The following exchange is from the combox of a piece entitled "The Boy Who Cried Waterboard," by Zippy Catholic, posted on the What's Wrong With the World website on 29 April 2009. Catholic philosopher Francis Beckwith's words will be in regular black; Mark Shea's in blue. This is (note!) an edited version, to highlight their particular back-and-forth dialogue. To read the whole thing and all the context, follow the link above.
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Apparently, KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] went through 5 waterboarding sessions, which consisted of 183 "spills" of water. I could be wrong about this, by the way. But that's the way I understand it.
Having said that, couldn't someone respond this way, "The fact that he went through 183 spills means that it wasn't torture to him. That is, a successful waterboarding is the result of the prisoner believing he could drown based on the sensations he is experiencing. But someone who is mentally tough could overcome those sensations by what he knows to be true, that in fact he is not drowning."
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I did not merely say "The fact that he went through 183 spills means that it wasn't torture to him." I said that "someone could say that," which means that "someone," and not necessarily me, "could say that." . . . that's what philosophers do, they think about stuff by suggesting different conceptual schemes. They don't just uncritically repeat the talking points of Moveon.org or Human Events as if they were gospel.
. . . you see what's going on here. If anyone wants to think about this stuff, they are shouted down by extracting their words out of context and offering loaded questions in order to imply bad faith.
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Yes. Someone could. In fact, someone has: it's been a standard talking point of the Rubber Hose Right since Limbaugh first proposed it for mass consumption by dittoheads a week or so ago.
Of course, it's an argument of almost preternatural stupidity. But still, you are right: someone could respond with it and lots of people are either born stupid or working hard to achieve stupidity by force of will.
You see, in torture sessions, it's not the victim who decides how many times he will be tortured. It's the torturer. You might as well say that since a woman was gang raped multiple times, that means it wasn't rape to her.
Blackadder's right, Dr. Beckwith. Listen to him. Instead of merely proposing preternaturally stupid responses as hypotheticals, go all the way and analyze why they are preternaturally stupid. Philosophy is, after all, about the love of wisdom.
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Fellow philosopher Edward Feser:
Yes, Frank, only preternatual stupidity or a Cafeteria
Catholic Bush-worshipping Ay-rab -hating Dittohead desire to shill for
the Rubber Hose Right could possibly (or, to be excessively charitable, at least plausibly)
motivate anyone even to raise conceptual questions about what
constitutes torture. So, come on now, listen to your moral betters,
then go see your confessor ASAP, OK?
I mean, as I noted in an earlier post, it's all just so obvious, right? Nothing more need be said!
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I'm sorry, but I cannot teach music to the tone deaf or art appreciation to the blind. If the gang rape analogy could not alert you to the problem of Dr. Beckwith's hypothetical response, no mortal power can put in what God has left out of your critical faculties.
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For myself, I have tended to confine my examples of torture to what is unambiguously torture (waterboarding, freezing prisoners, strappado). Of course, there are grey areas where seemingly innocuous things can be used for torture (and have been). But since the Makers of Fine Distinctions are so eager to always pretend that such grey areas are proof we do not torture, I have tended not to bother with them.
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I'm attempting to say that a man who is actually tortured and a woman who is actually gang-raped are both at the mercy of the people who are torturing and gang-raping them. The fact that these evil acts are perpetrated against them multiple times is no proof at all that it is not torture or rape to them. To say that it is evidence of this is preternaturally stupid. To mention that "somebody" might say it, without noting the preternatural stupidity of the argument is not what I would call an optimal exercise of the vocation of "philosopher".
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As I have already noted, the 183 number is highly misleading.
No. What's misleading is the claim the 183 acts of torture become five acts of torture if you cluster the 183 acts into groups of five.
But that, of course, does not have any effect on the judgment as to whether the act itself is torture.
I actually had not heard Limbaugh's comments on this matter. (I really don't remember the last time I listened to his radio show). I thought of the fictional comments all by my lonesome. That's what we philosophers tend to do. It is not our first thought to reach for the rubber hose remark.
But, of course, it should not matter who says this or that. What should matter is whether one has a good or bad argument, whether one has carefully thought through the issue in question.
Yes. And that's what I addressed: the fact that your (or "somebody's") argument was extraordinarily bad.
As I have said on numerous posts, I carry no brief for torture. I think, as the Church teaches, that torture is intrinsically evil.
Good.
There are, of course, clear cut cases of torture. And there are, of course, clear cut cases of non-torture. But there are, whether we like it or not, borderline cases whose intrinsic evil a reasonable and well-informed person may call into question.
