Morality of Water Torture

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Morality of Water Torture

The present question regarding the nature and morality of torture offers us an excellent opportunity to advance the level of sophistication of our understanding of morality. We learn best when we are questioning a matter that is meaningful to us.

I was eleven years old when Germany and Japan surrendered and WWII was finally over. One searing memory of this war were the stories I read and the movies I watched during and after the war regarding the torture and general brutality that the German Gestapo inflicted upon the people they conquered. I do not know why this left such a strong impression on me but it certainly did.

Coincidentally I have been studying “Moral Imagination” by Mark Johnson. This is the same Johnson who coauthored the book “Philosophy in the Flesh” with George Lakoff. I have decided to apply the theories Johnson presents in his book as a means to illuminate this matter regarding the morality of water torture used by my country in our struggle with Islamic extremists.

Moral understanding is like any other kind of experience; when we examine a domain of experience that relates to human relationships we must focus our attention on human understanding it self. If we do so we discover that human understanding is fundamentally imaginative in character.

“Many of our most basic concepts have considerable internal structure that cannot be accounted for by the classical theory of concepts as defined by necessary and sufficient features…The primary forms of moral imagination are concepts with prototype structure, semantic frames, conceptual metaphors, and narratives.”

To become morally insightful we must become knowledgeable of these imaginative structures. First, we must give up our illusions about absolute moral codes and also our radical moral subjectivism. Second we must refine our “perception of character traits and situations and of developing empathetic imagination to take up the part of others.”

Empathy is a character trait that can be cultivated by habit and will. Sympathy is somewhat of an automatic response.

When we see a mother weeping over the death of her child caused by a suicide bomber we feel immediate sympathy. Often we will come to tears. But we do not feel anything like that for the mother who may be weeping over the death of her child who was the bomber.

To understand the bomber we must use empathy. We attempt through imagination and reason to create a situation that will allow us to understand why this was done. This is a rational means to understand someone who acts different than we would.

“Empathy is the idea that the vital properties which we experience in or attribute to any person or object outside ourselves are the projections of our own feelings and thoughts.”

The subject viewing an object of art experiences emotional attitudes leading to feelings that are attributes of qualities in the art object thus aesthetic pleasure may be considered as “objectified self-enjoyment in which the subject and object are fused.”

The social sciences adopt a similar concept called ‘empathic understanding’, which refers to the deliberate attempt to identify with another person and accounting for that persons actions by “our own immediate experience of our motivations and attitudes in similar circumstances as we remember or imagine them”. This idea refers to a personal resonance between two people.

“What is crucial is that our moral reasoning can be constrained by the metaphoric and other imaginative structures shared within our culture and moral tradition, yet it can also be creative in transforming our moral understanding, our identity, and the course of our lives. Without this kind of imaginative reasoning we would lead dreadfully impoverished lives. We would be reduced to repeating habitual actions, driven by forces and contingencies beyond our control.”

Can you imagine an individual who is a hard headed realist and very accomplished at empathy sanctioning the use of water torture on anyone, friend or enemy?

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Yes Coberst I can imagine it sadly. Torture is deplorable, it is normally employed by those that are desperate to prove their strength and superiority. But, it does have its place. I can envision myself torturing someone to get needed information to save others. I suppose this might mean I have less than exemplary scruples but, when charged with protecting and no other humane way is left to extract needed information or time is a desperate factor, I would not hesitiate. I have no pride in this, no ego, nothing except, a realization that I am human with human responsibilities.

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Torture is deplorable? Let me demostrate before you the awesome power of language to negate human suffering. No matter how often you justify torture, you must still justify torture. It is a job that never gets done in the past, and cannot be done before it happens. The proper order of events is to have a cause to torture, to torture, and then to justify that torture based upon the facts. Since it is universally acclaimed to be an inhumanity, good luck with making it look good.

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How is it supposed to look good? And why should I wish to make it look good?

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torture looked great when it was called manifest destiny

water torture? please… crucify them.

-Imp

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Isn’t that why every one justifies the unjustifiable? Isn’t it to pin a happy face on death? So, do as you wish, but remember that what you justify for yourself you justify for all.

