Torture has become the subject of intense debate in recent years. One facet of that debate is whether there are any circumstances during which it might be an appropriate response by a respectable government. One might wonder precisely why torture receives so much more attention than, say, the "collateral damage" that is an inevitable aspect of contemporary warfare. But the debate also involves what counts as "torture," as distinguished from "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" methods of interrogation or even "coercive but (...) acceptable" methods. This article argues that we sometimes overemphasize the significance of particular acts — i.e., x either is or is not torture — as against the importance of the phenomenology of torture, which involves creating a structure of complete domination and, therefore, complete vulnerability. This is similar to the phoenomenology of slavery. Indeed, in this 150th year since the Supreme Court's decision in the Dred Scott case, it is important to contemplate the full meaning of Chief Justice Taney's declaration that blacks had "no rights" that whites were "bound to respect." Can a liberal political order ever carve out a set of persons — such as suspected terrorists — who indeed have "no rights" that the state is obligated to respect? If the answer is no, then what are the implications for the process by which the United States, presumably a liberal political order, conducts interrogations even of those suspected of being "the worst of the worst"? (shrink)

The problem of “dirty hands” has become an important term, indeed one of the most important terms of reference, in contemporary academic scholarship on the issue of torture. The aim of this essay is to offer a better understanding of this problem. Firstly, it is argued that the problem of “dirty hands” can play neither within rule-utilitarianism nor within absolutism. Still, however, the problem of “dirty hands” represents an acute, seemingly irresolvable, conflict within morality, with the moral agent understood, following (...) Nagel, as necessarily holding mixed, absolutist-consequentialist moral intuitions, pulling in opposite directions. Secondly, a distinction is drawn between real situations of “dirty hands,” and other conflictual scenarios, which are commonly, but unjustifiably placed under the metaphorical title of “dirty hands.” Finally, it is suggested - utilizing Nagel’s own ideas, as developed in his later work, and Sen’s notion of evaluator relativity—that the moral “blind alley” manifested in the problem of “dirty hands” may not be totally blind after all, at least from the situated agent’s own internal point of view (as opposed to that of an external observer trying to put herself in the agent’s position by way of moral simulation). Thus, contrary to Walzer’s approach, it is possible for a person (politician) acting in a situation of “dirty hands,” not to believe herself to be guilty, but still be a moral person. (shrink)

What kind of persons could engage in political torture? Not only the morally impaired who lack empathy or compassion, or even the merely obedient, but also the righteous who struggle with conscience, and the realists who set morality aside.

Lisa Tessman (2016: 164) recounts the case of a Jewish mother, running from Nazis, who faced a terrible choice. She could (a) drown her infant, or (b) accept the virtual certainty that her baby’s cries would doom the refugee group she was fleeing with. Given those options, (b) is worse. If the whole group is discovered, many will die, including the infant. Still, preemptively drowning a baby—indeed one’s own baby—is a terrible act. To make sense of cases like this, Tessman (...) turns to the concept of moral failure: an act that violates an important moral value such that the loss cannot be fully redeemed by gains elsewhere. I will argue that criminal justice needs a moral framework like Tessman’s. It needs to make sense of the fact that some options are genuinely better than others, without letting honorifics like ‘justice’ obscure the equally important fact the best available option might be terrible. More specifically, I will argue that when punishment involves prison, as it often does, it is a moral failure. It can be justified only in the sense that preemptively drowning an infant can be justified: like the fleeing mother, society might on some terrible occasions find itself with no better alternative. (shrink)

Liberal democracies who perpetrate torture represent an apparent paradox: a flagrant violation of human rights by states supposedly dedicated to protecting human rights. In liberal democracies, the political, social, and legal narratives used to justify torture portray torture as an individual act motivated by important moral values. This individualized torture narrative then shapes the moral framework through which the public, policy-makers, and individual torturers view torture, and masks the institutional nature of torture perpetration. It is this interaction between an individualized (...) torture narrative and the moral framework of torture that distinguishes democratic perpetrators (Critchell et al. 2017, 9-10) from nondemocratic perpetrators of torture. Yet, the implementation of a torture program in a democratic state is remarkably similar to the implementation of a torture program in a nondemocratic state. In both cases, torture is an institutionalized practice given moral and political meaning through broad social and political narratives. This chapter uses the post-9/11 US torture program as a case study of a democratic perpetrator in order to explore the interaction between democratic narratives of torture, state implementation of torture, and the moral psychology of individual torturers. This permits a way of thinking about torture perpetration that goes beyond a myopic focus on torture as individual act to understand the interaction and mutual reinforcement of different forms of torture perpetration. This analysis also offers a starting point from which to consider how to resist and oppose torture narratives that sustain democratic tortue, a question I explore in the conclusion of this chapter. (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, "[h]ow 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)