The old "What O What is Torture?" gambit. I can answer that in this case. Forcing somebody to undergo simulated drowning once, much less 183 times, is a clearcut case of torture, not a "borderline case". Attempting to argue to the contrary is sophistry.
Consider this example. The Church teaches that active euthanasia is intrinsically immoral, including some acts of withholding treatment that lead to death. On the other hand, there are acts of withholding treatment that lead to death that are not intrinsically immoral. So, if someone were to simply employ colorful pejoratives to distract us from the serious work of thinking carefully and cautiously about these borderline cases--e.g., "killer," "rubber hose right,"--that someone would be planting the seeds of intellectual vice into his listeners. He would be providing the occasion for a person to harm his own soul.
I mean, as I noted in an earlier post, it's all just so obvious, right? Nothing more need be said!
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I'm sorry, but I cannot teach music to the tone deaf or art appreciation to the blind. If the gang rape analogy could not alert you to the problem of Dr. Beckwith's hypothetical response, no mortal power can put in what God has left out of your critical faculties.
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For myself, I have tended to confine my examples of torture to what is unambiguously torture (waterboarding, freezing prisoners, strappado). Of course, there are grey areas where seemingly innocuous things can be used for torture (and have been). But since the Makers of Fine Distinctions are so eager to always pretend that such grey areas are proof we do not torture, I have tended not to bother with them.
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I'm attempting to say that a man who is actually tortured and a woman who is actually gang-raped are both at the mercy of the people who are torturing and gang-raping them. The fact that these evil acts are perpetrated against them multiple times is no proof at all that it is not torture or rape to them. To say that it is evidence of this is preternaturally stupid. To mention that "somebody" might say it, without noting the preternatural stupidity of the argument is not what I would call an optimal exercise of the vocation of "philosopher".
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As I have already noted, the 183 number is highly misleading.
No. What's misleading is the claim the 183 acts of torture become five acts of torture if you cluster the 183 acts into groups of five.
But that, of course, does not have any effect on the judgment as to whether the act itself is torture.
I actually had not heard Limbaugh's comments on this matter. (I really don't remember the last time I listened to his radio show). I thought of the fictional comments all by my lonesome. That's what we philosophers tend to do. It is not our first thought to reach for the rubber hose remark.
But, of course, it should not matter who says this or that. What should matter is whether one has a good or bad argument, whether one has carefully thought through the issue in question.
Yes. And that's what I addressed: the fact that your (or "somebody's") argument was extraordinarily bad.
As I have said on numerous posts, I carry no brief for torture. I think, as the Church teaches, that torture is intrinsically evil.
Good.
There are, of course, clear cut cases of torture. And there are, of course, clear cut cases of non-torture. But there are, whether we like it or not, borderline cases whose intrinsic evil a reasonable and well-informed person may call into question.
The old "What O What is Torture?" gambit. I can answer that in this case. Forcing somebody to undergo simulated drowning once, much less 183 times, is a clearcut case of torture, not a "borderline case". Attempting to argue to the contrary is sophistry.
Consider this example. The Church teaches that active euthanasia is intrinsically immoral, including some acts of withholding treatment that lead to death. On the other hand, there are acts of withholding treatment that lead to death that are not intrinsically immoral. So, if someone were to simply employ colorful pejoratives to distract us from the serious work of thinking carefully and cautiously about these borderline cases--e.g., "killer," "rubber hose right,"--that someone would be planting the seeds of intellectual vice into his listeners. He would be providing the occasion for a person to harm his own soul.
Although I understand Mr. Shea's passion, and indeed respect the
tenacity he employs in making his case, I cannot help but think that his
pious pose and profane prose do little in reminding his listeners that
he is an advocate for the good, the true, and the beautiful.
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Mark is boxing with phantoms in his own mind. I'm not defending torture. Never have; never will. What I am defending is thinking rather than emoting and demagoging.
A few things to remember:
Mark is boxing with phantoms in his own mind. I'm not defending torture. Never have; never will. What I am defending is thinking rather than emoting and demagoging.
A few things to remember:
1. just because Rush Limbaugh says something doesn't make it wrong.
True. Which is why I never said so. I merely noted that "somebody" has
in fact made the point you are making and that lots of other somebody
have been repeating it.
2. a sneer is not a rebuttal.
Correct. This is a rebuttal:
You see, in torture sessions, it's not the victim who decides how many times he will be tortured. It's the torturer. You might as well say that since a woman was gang raped multiple times, that means it wasn't rape to her.
