opinions on any topic. Democracy is a compromise. Even if Colin Powell or Kofi Annan or
Nelson Mandela were presidents of the USA today, there would be some people around to hate them
or to call them stupids and madmen. Thus is the nature of the world.

Thus my verdict: As long as results come up and strict and controlled procedures are observed, and
freedom of the press and the judiciary is not endangered, there may be torture interrogations. The
danger that "loss of citizen trust of government and compromise of the judiciary" may ensue has to be
seen in relation to the danger inherent in a fundamental distrust against a government functioning by
due process of law. Even the GW Bush Government is not a Hitler- or Videla- or
Saddam-Government and should not be taken to be one without the greatest offence to the American
voters and political institutions.

A final word on question Nr. 5 : "Is it fair to hold utilitarians responsible for a plan of repair or
restitution for unavoidable bad effects of the proposed utilitarian program?"

How should that be? The whole American People had to bear the consequences of the Vietnam war,
not only "the utilitarians". But as I said above : The Vietnam War was NOT brought about by some
supervillains or madmen but by two Democratic Presidents correctly elected. We simply have to
accept this unavoidable rest of tragedy in all human endeavors.

Hubertus Fremerey

The following remarks are meant as a backdrop against which to orient your ideas. The argument
against torture is already half lost, in my view, because you argue your case on the opposition's
grounds, that makes your case all the more hard to win.

To the question 'Cantorture be justified?' the answer is yes — even with the best will in the world. We
can exemplify this from history e.g. the Inquisition. The discussion needs to be carried on within the
question of whether torture shouldbe justified. And the answer is no. The reason being that torture is
perverse. Justification for torture, therefore, in this context, is perverse, and as such, contrary to
reason. If we abstract torture from this context, we are left with open-ended or closed arguments for
or against torture, but the presupposition is the same on both sides,namely, that perversity (torture)
can be a rational starting place for arguments (for or against it) or a rationally coherent object of
thought; this latter assumes that torture, in itself, is no more or less perverse than our arguments
contrive to make it. Your questions to Ask a Philosopher show you already subscribe to this in
principle, if not in fact. Whether one is 'for' or 'against' the instrumental argument for torture, there is
tacit agreement between both sides that torture is itself neutral, like an object in the natural world. The
arguments then become tortured on both sides of the equation.

The death penalty may seem an analogous case, but it is not, because death in itself is natural, death
is not something that happens to one person (the condemned) and no-one else. Death belongs to the
human condition, and in the case of the death penalty, those conditions are severely straitened for a
greater good (atonement for despicable crimes, safety of others, freedom from fear etc.). This is not
to justify the death penalty, but to say that you cannot argue about torture as if the presuppositions
are the same.

It may be objected that there are different kinds of torture — that imprisonment is a torture, that
solitary confinement is. But convention rules that they are punishments in lieu of something worse
(the death penalty, historically). Real torture in the context of common law and convention (of 'should',
again) is a perverting of these things, and as we would say, of justice.

Matthew Del Nevo

www.sicetnon.com

I wonder how much there is of philosophical interest in this question. It seems trivially true that the
course of action suggested, like any pretty much any other course of action whose description doesn't
itself imply net utility loss, might be utility-maximizing. It then remains to be asked how this implication
is to be applied. (I don't see the relevance of double effect in a utilitarian context.)

Here I would suggest that state programs, as opposed to personal actions, rarely remain concealed;
too many people know about them. Sooner or later the truth comes out. Even if it is later, we don't
know how much later, and bad spinoff effects are likely. (Admittedly, so is the good spinoff effect of
revulsion.)

Moreover, I question how often torture is needed to extract information. The problem is not the usual
question about whether such information is reliable, but rather the question of whether it is needed at
all. Put it this way: either you're torturing for fairly insubstantial reasons, or you're not. If you are, then
certainly the fear of discovery and the spinoff effects, to say nothing of the direct effects, have great
negative utility. If you're not, then consider the post-mortem analysis of 911, which indicates that the
US government already had plenty of relevant information: they just didn't know how to use it or
correlate it. This is a very common difficulty with intelligence services. Given such background
conditions, it seems likely that, if you're know enough to have substantial reasons for torturing
somebody, the information you want is very likely obtainable through a combination of the information
already in your possession and other, less drastic means. These background conditions also make it
unlikely that torturing for light reasons will be utility-maximizing.

Michael Neumann

For what it's worth, I would answer these questions as follows:

1. The language already used is quite properly philosophical, although any plausible theory of virtue
ethics or deontological (duty) ethics would surely require agents to try to foresee unintended
consequences and take these into consideration. An agent who did not do so would lack the virtues
of prudence and wisdom, and would be failing in her duty to promote the well-being of others and
respect their rights, etc..

2. I think the principle of double effect is always worth bearing in mind (although Jonathan Glover
gives good reason to have reservations about in in his book "Humanity"). This principle says that you
should not do an act the disastrousness of whose unintended but foreseeable effects dwarfs the
intended good effects. On this the principle strikes me as being quite right.

3. Not publicly, since this would give the game away. It might be responsible to intend such deception
privately, but the consequences of such deception would have to be taken into account. Politicians
and military leaders might have to lie sometimes, but their doing so is hardly likely to strengthen
public faith in democracy or their own private commitment to doing the right thing (virtue).

4. This depends on how easy it is to do so and how serious the consequences are likely to be. The
consequences of many acts are easy to predict, but of course the future is obscure to us and what
might happen if we start routinely torturing people is hard to predict. Again I think Glover is good on
this, as he traces the spread of torture from Nazi Germany to a host of other countries as the Nazi
torturers moved around the world and passed on their techniques. Torture is hard to keep isolated
and under control (in the hands of 'good' regimes, for instance). Given the horror of it, I would think
you would have to be very sure of yourself to recommend using torture, even in a ticking bomb case.
Bear in mind also, of course, the high chance of the torture victim lying to end the torture.