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Well if you look at it from the US point of view, water boarding is a relatively humane form of torture if it’s being done for the sole purpose of gaining valuable “matter of national security” information. Sure its still a bleeped up thing to do and no amount of frosting is going to cover up its inhumane-“ness” but if you look at torture as a means of killing someone or as a means of punishment for a crime, then there should, in my perspective, be a line as to how far you can go, not only for the criminal but also for the people doing the torture.—>the latter part I got from a Vince Flynn book.

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It appears to me that few people have ever been taught anything about empathy. Empathy is an effort of the imagination to walk in the shoes of another. I suspect that anyone who understand the meaning of empathy and has been able to walk in the shoes of another could not torture that individual.

Take anyone who you know well and truly despise and imagine torturing that individual. I do not think any normal person could do such a thing.

I think that one of the reasons that we humans are on the path to self destruction is partially due to the fact that our culture has never embraced the understanding of empathy.

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We are all taught sympathy and empathy in our mother’s arms. To survive in this world, dog eat dog, rat race that it is we must first deny ourselves sympathy, deny our own pain, and then deny the pain of others. It can be digitize. It can be made a science. People can be pushed to the point of death, distraction, madness; and they can be kept among the living. It is all chemistry and science, and bureaucratic. You do your part in inhumanity, but the guilt is never individual, always shared.

No. It is not that empathy is not taught, but that life demands that we deny to others their humanity like we deny our own. Where is the heart? Where is the Love? Where is the tie that binds all of humanity to a common purpose? That is the triumph of our age, that the dead bury the dead with none to mourn.

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Not far from where I grew up natives burned each other up for their revenge and entertainment. To me this was not humane, but once you have brutalized anyone, you may as well kill them off. Too often people are brutalized in life and left free to brutalize others, and you might not be able to brutalize a human being out of his humanity, but you can make a brute into more of a brute. Killing a person isn’t near the crime of torture. Everyone dies. The unavoidable can hardly be considered a great crime compared to torture which excludes a person from his rights and his humanity, and then leaves him to find his own way back. Everyone has rights, and what we defend for another we demand for ourselves. The eventual object of war with Islam is peace, and we require honor to have peace. When we torture we destroy our honor and attack their honor; which means we ruin our chances for a durable peace. I might well agree that Islam needs to be isolated, respected, and even feared. At the same time, I know that if we give them justice and peace they will do the same in return. These people are republican. They don’t just want a life. They want the good life. They will give us peace, but only if we give them their due.

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Like juggernaut had said, “we are taught empathy and sympathy…,” but we are also taught about realism. You keep stressing the importance of empathy, which I also agree with, but you also have to remember that empathy also has its limits---->We can always be empathetical of a murderer, rapist, etc, but we also must give that person a form of justice, though this does not mean that I am sanctioning torture. I’ve already stated that I believe torture is needed only when valuable information can be achieved.

Juggernaut- I agree and disagree…depending on your take of punishments for certain crimes------>In many countries, mercilessly beating criminals is condoned, the harsher your crime, the more severe the beating. Though I am an American, I sometimes find it necessary to mercilessly punish some people. I was personally effected and affected by domestic violence, and I can tell you this, if anyone else, regardless of any warning, touches my mother in any bodily harm, I will come down on them with sever vengeance. Maybe that makes me a bleeped up person or a psycho, but certain situations can cause people to behave rather “irrationally,” depending on the perspective of a person.

Anyone remember the movie, The Interpreter, with Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman? There was this wonderful story that Kidman’s character told about one African tribe’s culture regarding murder, I don’t remember and can’t find the exact quote but I will try to give a good summary of the scene. Kidman talks about the form of justice in a murder “trial/sentence” of convicted murderers, in the case of a murder, if the murderer is found and the victim has living family members, the fate of the murderer lies in the hand of the closest family members, literally. They would somehow tie the convicted person near a river/lake’s surface and tie strings around the person that both cause them to sink/leading to drowning and strings that allow someone outside of the river to be able to rescue the person. Either the family members watch the man drown or they can pull him out of the water------->this may not be an exact account of the story, but the analogy is exactly the same.
In my perspective, I think that it’s a tough choice, I mean the man has killed someone in your family…say a mother or father, how can someone just let that go. In Africa, specifically Darfur today, there are horrific forms of violence and savagery that would lead anyone of the victims to seek vengeance. Sometimes, simply jailing or solitary confinement is not enough, some people in this world need to be taught a lesson, criminals thrive from the indulgence of society----->Batman Begins.