This article argues that existing approaches to programming ethical AI fail to resolve a serious moral-semantic trilemma, generating interpretations of ethical requirements that are either too semantically strict, too semantically flexible, or overly unpredictable. This paper then illustrates the trilemma utilizing a recently proposed ‘general ethical dilemma analyzer,’ GenEth. Finally, it uses empirical evidence to argue that human beings resolve the semantic trilemma using general cognitive and motivational processes involving ‘mental time-travel,’ whereby we simulate different possible pasts and futures. I (...) demonstrate how mental time-travel psychology leads us to resolve the semantic trilemma through a six-step process of interpersonal negotiation and renegotiation, and then conclude by showing how comparative advantages in processing power would plausibly cause AI to use similar processes to solve the semantic trilemma more reliably than we do, leading AI to make better moral-semantic choices than humans do by our very own lights. (shrink)

This article reviews the reasons scholars hold that driverless cars and many other AI equipped machines must be able to make ethical decisions, and the difficulties this approach faces. It then shows that cars have no moral agency, and that the term ‘autonomous’, commonly applied to these machines, is misleading, and leads to invalid conclusions about the ways these machines can be kept ethical. The article’s most important claim is that a significant part of the challenge posed by AI-equipped machines (...) can be addressed by the kind of ethical choices made by human beings for millennia. Ergo, there is little need to teach machines ethics even if this could be done in the first place. Finally, the article points out that it is a grievous error to draw on extreme outlier scenarios—such as the Trolley narratives—as a basis for conceptualizing the ethical issues at hand. (shrink)

There is a decided consensus that Kantian ethics yields an absolutist case against torture – that torture is morally wrong and absolutely so. I argue that while thereisa Kantian case against torture, Kantian ethics does not clearly entail absolutism about torture. I consider several arguments for a Kantian absolutist position concerning torture and explain why none are sound. I close by clarifying just what the Kantian case against torture is. My contention is that while Kantian ethics does not support a (...) variety ofmoralabsolutism about torture, it does suggest a strong version oflegalabsolutism. (shrink)

As an adherent to the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United States has made a commitment to social justice. As a part of this commitment, the U.S. maintains that the right to an education is both innate and compulsory. This paper addresses U.S. government’s failure to uphold its citizens’ educational rights, made clear by the inadequacy of the educational programs currently offered to juvenile offenders. Based on the findings of recent scholarly literature, this paper argues that both juvenile (...) and adult correctional institutions lack the resources necessary to provide proper educational instruction and adequately address the special educational needs of juvenile offenders. To help the U.S. maintain its commitment to social justice, alternatives to juvenile incarceration are proposed. (shrink)

This paper gives an overview of Pierre Bayle’s theory of toleration and derives a normative principle of toleration from it that is meant to compete with other normative principles of toleration such as the Harm principle.

Are the sources of a combatant's knowledge in war morally relevant? This article argues that privacy is relevant to just war theory in that it draws attention to privacy harms associated with the conduct of war. Since we cannot assume that information is made available to combatants in a morally neutral manner, we must therefore interrogate the relationship between privacy harms and the acts that they enable in war. Here, I argue that there is ample evidence that we cannot discount (...) the analysis of privacy harms in war, and that analysis of such harms requires us to examine social goods. I develop this point to demonstrate the problems that this poses for aspects of revisionist just war theory; namely, reductivism and individualism. In order to evaluate the moral consequences of privacy harms in war, we must understand the unilateral and adversarial character of balancing privacy harms against social goods in the context of war, which, in turn, requires that we consider social goods and social institutions as objects of moral evaluation. Further, concepts drawn from privacy scholarship, such as Helen Nissenbaum's concept of contextual integrity, enable us to identify a range of moral problems associated with contemporary war that deserve further attention from just war theorists. (shrink)

Modern human rights instruments ground human rights in the concept of human dignity, without providing an underlying theory of human dignity. This paper examines the central importance of human dignity, understood as not humiliating people, in traditional Jewish ethics. It employs this conception of human dignity to examine and criticize U.S. use of humiliation tactics and torture in the interrogation of terrorism suspects.

