Ethical basis for Veganism or Vegetarianism?

[legs laney]

I think that any act can be justified under certain specific circumstances. Take, for example, this hypothetical situation: a terrorist has planted bombs at a couple of different heavily-populated locations in a city. The bombs are set to go off in about an hour. The only way for the police to find and disable the bombs in time would be to torture the terrorist using new, high-tech techniques that are almost guaranteed to work. Would you still be against torture in this situation?

I see a lot of problems with ur hypothetical.  1.  your verbage "almost guaranteed" to work.... that sounds like a half baked promise that cries false to me, there are no guarantees in life and who is doing the guaranteeing?  2.  new, high-tech techniques?  so you are proposing this scenario in the future only, not in the present time? and why? and how would the present day techniques have to change to suit you?  maybe we could start a new high tech technique business together (joke)  3.  you are still not guaranteed the terrorist would give up the info, are you?  i would actually assume it would be more glorious for this kind of man to die for his cause, would it not?  4.  although i am mostly against torture, i would consider it during the following scenario:  if it is my child or family at risk of harm i would consider using torture if it befit the situation; although i still say this is immoral; example:  if someone raped my daughter and got away with it, i would think i would want to hunt him down and make him suffer even if it put my own life on the line. (although we never know what we're capable in any given situation until the situation arises, do we) 5. if the act were justified, who's the judge?  and who is the future judge of the next act?  and how do we know where the line is drawn? and how do we know the guy we are terrorizing really is a bad guy and is a part of the crime?  6. how do we know the bombs will be going off within an hour?  sounds like a bad movie plot.. haha  7.   so assuming there was a way to exerpt info needed to save a mass quantity of people that were guranteed to die, i personally, would risk one life (even if it were mine) to save the whole, but also think that lends a hand in dangerous decisions down the line; but that's just me and my opinion.

[LegendarySandwich]

I think that any act can be justified under certain specific circumstances. Take, for example, this hypothetical situation: a terrorist has planted bombs at a couple of different heavily-populated locations in a city. The bombs are set to go off in about an hour. The only way for the police to find and disable the bombs in time would be to torture the terrorist using new, high-tech techniques that are almost guaranteed to work. Would you still be against torture in this situation?

I see a lot of problems with ur hypothetical.  1.  your verbage "almost guaranteed" to work.... that sounds like a half baked promise that cries false to me, there are no guarantees in life and who is doing the guaranteeing?  2.  new, high-tech techniques?  so you are proposing this scenario in the future only, not in the present time? and why? and how would the present day techniques have to change to suit you?  maybe we could start a new high tech technique business together (joke)  3.  you are still not guaranteed the terrorist would give up the info, are you?  i would actually assume it would be more glorious for this kind of man to die for his cause, would it not?  4.  although i am mostly against torture, i would consider it during the following scenario:  if it is my child or family at risk of harm i would consider using torture if it befit the situation; although i still say this is immoral; example:  if someone raped my daughter and got away with it, i would think i would want to hunt him down and make him suffer even if it put my own life on the line. (although we never know what we're capable in any given situation until the situation arises, do we) 5. if the act were justified, who's the judge?  and who is the future judge of the next act?  and how do we know where the line is drawn? and how do we know the guy we are terrorizing really is a bad guy and is a part of the crime?  6. how do we know the bombs will be going off within an hour?  sounds like a bad movie plot.. haha  7.   so assuming there was a way to exerpt info needed to save a mass quantity of people that were guranteed to die, i personally, would risk one life (even if it were mine) to save the whole, but also think that lends a hand in dangerous decisions down the line; but that's just me and my opinion.

I had written a response to each of your perceived flaws with my hypothetical situation, but then my computer decided to restart (fucking Microsoft Update...), so I'm just going to say that, using your logic, our entire justice system is fatally flawed, most of your points are basically just nitpicking my hypothetical situation, you would think torture justified if your family was in risk of danger but not potentially thousands of innocent people (?), and that if you consider torturing a terrorist to save potentially thousands of life a slippery slope. Did I get that right?

[LegendarySandwich]

Everything that you can consume was alive at some point... whether you're murdering animals or raping the land, you need to eat to survive.  Every living thing exercises this basic survival principal.  Now, I personally do believe that unnecessary torture is evil... hope that addresses your question.

What would you consider necessary torture?  

I think it is fairly obvious that if you are killing an animal to eat it or yanking a fruit off a tree that torture is certain.  Can you do either of those things without torturing the subject?  If so, enlighten me.

