Torture

Torture is a touchy suspect (pun not intended), some view it as a moral way of information extraction, others don't. It's as simple as that. What I'm going to briefly explore, is when it is morally right (if ever).

First you should know that with concerns to morals, I am relativist and slightly utilitarian.

For example, let's say if you torture someone so that you may know where a bomb is on an airliner, then fair enough. Injuring someone briefly so that several hundred people may be saved is an excellent trade off in my opinion. Unfortunately, this assumes that torture will yield the required results.

Can torture do this, though?

With concerns to confessions, it's pretty much a fact that tortured people will eventually confess to stuff they have never done - look at all those witch trials a while back, most were simply old women with a knowledge of herbs or something.  This implies that other information from torture can be inaccurate. So again we hit another moral barrier with more bad consequences, the person could give inaccurate information that could itself potentially endanger more lives due to its inaccuracy.

On the flip side, the information gained from torture can be hugely beneficial. Basically, it's just a gamble on the tortured will and pain tolerance - and don't forget the tortured might not even have any information at all.

Would you risk serious injury (or even death) on a possible innocent individual for a chance to gain some valuable information?

And that's done for today, as I am tired!