Ticking Bomb

Insight on “ Should the Ticking Bomb Terrorist Be Tortured?”

Reading the “Ticking Bomb”’ and relating it back to the Transplant Case from class, I found myself in an ironical situation. In the Transplant case, I agreed with the idea that we shouldn’t base our decisions on what will give the best outcome but rather whether the actual decision is moral/just in that it respects rights.   However, if we follow this same line of reasoning to the Ticking Bombing, which is essentially the same, except that in much more massive numbers and the individual to be tortured will not actually be killed and is actually guilty.  It might be easier to diagram:

Case	1		2		3		4
Scenario	*5 Dead *1 Alive	*5 Alive * 1 Killed	*5 Poisoned *1 Alive	*5 Poisoned are Saved *1 Killed	*Millions of Dead Civilians *1 Guilty Individual Not Tortured	*Millions Of Alive Civilians *1 Guilty Individual Tortured	*Millions of Dead Civilians *1 Innocent Child Not Tortured	*Millions of Alive Civilians *1 Innocent Child Tortured
Welfare	Less Welfare	More Welfare	Less welfare	More welfare	Less welfare	More Welfare	Less Welfare	More Welfare
Rights	No violation	1 Violation	5 rights violation	1 rights violation	Millions of violation	1 rights violation or no violation? No violation	Millions of violations	1 Rights Violation
Just	More just	Less just	More just	Less just	Less just	More Just	? No violation of right in your action Unjust	? 1 violation of right Unjust *More Welfare, Less rights violation --More just

Above, I constructed a diagram of my thinking on these cases. The 1st one is the transplant case.  The 2nd case is the modified transplant. The third case is that of the terrorist who plants a bomb in a city to kills millions of civilians and we are trying to answer whether to torture the terrorist or not. The fourth case is that of a terrorist who plants a bomb in the city to kill millions of civilians but torturing the terrorist yields no results and the question  is whether  their innocent child should be tortured in order for the terrorist to confess where the bomb is and how to stop it from going off.  

In the first case I stated that the correct thing to do would be to not kill the innocent person to save the five who are dying of natural causes.  My reasoning is that it is not moral and it is not just to violate the right to life of one individual to save five people who are dying of natural causes. The five people had their chance to live, their right to life was not violated. They were able to live their lives up to their natural deaths and taking away one person’s right to life to save those five is wrong. Imagine, if the person were killed to save the five people.  In the second case, I reasoned that the right to life of the one individual should still be protected and that the individual should not be killed to save the 5 poisoned. It is tragic, that someone violated the right to life of those 5 and it is tragic that there is less welfare overall, however, that does not justify killing an innocent person. Unjust circumstances do occur in life, but that does not mean we should impose other unjust circumstances over some to repair those of others.  Now, what seemed easy to decide in the first two cases suddenly becomes very difficult in the bomb ticking cases. Following the same line of reasoning as before, we should opt for no rights violation even if that means less welfare. However, does a terrorist whose intention is to kill millions of people, have rights? In this case, intervention or restricting the terrorist’s liberty would satisfy the Harm Principle. But is torturing the terrorist justified? To play devil’s advocate, we can also question what exactly is a terrorist? For example, a case brought up in the Ticking Bomb paper is would the Jews in the concentration camps be considered terrorist if they threatened to blow up a German kindergarten if they aren’t released or let free. It seems strange to call the Jews terrorists, it does not seem equite right. In this case, it seems rather as a case of protecting and defending their security, just like a nation defends its security.  

Possible Distinction Between Acts of Terrorism and Acts of Defense (both are acts which may cause harm to innocent lives on massive scale):

terrorist---> someone/group who attacks another for some interest without being attacked first

defense----> someone/group who attacks another as defense to an attack from the other

How to balance the nation’s security with the protection of civil liberty?