This chapter suggests a scheme of reconstruction, which explains how scenarios, questions and arguments figure in thought experiments. It then develops a typology of ethical thought experiments according to their function, which can be epistemic, illustrative, rhetorical, heuristic or theory-internal. Epistemic functions of supporting or refuting ethical claims rely on metaethical assumptions, for example, an epistemological background of reflective equilibrium. In this context, thought experiments may involve intuitive as well as explicitly argued judgements; they can be used to generate moral (...) commitments, to explore consequences of moral theories, and to show inconsistencies within or between moral commitments and moral theory; but the results of thought experiments by themselves do not settle what is epistemically justified and may also be rejected. Finally, some prominent challenges are discussed: do unrealistic scenarios undermine epistemic thought experiments? Are ethical thought experiments misleading? Do they rely on weak analogies? Are there specifically moral objections to ethical thought experiments? (shrink)

A detailed, clear, and comprehensive overview of the current philosophical debate on. The question of when, and under what circumstances, the practice of torture might be justified has received a great deal of attention in the last decade in both academia and in the popular media. Many of these discussions are, however, one-sided with other perspectives either ignored or quickly dismissed with minimal argument. In On the Ethics of Torture, Uwe Steinhoff provides a complete account of the philosophical debate surrounding (...) this highly contentious subject. Steinhoff’s position is that torture is sometimes, under certain narrowly circumscribed conditions, justified, basing his argument on the right to self-defense. His position differs from that of other authors who, using other philosophical justifications, would permit torture under a wider set of conditions. After having given the reader a thorough account of the main arguments for permitting torture under certain circumstances, Steinhoff explains and addresses the many objections that have been raised to employing torture under any circumstances. This is an indispensible work for anyone interested in one of the most controversial subjects of our times. (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)

Abstract. To understand the problem of torture in a democratic society, we have to take up a political-theological perspective. We must ask how violence creates political meaning. Torture is no more destructive and no more illiberal than other forms of political violence. The turn away from torture was not a turn away from violence, but a change in the locus of sacrifice: from scaffold to battlefield. Torture had been a ritual of mediation between sovereign and subject. Once sovereignty is located (...) in the people, it no longer makes sense to speak of being sacrificed for the sovereign. Instead, sovereign presence is now realized in an act of self-sacrifice. The wars of modern nation-states have been acts of reciprocal self-sacrifice. Terror invokes torture in response because both speak a primitive language of political sacrifice, denying the enemy the privilege of self-sacrifice. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

This paper outlines and explores the problem of democratic dirty hands, the sui generis moral situation where democratic politicians justifiably violate both a cherished moral principle and the fundamental processes of democratic governance. Some recent contributions to the dirty-hands debate have argued that the principles of democratic governance render DDH impossible. The paper rejects this view as based on a misunderstanding of the minimal and necessary conditions for both DH and democratic overnance. However, DDH does raise interesting issues concerning the (...) complicity of citizens with their politicians’ DH. Citizens are accessories to such acts and have a duty to contribute to the reparations for the victims of DDH. Furthermore, as citizens bear some responsibility for the moral violations that were done in their name, they properly ought to feel some of the moral pollution that these actions generated. (shrink)

One of the biggest challenges facing modern societies is how to monitor one’s intelligence community while maintaining the necessary level of secrecy. Indeed, while some secrecy is needed for mission success, too much has allowed significant abuse. Moreover, extending this secrecy to democratic oversight actors only creates another layer of unobserved actors and removes the public scrutiny that keeps their power and decision-making in check. This article will therefore argue for a new type of oversight through a specialised ethical whistleblowing (...) framework. This includes, first, outlining what intelligence wrongdoings justify whistleblowing; second, whether whistleblowing is the correct remedy – something not necessarily clear with intelligence; and finally, what form the whistleblowing should take. This framework will examine the Snowden case to determine whether he was correct leaking intelligence data and whether the means were appropriate, and second, whether those involved in the Central Intelligence... (shrink)