And it's a rebuttal you still have not addressed.
3. if in your comments you employ insult as a substitute for argument, don't feign offense when those you insulted push back.
I employed no insult. I described "somebody's" argument as
preternaturally stupid, because that's what it is. It lacks
intelligence. It does not betray even the rudiments of critical
analysis of its huge weaknesses. I took it for granted that you were
sincere when you told Blackadder that is it not what you think,
but what "somebody" might think. I said that if "somebody" were to
actually think that, they would be thinking something stupid and that
other (not you) have in fact, expressed this stupid idea. But even that
is directed at the idea, not the person. But since I took it for
granted that you were not claiming you think it, I said nothing about
you at all--except to express my disappointment that you would give
voice to "somebody's" hypothetical opinion without noting the gigantic
flaws in the argument.
4. if you're going to trot out appeals to human dignity to ground your position, don't be surprised when people are taken aback when you don't treat them with dignity when making your case.
I said nothing about your person at all. I noted that the argument has
been popular among the torture defenders I meet in cyberspace (whom I
refer to as the "Rubber Hose Right" just not a few here speak casually
of the "Moloch-worshipping Left"). I did not say you numbered among
them, merely that the argument was popular with them, which it is.
Again, my words were directed at the idea, not the man.
5. don't follow leaders; watch the parking meters.
You know, that's just what I tell those who are bending over backward to adore Obama or excuse Bush/Cheney torture policies.
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The following comment was in a thread in the same venue under a post dated 25 April 2009:
I think there is a great danger is employing the argumentum ad hitlerum fallacy to either the Vox crowd or those who want to have a serious conversation about what constitutes torture, just punishment, etc. When someone offers a counter-example to your moral position, you owe it to that person, if he or she is serious, to carefully, charitably, and intelligently offer that person a response. Calling such a person names because he or she happens to think that rational discourse is important undermines one of the first principles of liberal democracy: political liberty. A polity that denigrates rational discourse opens itself up to demagoguery and totalitarianism. And if you haven't noticed, we're creeping in that direction.
Every since the 1960s, the "social movement" ethos of self-righteous know-it-alls has inhibited rather than advanced civility.
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I would add that Mr. Shea never adequately rebutted "somebody's" argument. Waterboarding, unlike rape, is intended to induce psychological distress. If the psychological distress appears to have been *absent*, one is hard pressed to say that the (absent) distress constituted torture. Rape, on the other hand, is not primarily psychological, and, thus, what the victim feels or thinks is irrelevant to the moral status of the act.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I don't think "somebody's" argument is particularly strong, because repetition of the waterboarding doesn't mean that psychological distress wasn't induced. It only means that the desired information was not obtained.
But, I think this is all somewhat beside the point: because I don't think one can straightforwardly make an argument from the amount of pain or psychological distress an act involves (or intends to produce) to that act's being torture. Torture simply--and obviously--is something more than the causing of pain. Spanking, for example, is not torture!
"You see, in torture sessions, it's not the victim who decides how many times he will be tortured. It's the torturer. You might as well say that since a woman was gang raped multiple times, that means it wasn't rape to her."
ReplyDeleteIs a non sequitur. The first part refers to quantity. The second part refers to species. Mr. Shea not only fails to understand his own argument, but doubles down on it by insisting Mr. Beckwith respond.
Additionally, the Church does not teach that all forms of physical or mental coercion are torture. If you are honest, reading the Magisterial documents on the subject, the condemnations are exclusive, specific lists. Blanket statements haven't existed, until the very recent past, amongst popes and theologians have sought to "paint with a broad brush" where there is none to be found.
ReplyDeleteFor example, the list in the Catechism of the Catholic Church is specific, and reiterates a list that has been compiling for some time; at least since the time of Napoleon when the pope condemned torture as political oppression.
In another example, Fr. Brian Harrison points to the response of Pope Benedict XVI on torture, but his response pointed to a 2006 Curial document that condemned torture for extracting confessions. Nothing more. That document is on the Vatican website to review. Use of torture for extracting confessions has always been deemed immoral because it offends the virtue of justice.
Another "internet resource" brings up the Inquisition requirement for both the Inquisitor AND the jurisdictional bishop to agree to coercion being applied. It does not forbid coercion to be applied, nor condemn it. It's true that what was allowed was "freer" during the Middle Ages, but we can't impose soft, post-Enlightenment thinking on the Faith.
That would be both Modernist and Liberal, since we would be saying that times make objective truth relative, and liberal insofar as people are trying to make Catholicism answerable to Liberalism, which is equally absurd.