Assuming that any person, who attempts to kill another loses their rights, then torture could be justified. It is interesting to see how being innocent or guilty of the unjust circumstances imposed on others, determines whether it is okay to violate your rights. For example, in the transplant cases it was wrong to violate one person’s right to save the others from unjust circumstances (death and poisoned). In this example, it is okay to violate one person’s right if they are guilty or responsible for the unjust circumstances imposed on others. This seems to be a very retributivist notion. This seems to imply that it is okay to violate someone’s rights if that person does something that deserves such consequence. Although, it also seems to be consequentialist in that excessive punishment of the terrorists would deter others from doing the same harm.  A consequentialist would defend torture if it leads to the best outcome or better world. A retributivist would defend torture if the person deserves to be tortured for some wrongdoing.  It seems that the consequentialist has more focus on preventing harm without regards to whether the person is actually guilty or not and the retributivist notion seem to focus more on desert (guilty/innocent) rather than preventing harm. Does punishment really prevent harm to others?  In this case, it seems that if the millions of lives were not presently at risk, this individual would simply have his/her liberty restricted. But since, something may be done to save the millions of innocent lives, the contemplation of doing more than simply restricting liberty to the individual is considered. In this case, I would say that by deliberately harming others this person and given that something may be done to save the millions, the terrorist should be tortured in order to save the millions of lives.   

If the terrorist already killed the millions of civilians, that person has already given up all their rights then it seems that there is no point in torturing them  because there is no longer no way of preventing their harm or obtaining information to prevent the death of the millions of civilians. Torturing them in this case would just be an act of vengeance. But then the question arises of whether the terrorist should simply be locked up in prison or whether the terrorist should be given the death penalty?  I guess the answer to this would depend on the magnitude of danger the terrorist represents to the rest of society.

This cases are very complicated. It really depends, in some cases torture is justified and in other cases it is not. Torture is always bad no matter what, it is always a harm, but some harms its seems that we justify and other harms we cannot justify. For example, simply torturing someone for torturing them (sadism), has no justification. On the other hand, torturing a guilty person to prevent harm to the people he/she tried to harm is justified.  The harm is the same: torture, but one is deemed as justified and another is not. But now, what about the case of torturing an innocent to prevent harm.   The Harm Principle would say that this is justified. If the  Harm Principle, is read as saying  we should restrict someone’s liberty or punish someone only to prevent harm to others”, then torturing the innocent to prevent harm would satisfy the Harm Principle and would permit  laws to be implemented knowing before hand that innocents will be unjustly condemned (as is the current case).  If the harm principle, is read as saying that we should restrict someone’s liberty or punish someone only to prevent that individual from harming others, then torturing the innocent would not be preventing harming to others because the innocent has not harmed others thus torture would not be justified. The Harm Principle is read as in the first definition and thus torturing the innocent child to save the millions of innocent lives would result in the violation of rights in the child but it would result in the protection of the rights of the millions of innocent lives and would result in the most welfare. Does the end justify the means?  It seems that in this case it may. You action to torture the child was bad, but it resulted in the better world. In contrast, not torturing the child,would result in your action not being bad (you are not harming the child and technically you aren’t killing the millions of individuals because you didn’t plant the bomb) but the result would be a worse world.   The problem here, is that it seems to problematic to say that the end justifies the means. It seems problematic to prevent harm to others when causing harm to one or to some in order to achieve the prevention of harm to others. On the other hand, it seems problematic to leave the millions of innocent lives perish, have their right to life violated. There seems to be a forced situation in which we are forced to choose between bad, worse, and worst situations. The problem with this is that how do we know in the long run what will the the best outcome?  And not only that but how much does the way in which that best outcome is achieved matter?

Parental Licensing

The argument for Parental Licensing is that assessing whether parent’s can raise a child will help prevent child abuse. Parental licensing focuses on prevention rather than the current system which focuses on amelioration.   I think the main beguiling error with the proposal of parental licensing is the fact that every parent and future parent is being subjected to this “assessment”, because of the relatively smaller proportion of bad parents that harm their children. I think that parental licensing will lead to many unjust decisions (e.g. children taken away from their parents unjustly) mainly because the definition of what is a good parent is very unclear and the definition of a bad parent can be deeply influenced by prejudices. Also, an expansion of a stricter definition of “good” parent seems to be easily permitted.  The main flaw in parental licensing is not in principle. In principle, the idea has some validity. However, in practice this would lead to a lot of power of the legal system over individuals and even nonexistent individuals by determining who is able to reproduce and whether those who have reproduced “deserve” to keep their children. It is not really clear that an implemented policy of parental licensing will really distinguish between parents that are clearly abusive towards their children psychologically or emotionally and between those parents that are considered “irresponsible, inadequate, incapable” or simply not ideal parents.  This is an important error to notice because it raises the possible unintended consequence that more assessments of parents will lead to much more errors where children are taken away from parents (thus violating both the rights and welfare of the children and parents)  compared to the current system’s errors of taking children away from their parents unjustly combined with the errors of leaving children with abusive parents.