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Death? Why is torture suddenly brought to death? So be it, A happy face on death, only the worst minds could ever be happy about death. To kill and attack is insanity, to defend or kill for food is not. Society is warped out of proportions because of egos and greed. Torture has its place. Killing has its place. Why would you ever think I should be happy about such a thing? I merely accept what is, acceptance is not contentment nor happiness.

raju;

Torture as punishment does happen, it has been condoned many sickening times throughout man’s history and into present day. People become insane when facing their egos and emotions. would an emotionless human be less prone to such actions?

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The reason that I know something about empathy is because I learned it on my own. I post on many forums and my guess is that fewer than 5% know anything about it. I have seldom had a conversation with anyone who knows empathy from sympathy. I grew up as a Catholic and do not recall any mention of empathy. I suspect that no Christian religion has emphasized empathy.

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Why should they? It is not a thing you can deny to a person or preach into him. Either you have it or not. And almost all people are sensitive to the needs of those they love, or know. That is not unusual. What is unusual is for people to spread caring for others beyond their natural group. I think the desire to help, spread the faith, and enjoy the self perception of giving has been badly abused in Christians. They do not understand that true help comes with a relationship. You should help only those with the courage to ask for it, and them you should not deny anything, least of all interest in their welfare. We should work to form the bonds uniting all human beings, but form relationships at the same time, one at a time until we can do justice no more.

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No one is safe from death who is not safe from torture. If you can do what you wish with a man’s body you can do with a wish to his soul. We have to live our lives. We have to find reason for hope. People caught in perilous times must often get by on memories, hanging on out of sheer will and hope. Life can be little enough of joy and far too much of torment, and people often live only to prove there is some virtue in life they feel they are only blind to. No person who dies can ever curse his fate for death, but only our fate, as death we share with our lives. So, if for the best of us life offers little, a matter of degrees and not of kind is it not a crime to make anyone curse his moments, and wish his life away? Does that very act not rob meaning from all we do and are? Is that not an insult to humanity, to life, to all our dreams? Death is the enemy of all we are and care to be, and what brainless beast, unconscious and unaware ever makes another wish death into the company for a common pointless gain?

We cannot make our enemy value our lives by making him hate his own. It is within our power to make anyone hate life, and plead for death. That has been the easy success of humanity. But where is the gain. We trade gold for lead in our weird economy. Who does that. Who allows that? Every person needs to know there is a standard for behavior, some action no human will stoop to touch. We protect ourselves from inhumanity when we protect others from our inhumanity. Our lives are no different from those who are tortured. It is all we have in common with the tortured. Those criminals who rob meaning from humanity to save a hypothetical human have their own private reason for their sadism. They are paid in full for the damage they do. Who are they? They are the devils of our nightmares wished upon the helpless by the vigorous. I wish they could feel all they do.

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On torture-

I have no problem with torture as punishment for the guilty- I do not mean lets break the fingers of those who steal, but I see no problem with a rapist or a murderer suffering.

For information, if it is actually effective, and the person is known to be guilty, I have no problem either. The information just seems faulty to me.

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If you justify brutality for the guilty because of their crimes, you justify brutality for the guilty in their crimes. The point I would have you grasp is this: Justice is the most difficult quality to arrive at when people give it all due time and respect. When they give it neither, injustice can be found in almost every measure from one end of society to another. Then, in capturing the criminal if you insist that he alone bear justice which society abhores, then it is not justice in the least; but is only brutality meant to frighten others from crime. No society should expect any member to be more just than the whole of society considered as an individual. They do so, no doubt; but the result is simply more rather than less injustice, more rather than less frustration, and more rather than less crime.

