Such exercises have little value beyond pseudo-intellectual stimulation

Actually these are real live debates in philosophy and political theory. You may consider those fields pseduo-intellectual but I do not.

a value that is easily outweighed by their frequent mutation into the thesis that torture in general must be a merely relative evil, or in any case not an evil worthy of blanket prohibition.

If I could only discuss things that Republicans wouldn't mutate into other things, I wouldn't be able to talk politics at all.

the hypothetical says nothing about the evil nature of willful and premeditated homicide as a general category of behavior

Right, right. Although you must admit, that point is fairly obvious and a matter of nearly universal consensus.

But what is the utility of waxing philosophical in this way in the context of a debate over conduct that is so grossly and diametrically unlike the hypothetical.

1) It has philosophical utility

2) The Ticking Time Bomb argument will be raised in most debates. Perhaps, having been warned here by The Fool, people like Liberal Artist, DcLaw and other liberals will be warned that making counterintuitive arguments that torture can't work or taking a self-righteous stand on the morality of sacrificing 15 million innocents in order to preserve the rights of their murderer will be very counterproductive and will harm the cause of reducing torture.

If something I say can help get them past denial, I'll feel somewhat compensated for time expended in a dirty job I feel has to be done.

Yeah but the problem, LA, is you're not nearly as convincing as you'd like to think you are. In fact, you're rather unconvincing. So the more you run around making your transparently bad arguments and missing the point, the more discredit you do to the anti-torture side, the more credibility we lose, and the harder you make it for us to stop torture.

So please dude. Just sit down and zip it and don't do any more damage than you've already done.

We all die, eventually. It's how we live that matters. Using torture is not living well. I reject your crude utilitarianism and numbers games

Dying ain't much of a living, boy.

Explain your devil-may-care philosophy to the 15 million dead people you so callously sacrificed just to make a philosophical point about how strictly you adhere to rules. Ooops, you can't can you? Because, as you say, we all die -- after living only once. That's why it is of the utmost importance not to let people die unnecessarily. They don't get a second chance. If you let their lives be snuffed out -- those lives are snuffed out permanently.

IF a person knows for a fact that there is a "ticking time bomb", how does he come to know it? IF there were some other source engaged in an alleged plot, who claimed a "ticking bomb", how does the investigator know for a fact that the claim was true? The answer to both questions is that he doesn't know the truth (otherwise, he wouldn't be asking) and he can't know whether or not the original claim was true or false. But, let's suppose the guess is correct: that there really is a ticking time bomb. Now, on what basis does the inquistor know for a fact - usually asserted as the second clause of this fable - that the person being quizzed has any knowledge whatever about the location, timing, or power of the actual bomb?

How does the investigator know he is not really an energy source for aliens in the Matrix? You can raise all these epistemological questions and you may well succeed in raising doubts about the probability of knowledge, but the mere possibility? Sometimes people just do get conclusive evidence for things. I'm stipulating that this is one of those times.

Finally, the torture advocate explains that the truth can be discovered by threatening the life of this person, who is notable for wanting to sacrifice his life for some religious cause and believes that his death will earn him eternal salvation.

Dying is relatively easy. That's why when the Christians invented Hell they made it not just dying but living on under conditions of torture. Unless he is Super Terrorist who can withstand all pain, he will eventually spill the beans. Remember, we're not talking stress positions here. We're talking no-holds-barred, the absolute worst torture that can be devised. And if he IS Super Terrorist, we'd have no way of knowing that until after we tortured him and found out.

Why would the inquisitor have any reason to believe any statement that the victim made?

Because, as I said in my scenario, if he tells us the bomb is at 200 W. 96th St, Apt 101, we go check his story out. And if he lied, we come back and increase the intensity of the torture, just like we warned him we would do if he lied.

The only credible answer is that the inquisitor is an abject fool.

I am indeed The Fool, at your service.

Schooling the ignorant is my specialty. Just glad I could help.