Watching the news the other night, I heard how some UN body had declared that the use of tasers constituted torture. (At least that is how it was reported). Predictably the Green party cited this as I for rejecting the use of Tasers.

The implicit argument here seems to go something like this. [1] The use of Tasers constitutes torture [2] Torture is always unjust, therefore [3] the use of Tasers is unjust. Formally this argument is valid. If [1] and [2] are true [3] follows. Most people I suspect will take issue with [1] and I think there could well be problems with this claim. I think however a more interesting issue arises here. Is [2] actually true, is torture always unjust or are there circumstances in which it is justified and, assuming Tasers are torture devices, are they an instance of such a circumstance.

Is torture always unjust? A common argument for justifiable torture goes something like this: A terrorist cell has planted several bombs in malls around the countries; they will be detonated some time in the next 24 hours. One member of the cell who knows where these bombs are has been captured. Would it be acceptable to torture the terrorist to gain this information, or should one instead let thousands die? Cases like this are sometimes called “ticking time bomb” cases. Many people find, that their moral sense or intuitions lead to conclude that torture is justified in ticking time bomb cases. The popularity of shows like 24 attest to this.

Act Utilitarianism provides a prima facie rationale for this judgment. According to Act Utilitarianism, an action is right if and only if the consequences of performing it result in more net happiness than any alternative. In this instance, torturing the terrorist will make him suffer. However, failure to torture him will result in thousands of deaths and thus will lead to even greater suffering. Hence, the former action; that of torturing the terrorist is justified.

Until fairly recently I did not find this analysis convincing, while I see the force of the ticking time bomb case. The act utilitarian assessment seems to me to be wrong. This is because one can construct equally plausible cases where one should not engage in violence against another person, even if doing so results in an increase in net happiness. Consider the following two cases, taken from the literature. Judith Jarvis Thomson [i]. Thomson points out that if a doctor painlessly kills a group of healthy patients and harvests their organs, an even greater number of people can be saved via organ donation. It is in fact conceivable that forcing people to under go various medical procedures such as kidney and or bone marrow transplants would result in numerous people being saved from fatal illnesses. Despite these facts, however, neither killing people nor enforcing compulsory transplants are permissible practices. Although such procedures may promote the happiness of others and in some cases be life saving, they do so by unjust means, killing and assaulting innocent human beings.

Don Marquis suggests a second case. The infamous the Willowbrook experiments which involved experimenting upon mentally retarded children in order to ascertain information for fighting diseases such as Hepatitis or the Nazi experimenting upon concentration camp inmates to learn how to combat hypothermia. Regarding these experiments Don Marquis notes that

The Tuskegee, Willowbrook and Nazi studies were wrong, not because they were bad and useless science, but because the human subjects in them were treated inhumanely…There is now a consensus, both in society and in academic bioethics that this is wrong even when the research will clearly benefit the common good. In short conformity with a respect for human subjects principle is a necessary condition of morally permissible research whatever its benefits.[ii]

I contend that Marquis is correct in these sentiments. What made such experiments wrong was not that they failed to bring about the significant results they aimed at, but rather that the means they did so were unjust, and involved disrespecting and degrading human beings. Hence even if important advancements in fighting hypothermia or hepatitis have been achieved, the experiments should still be condemned.

A few years ago however, I came across a different analysis of the ticking time bomb case that makes sense of its initial plausibility without leading to the conclusion that violence is justified whenever more, or a large number, of people are made happy by its commission.

In his monograph The Theory of Morality Alan Donagan responds to ticking time bomb cases, by noting, correctly, that violence is not unjust if used against an unjust aggressor. Suppose a person is attacking an innocent third party and is threatening to kill them or do them irreparable injury, suppose further that the only way to stop him is by use of violence, either by physically hitting him and inflicting probable pain and injury upon him. In such a situation, both civil and divine law recognise that the use of violence is justified. It’s this moral insight that is behind the legal right to kill or use force in self defence.

Donagan goes on to note that the case I sketched above seems to fit this paradigm of justified use of violence. The terrorist, is complicit in the planting of bombs which are about to go off, hence he is in the process of committing a heinous act of violent aggression against hundreds of innocent people, hence if the only way to prevent this attack from killing these people is to use violence against him, it is justified. This however, seems to leave open a case for justified torture. If one has reasonable grounds for thinking that the terrorist is complicit in such an attack and if one knows that the only way to gain the information necessary to thwart this attack is to torture the terrorist, then one is justified in using violence proportionate to the gravity of the attack, against the terrorist, to extract this information.