How can yanking a piece of fruit off of a tree be torture? Plants don't feel pain.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Really?

I disagree, absolutely.  Not only is torture immoral, to my mind, it is inefficient.

I think that any act can be justified under certain specific circumstances. Take, for example, this hypothetical situation: a terrorist has planted bombs at a couple of different heavily-populated locations in a city. The bombs are set to go off in about an hour. The only way for the police to find and disable the bombs in time would be to torture the terrorist using new, high-tech techniques that are almost guaranteed to work. Would you still be against torture in this situation?

Yes, I would, for these reasons:

1) Were I the terrorist, I'd only have to hold out for an hour, meaning that if I have a plausible cover story, I can mislead the entire apparatus of law-enforcement, and thereby play an important role in ensuring the success of the operation.  Before you argue, keep in mind: captured American pilots in Vietnam took up to 8 years of torture, with no larger purpose, than survival.  You will have done nothing with your torture other than mislead the organs of enforcement, and sell out your principles.
2) The compartmentalization of any decently-planned operation means that torture will be unremunerative.  If you were planning to kill half-a-million people, would you stock all of the vital info into one brain?  No.  You would tell each operative only what they need to know to carry out their portion of the operation, and nothing more.  Therefore, even if your torture elicits the truth, that truth may well be barren; but you have still compromised your own moral standards.

Also, your ticking-bomb scenario is so vague, not to mention unlikely, as to be useless. In the absence of detail about these  "new, high-tech techniques", you are asking me to approve an immoral action based on a purely hypothetical setup.  That I cannot do.

I can conceive of no instance which would justify torture.  We didn't torture PoW German submariners in WWII in order to learn Doenitz's order of battle in the Atlantic.  We didn't torture Japanese sailors to learn the whereabouts of the Yamato or Musashi.

I would be ashamed to fall short of the standards of my forebears, and you should be as well.

[LegendarySandwich]

Really?

I disagree, absolutely.  Not only is torture immoral, to my mind, it is inefficient.

I think that any act can be justified under certain specific circumstances. Take, for example, this hypothetical situation: a terrorist has planted bombs at a couple of different heavily-populated locations in a city. The bombs are set to go off in about an hour. The only way for the police to find and disable the bombs in time would be to torture the terrorist using new, high-tech techniques that are almost guaranteed to work. Would you still be against torture in this situation?

Yes, I would, for these reasons:

1) Were I the terrorist, I'd only have to hold out for an hour, meaning that if I have a plausible cover story, I can mislead the entire apparatus of law-enforcement, and thereby play an important role in ensuring the success of the operation.  Before you argue, keep in mind: captured American pilots in Vietnam took up to 8 years of torture, with no larger purpose, than survival.  You will have done nothing with your torture other than mislead the organs of enforcement, and sell out your principles.
2) The compartmentalization of any decently-planned operation means that torture will be unremunerative.  If you were planning to kill half-a-million people, would you stock all of the vital info into one brain?  No.  You would tell each operative only what they need to know to carry out their portion of the operation, and nothing more.  Therefore, even if your torture elicits the truth, that truth may well be barren; but you have still compromised your own moral standards.

Also, your ticking-bomb scenario is so vague, not to mention unlikely, as to be useless. In the absence of detail about these  "new, high-tech techniques", you are asking me to approve an immoral action based on a purely hypothetical setup.  That I cannot do.

I can conceive of no instance which would justify torture.  We didn't torture PoW German submariners in WWII in order to learn Doenitz's order of battle in the Atlantic.  We didn't torture Japanese sailors to learn the whereabouts of the Yamato or Musashi.

I would be ashamed to fall short of the standards of my forebears, and you should be as well.

You're nitpicking. The details don't matter. The point I was trying to get across is that any action can be justified, even if the circumstances by which it would be justified are so far-fetched that it seems very unlikely any sort of similar scenario would occur in real-life (although I did try to pick a plausible situation).

[Davin]

You're nitpicking. The details don't matter. The point I was trying to get across is that any action can be justified, even if the circumstances by which it would be justified are so far-fetched that it seems very unlikely any sort of similar scenario would occur in real-life (although I did try to pick a plausible situation).

I don't believe that any action can be justified. You may believe that raping your five year old son/daughter is justified if you had a gun to your head and the fate of all life on Earth was somehow dependent on it, however I think that creating hypothetical situations that won't exist in order to justify actions... is the same as saying that the actions are unjustifiable.