In this research, the political relationality in-between life and expression is viewed on through Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic anti-methodology. In the first part, the methodological context is elaborated and brought into relation with Arendt and Agamben's work. After Part I Dispositioning a Milieu in which I dispose the conceptual and paradigmatic frameworks of thinking within politics of flight; in Part II Exposition of Milieus the diversity of practices within the politics of flight are mapped out. This provides a politico-philosophical diagnosis (...) in which the relationships between bodies and expression are always carried out in the same way in each chapter: from form of content to form of expression to matter of expression to matter of content. Form of content is the territorial setting in which bodies are assembled in a certain way; these assemblies are strengthened by form of expression. Yet, forms break and degrade, they never fully touch the unthinkable reality. They do not always give room to the voices, gestures and images that defy the absoluteness of these forms. Yet, I end each chapter with the matter of content; which simply indicates life itself in all its varieties and in all its possible connections to a discourse. Each chapter ‘concludes’ with matter of content, due to the fact that, as I argue, life is the most neglected phenomenon in politics. The ending is however not for the sake of finality; but for the sake of a process. As a feedback loop this ‘recapitulation’ bends back toward the start; toward enforced forms of content and forms of expression, in order to create another form of politics. How do we express endlessness? How do we approach a limbo as a topos of in-between that escapes our discursive vocabulary of here versus there? (shrink)

A great deal of constructivist international relations research on norms focuses on the diffusion of liberal human rights values. In contrast, this article analyzes how critics seek to undermine human rights principles in contexts where human rights norms are increasingly hegemonic. It argues that when norm challengers are frustrated by the institutionalization of human rights, they engage in transnational strategies to pursue their agendas. In norm proxy war, actors patronize surrogates in locales where norms are weak in the hope that (...) victories abroad will reverberate internationally and at home. This dynamic is illustrated by American evangelical sponsorship of political homophobia in Uganda, culminating in that country’s draconian anti-LGBT legislation. When norms are resisted through outsourcing, actors contract out human rights violations in an effort to erode norms through practice, as evidenced by patterns of extraterritorial detention and extraordinary rendition to torture in the post-9/11 “Global War on Terror.” Identifying these patterns broadens understanding of potential pathways of norm contestation. (shrink)

Contemporary (post-1945) liberalism functions analogously to Roman Catholicism in the decades after 1443. Both ideologies, in their respective periods, represent the hegemonic ideology of Western civilization, despite the fact that both comprise a miscellany of competing belief systems. Both ideologies are dominated by a single hegemonic power—the United States and the Renaissance papacy, respectively—which strives for doctrinal stability. All who reject official “doctrine,” however, are rendered liable to violent suppression. In this, papal Catholicism and American liberalism display an ultra-conservative outlook; (...) but they also evince a powerfully millenarian streak, as evidenced by their dual proclamations of the “end of history” and their zealous missionary responses to macro-historical events in the final decades of the fifteenth and twentieth centuries. For ideologues of both regimes, those events speak to an ultimate harmony of truth and value that only serves to entrench their own dogmatism. This, however, has dire consequences when it comes to war, as can be seen in the “crusading” character of contemporary liberal warfare. Ultimately, the Renaissance papacy proves unable to maintain its monopoly on Christian doctrine; and one has to wonder if a similar fate may befall America's perceived role as the champion of liberalism. (shrink)

The war on terror is commonly characterized as a fundamentally different kind of war from more traditional armed conflict. Furthermore, it has been argued that, in this new kind of war, different rules, both moral and legal, must apply. In the first part of this paper, three practices endemic to the war on terror -- torture, assassination, and enemy combatancy status -- are identified as exceptions to traditional norms. The second part of the paper uses these examples to motivate a (...) generalized account of exceptionalism; a taxonomy of different exceptionalisms is derived, including temporal, spatial, and group-based exceptionalisms. The third part of the paper considers the ethical status of exceptionalism, paying particular attention to the group-based exceptionalisms that are argued to be prevalent in the war on terror. It is concluded that there is nothing inherently wrong with group-based exceptionalism and, furthermore, that the proper locus of ethical evaluation lies not with the norms that are being excepted, but rather with the groups that are being excepted from them. (shrink)

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)

In Torture, Terror and Trade-Offs: Philosophy for the White House Jeremy Waldron asks how moral philosophy can illuminate real life political problems. He argues that moral philosophers should remind politicians of the importance of adhering to moral principle, and he also argues that some moral principles are absolute and exceptionless. Thus, he is very critical of those philosophers who, post 9/11, were willing to condone the use of torture. In this article I discuss and criticize Waldron’s absolutism. In particular, I (...) claim that the arguments he offers in support of it are either dependent on religious conviction or support only rule utilitarianism, not absolutism. Additionally, I argue that the character of politics is such that it is both undesirable and morally irresponsible for politicians to adopt the absolutist approach favoured by Waldron. We have reason to be glad that Professor Waldron does not go to Washington. (shrink)