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You most surely do not. Punishing a person for a crime they have commited is in no way the same as harming an innocent person for no reason. This is a ridiculous assertment.

I am not society. I’m one person.

The fact that society thinks torture is bad does not matter in the slightest to me. 100 years ago, society thought slavery was a grand idea. I as an individual think that people should be held responsible for their actions, and have no problem being held accountable for mine.

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I very often feel like I am getting a fairer hearing from the walls around my than from some people. And it is then I feel like I should shut up my mouth and let them have the floor. And, I may.

If we look at slavery, there has been some moral push against it even back to the writings of Plato, and even to the Trojan war. In modern times, at nearly every stage of the slave trade there was some moral outrage. You cannot ever justify the statement that society thought slavery grand. Very seldom was it unregulated, and even where it was legal it never had the unqualified support of society. In any event, society is not just one part of society, but the whole considered as a whole, even the slaves who cooperated to some extent, and consented to their slavery. Is this unusual from one who may have come out of a nature where captivity equaled cannibalism? Even to those who hate slavery cannibalism is usually percieved as the greater curse, but who can measure human progress by the past? When we lose their frame of reference we lose their frame of mind and cannot judge them. But we can judge ourselves.

How often is it that people guilty of some terrible crime excuse their behavior with a history of abuse? Even if you do not excuse them their crime; does it not make you wonder how the experience of abuse and the threat of abuse works on some young minds?

Do you want death for the child abuser. Everyone does. But what then is the reason to show mercy for the victim if the victims death results in no greater punishment? Surely some matter of choice is involved, but who is it that deliberately injures when to injure may mean life in prison, or death? Clearly abusing people are often at the mercy of their own psychology, so, while it may be politically expedient to say: Deter the criminal with pain, deprivation, and death; is it really good policy?

The greater the punishment justifies the greater crime. Perhaps not in your mind; because you are well. When you are dealing with people who have already been brutalized the threat of brutality is often an invitation to brutality. Brutality is an ineffective, and often counter productive threat since it is clearly a position of all humanity to prefer, if only for a moment, to be the victors rather than the victimized.

Wouldn’t you agree, that if the goal is to protect the innocent, that the punishment of the criminal, in an absolute sense, must be defered to God? If you find those who have been abused you have located many who will be abusers. Build a wall between those people and others as high and as unassailable as is necessary. That is punishment enough. But for the sake of society; realize that once a person has been removed from their humanity, and from the trust each should be able to hold in others who have power over them, there is little hope of bringing them back.

Surely you might kill them; and murder is less the crime than brutality. But murder is not prefered because the torture is worse. The fact is that brutality is a crime that continues on and on, and cannot be cured without intervention, and perhaps, cannot be cured at all. Life is brutal enough, and every living soul should be able to look to fellow humans for mercy and help. For this reason, torture is a crime against humanity, an injury to all, for those who inflict suffering never know the extent of the suffering they inflict; but humanity must suffer brutality endlessly as a result.

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Degree’s of brutality and measuring amounts of pain appropriate to a specific atrocity seem to miss the point a bit. I don’t think anyone with any serious thought advocates torture as a punishment to a crime. When torture occurs it is usually a manifestation of cruelty on the part of a group against another group that has been declared less human or deserving of said punishment.

Waterboarding as it has entered the national debate is a technique that simulates drowning and has been one of the more popular “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” Part of the reason it is so heavily used is that prior to our nation’s current percieved need for Enhanced Interrogation Techniques it was used in our military’s SERE schools to prepare soldiers/sailors/pilots for what they could expect should they be captured. It causes the sensation of drowning without doing immediate physical harm. Of course what won’t harm a well fed, physically fit, western soldier might just kill a sickly, possibly wounded, third worlder.

Should we torture as a form of punishment is not a question, we shouldn’t. IS Waterboarding torture seems the more relevant question. Simply producing pain to elicit a desired response does not equal torture. I use what are called ‘pain compliance’ techniques every weekend to convince drunk patrons to leave the bar. I hardly think a wrist lock in order to convince someone to stop trying to hit me and go on their way is the same thing as Waterboarding someone for information but I would be interested in where others think the distinction is made.