Interestingly Donagan steps back from concluding that torture should be permitted in such cases. He notes, perhaps plausibly, that in real life situations its dubious one will really know that a given person is in fact a terrorist. Nor is it likely in most situations that one will know that torture is the only way to prevent an attack hence he concludes. A rule allowing torture in such cases would probably cause much mischief. He concludes “In the last century and a half, torture has come to be prohibited in all civilised countries: and rightly, because it has been found practically impossible , while allowing it at all, to confine it to those very few cases where it would be morally permissible”

This may be a compelling reason for banning torture as an interrogation technique. But it seems clear to me that the context in which the use of Tasers are being proposed is quite different. No one is suggesting Tasers be used as an interrogation device to extract information from suspects. Instead, Tasers are used by the proposed as a defensive weapon, to defend either the police man himself or a member of the public from imminent attack. And it seems false to suggest that the law cannot make distinctions between violence used in justifiable defence of the innocent and that which is not. For centuries both common law and statute law have been drawing just this distinction and applying it in the courts. Section 48 of the crimes act for example allows this defense to assault. “Every one is justified in using, in the defence of himself or another, such force as, in the circumstances as he believes them to be, it is reasonable to use." So it seems then that (i) one can justifiably inflict pain injury and even death on a person in defense of ones self or others and (ii) the law can make this distinction. Hence it’s hard to see why, torture, which is wrong presumably because it inflicts pain and injury on people, can always be unjustified in the context being proposed. Hence even if one grants that the Tasers are a form of torture it does not follow its always wrong to use them.

There is of course a way around this conclusion, an apologist for the greens could argue that (i) and (ii) are false and we should abolish section 48 of the crimes act. I think this is absurd, but stranger things have come from the Green party. Consider, Sue Bradfords tireless campaign to abolish section 59 of the crimes act which allowed parents to use “reasonable force” to correct bad behavior of children. I distinctly remember Sue arguing that this defense should be abolished because. (a) its unacceptable to draw distinctions between reasonable and unreasonable violence (b) all forms of violence are wrong. (c) All people have a right to be protected from violence and (d) what’s reasonable to one person is not reasonable to another (e) under section 59 some people who were guilty of assault were acquitted because they persuaded a jury that their force was reasonable. Now, as I pointed out Bradford herself, don’t each of these arguments apply with equal force to section 48 of the crimes act? In a sense then the Greens have already made the argument that people should not be allowed to defend themselves by implication which, perhaps, puts this whole Taser debate in an interesting context.

I just recieved word from the Editor of The Journal of Ethics and Medicine that my article "Boonin's Defense of the Sentience Criteria: A Critique" has been accepted for publication in a future issue (the exact issue is still being decided). There may be some minor ammendments made but at present the following is the accepted abstract for this article.

I want to focus on one criticism leveled at me in this comment. It’s the objection that that I support “imposing my views onto others”. This criticism of religious conservatives is not new, I have seen it numerous times in the media and even some academics use it. In her book The Abortion Myth, bio-ethicist Leslie Cannold writes.

The United States religious right, like most religious extremists, believe their political beliefs are actually God’s will. ... [Feminism is opposed] to one religious groups imposition of its rather narrow version of morality on a pluralistic society.

Cannold objects that any appeal to divine law as laid down in scripture constitutes an imposition of one’s view upon others and this is, she assumes objectionable. Feminists (such as her) she assures us oppose such things.

I always find this objection strange, because despite widespread impression to the contrary there is nothing objectionable about imposing one’s moral beliefs or values upon others. I know this comment will strike many as absurd, so I will offer two arguments for this claim. Firstly, the contention that it is wrong to require others to comply with one’s moral principles is subject to serious counter-examples. Secondly, it is self-referentially incoherent.

Turning to the first, consider an act like rape, assault or infanticide. I believe each of these practices is wrong. Further, I expect others to refrain from doing them. I even support their commission being considered a crime punishable by the state. However, if it were wrong to impose my moral beliefs upon others, my position on rape, assault or infanticide would be unacceptable. I would have to leave others free to choose whether they wished to rape or kill children and hold that my own qualms about these matters do not apply to others. This would be absurd.

Secondly, the contention that it is wrong to require others to comply with one’s moral principles is self-referentially incoherent. This is clear when one realises the contention itself is a moral principle. Those who defend it assert that it is wrong to impose one’s beliefs upon others, that one is required to refrain from such an imposition and any attempts to do so should be prevented. However, given that this contention expresses a moral principle then those who defend it have no right to expect that others will comply with it, nor can they force people to do so. If it is wrong to require others to comply with one’s own moral principles then those who reject this principle, such as I, are free from having to follow it since no one has the right to impose it upon me.