Huemer's Paper

This paper brings out the intuition and further solidifies that the Harm Principle is rather weak, that is to say that the Harm Principle details a necessary but not sufficient condition. The Harm Principle states that the only case in which someone’s liberty may be restricted is to prevent harm to others, not to prevent that person from harming others.  It is very implausible to view the Harm Principle as a necessary and sufficient condition. The reason is that among ourselves we harm each other in many ways. For some harms (e.g. rape, murder, theft, etc.) , we justify the restriction of liberty. For other harms (e.g. name calling, telling someone a hurtful truth, rudeness, gossip, etc. ), we do not justify the restriction of liberty.  Not all harms “deserve” or are such to restrict someone’s liberty.  The paper also goes on to describe something that the Harm Principle doesn’t really go into.  The Harm Principle describes harm to others, but not really harm to oneself. Although, it actually might. The Harm Principle was designed to rule out paternalism or legal moralism, which justify restricting an individual’s liberty for that individual’s own good. Thus if someone harms themselves but does not harm others, would this satisfy or would not satisfy the Harm Principle? It seems it would not justify the harm principle. Although,  one could argue that if someone harms themselves, then they would also harm those who are dependent on that person in any way (financially, mentally, psychologically, or emotionally). I guess the main question in drug legalization, similar to the suicide case, is how much should the government intervene to prevent people from harming themselves or emotionally harming others? Do drugs directly or indirectly harm others? I guess it depends on the type of drug. Say a person dies due to a drug overdose. This person will in fact have harmed others, namely those who depended in this person in some way. However, if this person died from a natural cause or a car accident or some other bad decision that led to the death, he/she would still harm others indirectly. Drugs are illegal, but it would seem ridiculous to illegalize death or car accidents. It seems plausible, though, to say that each individual has a right to do as they wish with their own life and body, even if it harms their self and ultimately results in their death, as long as they do not harm anyone else. Although, this raises issues of whether one can have a right to death also. A right to end one’s life if one desires to do so.  The issue here would be if the person is rational and completely understands what ending one’s life signifies.

Does criminalizing drugs satisfy the Harm Principle? In other words,can drugs be criminalized, can there be government intervention because drugs harm others and by intervening the government would be preventing harm to others. Presumably, the drugs would only harm the person who consumes them. However, we can imagine scenarios in which drugs can incapacitate or provoke someone to act out in ways that may harm others (e.g. impaired cognition that leads to car accidents thus harming others, violent behavior, etc. ). However, not all drugs are recorded to cause violent behavior or impaired cognition so it seems that generalizing against all drugs is not a justified intervention. A more justified intervention seems to be one that intervenes or criminalizes those drugs that cause violent behavior or impaired cognition that may pose harm to others. However, there are also prescription drugs that may cause impaired cognition and those are not criminalized. Then, again, they do have some kind of intervention due to the fact that they are not over the counter but have to be prescribed by a physician. I guess the main question in drug legalization, similar to the suicide case, is how much should the government intervene to prevent people from harming themselves or emotionally harming others? It seems that only those drugs that cause cognitive impairment (e.g. distorted vision, difficulty completing basic tasks, difficulty with motor functions etc.) or that cause violent behavior should be made illegal.Drugs that do not cause either of the two, seem to cause no harm to anyone else other than the person consuming them. Then, it seems the government should not intervene. However, the main problem I see with the argument for legalization of drugs, is the fact a person consuming drugs may not actually be fully informed or rational about their decisions. This actually may not be a problem, though, because this reasoning can easily be used to justifying intervention by simply stating that people are not well informed or do not know what is best. The real problem for this argument lies in the premise that drugs do not harm others. There are drugs recorded to cause violent behavior in which case they do pose harm to others and in these cases there should be interference. This is a very complicated case, because we see that alcohol (distorts cognition,motor functions, produces violent behavior) classifies as causing harm to others but it is legal. There are certain restrictions such as age limits and laws that prohibit drunk driving. According to the author’s argument in the paper, drugs should be legalized. However, alcohol is a drug that is legal but considering the Harm Principle, one would think it should be illegal.