[LegendarySandwich]

You're nitpicking. The details don't matter. The point I was trying to get across is that any action can be justified, even if the circumstances by which it would be justified are so far-fetched that it seems very unlikely any sort of similar scenario would occur in real-life (although I did try to pick a plausible situation).

I don't believe that any action can be justified. You may believe that raping your five year old son/daughter is justified if you had a gun to your head and the fate of all life on Earth was somehow dependent on it, however I think that creating hypothetical situations that won't exist in order to justify actions... is the same as saying that the actions are unjustifiable.

Perhaps. But you never know what might happen in the future; who knows, maybe something similar to one of these situations comes to pass.

[Davin]

You're nitpicking. The details don't matter. The point I was trying to get across is that any action can be justified, even if the circumstances by which it would be justified are so far-fetched that it seems very unlikely any sort of similar scenario would occur in real-life (although I did try to pick a plausible situation).

I don't believe that any action can be justified. You may believe that raping your five year old son/daughter is justified if you had a gun to your head and the fate of all life on Earth was somehow dependent on it, however I think that creating hypothetical situations that won't exist in order to justify actions... is the same as saying that the actions are unjustifiable.

Perhaps. But you never know what might happen in the future; who knows, maybe something similar to one of these situations comes to pass.

I hold discussing the possibility that one of these situations could occur in the same place as discussing Pascal's Wager.

[LegendarySandwich]

I hold discussing the possibility that one of these situations could occur in the same place as discussing Pascal's Wager.

I see your point.

[Davin]

I hold discussing the possibility that one of these situations could occur in the same place as discussing Pascal's Wager.

I see your point.

That is not to say that one should avoid talking about it, I just think that even if one agrees, that in this supremely unlikely scenario that action X is OK to commit, it doesn't mean that they agree that the action is justified. The problem with me discussing this kind of thing is that I've had many discussions with theists that use this kind of thing as a wedge to drive an unreasonable point into the discussion (if all actions can be justified, even if they're justified in situations that well never happen, then you can do anything you want and run around raping and killing people). I'm trying to overcome this bias, but it is difficult for me to not use my experience from talking about similar things.

[LegendarySandwich]

I hold discussing the possibility that one of these situations could occur in the same place as discussing Pascal's Wager.

I see your point.

That is not to say that one should avoid talking about it, I just think that even if one agrees, that in this supremely unlikely scenario that action X is OK to commit, it doesn't mean that they agree that the action is justified. The problem with me discussing this kind of thing is that I've had many discussions with theists that use this kind of thing as a wedge to drive an unreasonable point into the discussion (if all actions can be justified, even if they're justified in situations that well never happen, then you can do anything you want and run around raping and killing people). I'm trying to overcome this bias, but it is difficult for me to not use my experience from talking about similar things.

You could go around raping and killing people, but I think you would get arrested fairly soon.

[Thumpalumpacus]

You're nitpicking. The details don't matter. The point I was trying to get across is that any action can be justified, even if the circumstances by which it would be justified are so far-fetched that it seems very unlikely any sort of similar scenario would occur in real-life (although I did try to pick a plausible situation).

It's a pity that you regard matters of principle and efficacy as "nitpicking".  

As for plausibility, this sort of instance has been talked about for almost ten years now, and has yet to come up, even once.  However, a shitload of torturing has in fact gone on.  Quite frankly, it appears you are trying to justify actual torture with hypothetical situations.

What I'm trying to get across to you is that if the intentional infliction of pain and suffering is wrong when terrorists do it, it is wrong when we do it.  The ends in this case do not justify the means, especially when one considers that the means more often fail than succeed, judging by the metrics of the very agencies using these tactics.

[The Magic Pudding]

In the terrorist has to be tortured to save a million scenario, the hero should be prepared to accept his punishment.  
Torture shouldn't be routine, I remember when it was only the bad guys that tortured.
Torture has supposedly prevented terrorist attacks, well how many did the Abu Ghraib happy snaps motivate?

[LegendarySandwich]

I don't disagree with you that torture should not be a common practice and that it doesn't work. However, to say that it's always immoral seems a bit too simplistic for me.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I don't disagree with you that torture should not be a common practice and that it doesn't work. However, to say that it's always immoral seems a bit too simplistic for me.

What, then, is your dividing line?  How do you know, a priori, that this round of torture is justified, but this round isn't?  Also, I haven't said that it is always immoral, although I think that's close enough to the truth to eschew the method altogether.