In fact, this contention that imposing your moral principles upon others is wrong has all sorts of curious consequences. Paul Hill believed that it was morally permissible to shoot abortionists. I think Paul Hill was wrong. However, if this contention is correct it is wrong for me to demand that Mr Hill comply with my beliefs as that would be forcing my beliefs on to him. Consequently, the laws that ban shooting abortionists are unjust as they impose someone else’s morality on to another. The same thing can be said about those who block abortion clinics and even those who blow them up. The alleged duty not to impose one’s beliefs onto others is a double-edged sword. Not only does it proscribe the criminalisation of abortion but it also proscribes making laws against preventing people from having abortions. It simultaneously entails both that people should be free to have abortions and free to force others not to have abortions. It is incoherent.

By itself, the observation that people are imposing their beliefs upon others is of little consequence. However, perhaps I am being unchartible Cannold does not object to such imposition in an unqualified manner. Her objection is that it is inappropriate to impose certain kinds of moral principles upon others . The types of principles Cannold wants to reject as a basis for public debate are those she labels “narrow”. What is meant by this spatial metaphor is unclear; however, I presume she means that this is a minority view, held by only a small segment of society.

Implicit in this argument is the claim that a necessary condition for any principle to be utilised in public debate is that the majority accepts it as true. However, this is subject to numerous counter-examples. Consider a culture where the majority believes that a husband has the right to beat his wife. Would an advocate of majoritarianism contend that in such a society criticism by a feminist minority of this practice and the advocacy of norms forbidding spousal abuse is an unacceptable imposition of a narrow, feminist perspective in a pluralistic society? Would it be true that in such a society public policy could not be based on the moral principle that it is wrong for a man to beat his wife?

Consider an Islamic society where the majority believe that conversion to a rival, monotheistic religion is immoral and should be a capital offence. Not to execute converts to Judaism or Christianity in such a society would, by this reasoning, be unjust. In societies where a racial majority thinks a racial minority is sub-human, it would be unjust to grant equal human rights.

I think then the objection to imposing ones “narrow” beliefs on to others is misguided. What is wrong is not the imposition of someones values, but the imposition of values that incorrect, irrational, oppressive or unjust. If the principles expounded in Christianity are correct and accurately reflect justice then there is nothing wrong with imposing them on others. To label an appeal to these values as unjust because it involves such an imposition is to argue backwards.

In my previous post I criticised Singer’s utilisation of the arbitrariness objection against voluntarism. Singer’s last objection comes as a rejoinder to the line of response sketched.

The problems with this response have already been demonstrated. Singer suggests that the modern theists who propose this response hold that ‘good’ means approved by God. However, this is not what they propose. Some, like Quinn and Weirenga, suggest that what makes actions right or wrong are the commands of God. Adams holds that wrongness is the property of being contrary to God’s commands. Neither of these views entails that ‘God is good’ means ‘God is approved’ by God.

In order for Singer’s objection to be something other than a straw man, it needs to be reformulated to deal with theories like the ones actually proposed by defenders of Voluntarism. One such formulation is suggested, though not endorsed, by Edward Weirenga.

This objection is problematic. Firstly, the last premise affirms that there is no moral value in never doing what one forbids oneself to do; i.e. there is no moral value in living by the standards you set yourself, so to speak. This is false. There very clearly is moral value in avoiding hypocrisy and hypocrisy involves, in part, not following the standards one lays down for one’s own behaviour. Moreover, the very notion at the heart of much contemporary, ethical theory is that of autonomy. Autonomy refers to the act of regulating one’s own behaviour in light of the laws or principles of which one approves.

Finally, note that Weirenga’s objection begins with “if to be morally good is to do no wrong ... then”. [Emphasis added]. The argument assumes that goodness is defined purely in terms of doing one’s duty. This was not claimed in the theory proposed and this assumption is at best controversial. Many ethical theories define ‘right’ in terms of a relationship to what is good and others see rightness as involving side constraints upon the quest for good. At best, what is needed is an argument as to why a theist must accept such a definition and none has been offered.

Paul Faber notes that within Presbyterian tradition there are strong precedents for not characterising goodness this way. He notes how God’s goodness is characterised in the Westminster Confession.[iii]

Here God’s goodness is not defined so much in terms of conformity to duties but in terms of various character traits or excellence. Virtues such as being loving, truthful, forgiving, etc, hating actions that are wrong, praising and rewarding what is right. Nothing in Voluntarism entails that God cannot have such attributes. Voluntarism might have this implication if it also maintained that God has such traits because he is required to or if the virtues mentioned cannot be attributed to God without defining them in terms of various commands he has issued. However, none of this is necessary. God does not have to have a duty to have something in order to have it and such things as being loving, truthful, forgiving, etc. can all be understood without specifying any divine command.

[i] Singer, Practical Ethics, 3-4.
[ii] Weirenga, The Nature of God, 222.
[iii] Paul Faber, “The Euthyphro Objection to Divine Normative Theories: A Response” Religious Studies 21 (1985): 564-567.
[iv] Westminster Confession of Faith, Ch. 2, Article 1, 145.