Current Political Debates on Abortion Laws in the U.S. (NY Times Article)

The following link is a relevant post by the NY times, discussing current takes on abortion laws in the U.S. According to this article, nearly 60% of Democrats claim that abortion should be legal, as compared to 30% of Republicans. The link shared discusses the current presidential candidates' views on abortion, questioning various scenarios (such as child rape, mother in critical condition) etc., and is a good, informative read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/06/upshot/candidates-disagree-on-abortion-but-public-is-in-surprising-harmony.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1409232722000&bicmet=1419773522000&abt=0002&abg=1

Abortion - A Case on Child Rape in Paraguay

In our presentation on abortion, Stephanie and I mentioned a case of child rape and the toll it may have on the child (in addition to the rape itself, of course) to be denied an abortion. This article is about a 10-year old girl, a rape victim, being denied an abortion in Paraguay and what she may consequently go through as a result of the law. 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/05/to-make-a-10-year-old-give-birth-isnt-just-horrifying-its-life-threatening?CMP=fb_gu

Gender selective in abortion

Today, I watched a documentary called India's daughter. It is based on 2012 Delhi bus gang rape. In the film, a woman mentioned that, in India, most women in rich family have had abortion because the baby was female.  Indian women have lower social status than man. The unbalanced gender ratio leads to that some men cannot get married, which is one of the reasons for rape cases occurring frequently in India. So what do you  think about this issue? Can you think about a way to prevent selecting gender? In India (also in China), it is illegal to know the sex of the baby. However, you can simply bribe the doctors. So, that's why only rich family can choose the sex of the baby. In poor family, women just keep having babies, until a boy is born.

Gun Control Stats

My group gave a presentation on gun control. Our assistant, Matt, had some counter-statistics that suggested that gun control has failed to reduce crime rates in the UK where our data suggests the exact opposite. I thought this was an interesting example of how statistics can be skewed in favor of each side of an argument.

One statistic I thought was interesting was the idea that gun control is highest in the US in Detroit. One perspective is:

"A quick review of Michigan gun laws shows that law abiding citizens wishing to own a gun for self-protection are strongly regulated and actively discouraged. First, they have to take and pass the Michigan Basic Pistol Safety questionnaire. Then they have to apply for the Ten Day Handgun Purchase Permit to buy the gun and make sure they find and buy the gun of their choice within 10 days, otherwise they have start the process all over again. When they make their purchase, they have to fill out a Michigan Pistol Sales Record form and make sure the pistol has a valid firearm Safety Inspection Certificate.

Once the citizen has purchased their firearm, they have 10 days to take the gun to the local police department, have the sale recorded, and a new Safety Inspection Certificate issued in their name. Otherwise, they are considered in violation of the law and could be arrested on a misdemeanor gun violation.

Federal laws also require a background check if you purchase a gun from a licensed dealer with a Federal Firearms License.

Note that each and every legal gun buyer in Michigan, and particularly Detroit, must be approved by the local police at least twice each and every time they purchase a gun and undergo a background check by the federal government.

As a result, Detroit has the second highest murder rate in the nation and is considered by many to be the most dangerous city in which to live in the United States. Simply put, gun control, as a means of controlling crime and protecting law abiding citizens, is a dismal failure." 

But it seems like there could be more to the story than what the article presents. Does anyone think they could come up with a counter example to this argument or another reason why crime rate may be so high in Detroit despite gun control rather than because of it? I'd be interested to hear other's perspectives. 

For more about the quoted article visit: 

http://mic.com/articles/22835/gun-control-facts-detroit-crime-rate-is-the-result-of-gun-control