5. If it's practicable it seems fair that everyone responsible should repair the damage they have done.
I would not hold utilitarians in general responsible for the consequences of utilitarian policies, but
government advisers, for instance, might be held responsible for the consequences of any policy they
explicitly and directly advised.

6. I would think so, but the whole point of imaginary ticking bomb scenarios and some real life terrorist
acts is to thwart our attempts to make sense of them and respond rationally. It is hard, if not
impossible, to predict and solve these riddles in advance or in general.

Duncan Richter

It might be worth noting that, abstract theoretical commitments aside, nobody takes the doctrine of
double effect at all seriously — that is — it is never applied consistently, but only in an ad hoc fashion
concerning otherwise embarrassing or tricky issues. Peter Singer gives the nice illustration of Catholic
Theologians who invoke double-effect in order to justify abortions in those cases where the mother's
life is endangered by pregnancy. The death of the fetus is claimed to be an unintended side-effect of
the (laudable) action that is saving the life of the mother. But, as I say, these same theologians would
flinch if a double-effect justification was attempted elsewhere: If a company dumps toxic waste into a
city's water supply, it is no excuse for them to say "we too believe in the doctrine of double-effect —
our intention was to get rid of this awful toxic waste (again laudable), and an unintended side-effect of
this was poisoning the water." Likewise it might be convenient for authorities to invoke double-effect
in regards to torturing people, but nobody would take that logic seriously as a principle of
right-conduct in general.

In short, double-effect seems to leave the non-Utilitarian in a very uncomfortable position. For the
utilitarian, the doctrine of double-effect seems indefensible, if not incoherent: it is the consequences,
after all, that matter and not whether or not they were intended. Consequences that are merely likely
to followfrom a course of action can indeed be used to evaluate the act's rightness or wrongness.

Question (3) is more difficult. In theory the "act" or "critical" Utilitarian can countenance secret
violations of rules which generally enhance happiness, but in practice this will be very difficult to pull
off.

Besides the risk of the secret getting out and leading to a climate of anxiety and fear is the risk that
the government will more readily set aside civil liberties the next time. A temporary restrained policy
might, given time and excuses, be expanded in terms of its scope or permanence by officials who see
the suspension of civil liberties as instrumentally useful. One needs to remember that the policy will
not be a secret to the authorities who are party to the deception: there is a very great risk that THEIR
respect for autonomy and individual security will be eroded by the experiment. Is it wise to encourage
those officials to see themselves as living outside of the moral constraints expected of everybody
else? This suggests a very powerful argument for never allowing civil liberties to be compromised. As
it happens, the torture victim, unless silenced by death, will presumably ensure that her treatment
does not remain a secret forever. Again, this could lead to fear, mistrust, and perhaps even panic.

Notice finally that the reasoning behind these compromises is exactly parallel to the logic of terrorism
itself: we should do horrendous things in order to fulfill some greater objective. But perhaps amongst
the greater objectives worth defending just are civil liberties.

Prof. Sean Allen-Hermanson

Oklahoma University

This question really highlights some of utilitarianism's trickiest problems. Some of your questions I
can help with, but 'answers' are hard to come by in this area. Anyway, here goes: 1. "I want to say
that unintended effects of a program may be morally acceptable when reasoning from something like
virtue ethics or duty, but a utilitarian argument must also attempt to account for all foreseeable effects
in its cost-benefits analysis. My questions:(1) What is the proper philosophical language for making
this assertion?"

Perhaps something like this: "While virtue ethics, and Kantian theories based on duty, may be able to
exclude unintended consequences on the grounds that morality must be based upon intentions,
consequentialist theories such as utilitarianism make judgements based upon states of affairs.
Therefore, an action which was intended to be good, is nonetheless the wrong action where it
produces worse consequences (i.e. a worse state of affairs) than another possible action. In this way,
all consequences must be taken into account when making utilitarian judgements, no matter what the
intentions."

However, it is useful to note that Robert Adams has argued that utilitarianism can be used to judge
motives, as the best motives are those which are likely to produce the most utility. See, Robert
Adams, 'Motive Utilitarianism', in, The Journal of Philosophy,LXXII, 14, (12th August, 1976).

2. Is the principle of double effect relevant when the intended good is clearly dwarfed by unintended
disastrous effects?

In principle, the utilitarian must answer 'no' to this question — it is the consequences of an act which
are important, not the intentions. However, we should perhaps make a distinction between making an
assessment of whether an act will be, or has turned out to be, a good one, and blaming those who
have committed bad acts from good motives. As a great deal of the evidence we have for assessing
the future consequences of an action is either in short supply, or based upon probabilistic
judgements, it is difficult to see how we can blame someone for consequences they could not
foresee. Note that this is very different from claiming that we should not blame someone for
consequences they did not intend. For the utilitarian, if you can see that there is a reasonable chance
of bad consequence x following from action y, then you are as responsible for this as you are for the
intended consequence. If you could not reasonable foresee this, or if there was only a very slim
probability of such a consequence occurring at the time of making the decision, then blame is
perhaps inappropriate. In this way you can commit an act which has bad consequences, and this will
be judged to be a bad act, but this does not necessarily imply that you should be blamed for what you
have caused. You can imagine lots of 'domino-effect' examples of this occurring.

Before your next questions, I should say a bit about the ticking bomb example you use. This is a
common example, and one which has massive intuitive appeal — in such a situation, the loss of one
(Continued)