Also, what constitutes torture? The ACLU's definition of what torture is, is likely very low. If I'm applying physical discomfort, as an agent of law enforcement, or public defense, or I'm employing mental or emotional means to make a detainee or suspect compliant, am I a torturer? Who decides? A pansy who thinks rough bedsheets are torture? Or a SEAL?
The Jesuit mind - the traditional mind - is what is needed here, but knee jerk liberals will decry it, as will knee jerk conservatives. You have to look at motives, means, limits, and the goal of coercion, and make an informed choice in the chain of command involved in the decision. It isn't cut and dry.
Lastly, as an aside, detainees know that waterboarding is not drowning. It might feel like drowning at the moment, but they know the CIA isn't going to kill then, defeating the entire point of interrogation.
I just popped by Mark Shea's blog. Here is a random sample:
ReplyDelete_____________
Indeed, the single most repulsive tactic of anti-abortion-but-not-prolife proponents of the “non-negotiables” is the habit of using the unborn as human shields for the defense of every right wing agenda item at odds with the Church’s teaching. So we now pass from “Why are we wasting time talking about “torture” [the scare quotes are essential for Torture Defenders] when the The Babies[TM] are dying?” to the bizarre claim that the Pope(!) is in league with Teh Population Controllers[TM] (read “abortion exporters”) and so we should ignore whatever this next document will say.
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Why does this bafoon think this kind of writing is persuasive. It just makes Catholics look stupid.
Mark's polemic that merely investigating the moral limits of torture vs interrogation etc is akin to "Trying to figure out how much I can get away with? Or how far can I go making out with a woman not my wife before it becomes adultery?" is tedious.
ReplyDeleteObviously showing romantic affection toward any female not my wife is intrinsically evil. However does that mean there are no circumstance by which I might press my body up close to a woman not my wife? Well it is winter here in NYC. What if I was trapped in a cab during a sub-zero blizzard with a young twenty something person of the female gender and we needed to keep warm by pressing our bodies against each other? That would be allowed.
We are not trying to see what we can get away with. We are trying to find out what is morally permissible and under what circumstances.
Why is this hard?
It's hard for those who see things in very stark, "us vs. them" / hyper-polemical terms.
ReplyDeleteDave, I'm reading the original thread and I think you're doing a disservice by leaving out Blackadder's remarks. One of Dr. Beckwith's remarks is addressed to him and not Shea. I think it also hides Dr. Beckwith's initial reaction before Shea ever commented.
ReplyDeleteI hope I can comment more later.
This is a red herring. I linked to the whole thing at the top and noted:
ReplyDelete"This is (note!) an edited version, to highlight their particular back-and-forth dialogue. To read the whole thing and all the context, follow the link above."
If people want the whole context and are too lazy to make a click on a link, that is their problem, not mine.
As I said, I was reading the whole post and finished it. I think your readers would have been better served with simply a, "go read this and comment here note". Still, it is what it is. Now the question in my mind is, "What is Dave's point"? Mark Shea is a butthead? Frankly I find Marks histrionics like nails on a chalkboard, conceded. What now?
ReplyDeleteThat Mark Shea didn't substantively reply to Dr. Beckwith? There I'm afraid we will have to disagree.
What I saw was Dr. Beckwith proposing a poor idea to explain why the waterboarding may not have been torture. Blackadder politely called him on it and he reacted badly (unless there was some kind of exchange that he did in fact delete).
Later, Shea weighted in and in stark terms called the idea all kinds of names. Dr. Beckwith then drifted mostly into an ad hominim about how mean Shea was, etc. Beckwith did offer the one post about euthanasia and the difficulties surrounding it but did not actually address how a reasonable man would hold that an intrinsic evil could rest on the victim's perception of the act.
Again, I cannot think of a solid example of where an intrinsic evil depends on the perception of the object of the moral act. Can you?
This is the essential point of the thread. The question of, "Is waterboarding an intrinsic evil" was not actually on deck
I gave the thing a neutral title and an objective, "non-partisan" introduction and offered both sides of a dialogue, with a link to the whole thing.
ReplyDeleteThis allows readers to make up their own minds. You did just that. I said nothing about anyone being a "butthead." If that was your impression, then it was. A = A.
People can get out of it whatever they want to get out of it.
My main point (unstated) is that Mark doesn't dialogue with those in disagreement with him. He preaches and polemicizes and ignores the other person. It's mutual monologue, and both Dr. Beckwith and Dr. Feser, in a similar exchange (professional philosophers who know about dialogue) noted that fact.