You are simply talking nonsense when it comes to philosophy and logic. And I am too tired - literally and metaphorically - to do a 101 on General Philosophy, Logic, Epistemology, Ethics and Political Philosophy.

Maybe you should TAKE Philosophy 101 and then get back to us.

You never read Derek Parfit's Star Trek teletransporter scenarios? Nozick's utility monster? Rawls' original position?

These kind of though experiments are commonplace in the philosophical literature.

I'm afraid you just don't get it. Go back and reread more carefully. The replies to your objections are there. You just haven't processed them.

I fully realized when I wrote my post that someone would jump all over my 8th amendment argument. I'm not a lawyer, but I can read the Constitution and it is often pretty clear. The 8th Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment

The key word is "punishment" i.e. a punishment handed out as part of the legal system. Interrogational torture is not punishment in the legal arena, its self-defense in the national security arena.

Its akin to war. We allow killing and the infliction of pain every bit as bad as torture in war all for the greater good if the circumstances justify it. I'm just saying if we are being threatened with a nuclear bomb this is a war like situation in which we can use the same kind of force we use in wars.

In any case, I'm not arguing that my scenario is legal. I'm admitting that it is not. I'm saying its necessary, not legal.

torture is very very good at extracting confessions, not accurate intelligence... The FBI in particular has people who are very very good at extracting more accurate intelligence by using more traditional methods

Short answer: in my scenario we already tried those methods and they failed.

Yes people are making the argument all over the place that torture can't work it. I don't believe it. I KNOW it would work on me. And if it would work on me, it would work on you. I seriously doubt that given all the instances of torture used throughout history nobody ever got the information they were after. That's just not plausible. What's more, that claim will be really implausible to a lot of average Americans. How are you going to back that up? Strategically you're better off not even going there.

I suspect that any real terrorist would resist, knowing that they had but a short time to hold out for.

Who says they would have a short time? You could threaten to torture them for the rest of their lives. Time goes by slow when people are ripping your fingernails off and putting needles in your eye.

If only your life alone was at stake and no one else's, and you could be saved by torturing a number of people, some of them women and children, and only one of them had the info to save you but you didn't know which one for sure, would you do it?

No. My scenario is 15 million saved to 1 tortured, not many tortured to one saved.

If your answer is "no", why would it be justifiable to do it if it would save another person other than you? Or two people? Or ten, or a hundred, or a million? A million people is composed of individuals,just like you.

Its a matter of weighing the consequences. As the number of people saved relative to the number tortured gets higher eventually it crosses a threshold where the moral thing to do is to torture.

We all die, eventually. It's how we live that matters. Using torture is not living well.

Clint Eastwood once said, "Dying ain't much of a living, boy." 15 million people dying to respect the rights of one terrorist is certainly not my idea of living well.

I reject your crude utilitarianism and numbers games.

I reject you morally childish and, at bottom, immoral rule-worshipping deontology.

You'd let 15 million die? You're a monster.

Its obvious that this subject makes people very emotional. But it's important for you all to buckle down and get a grip. Many of you are making blatantly piss-poor arguments that will play into the hands of the torturers. You don't want to do that.

Please, if you really care about fighting torture, rather than moral posturing, DO NOT go out there and make these crappy arguments.

You need to read the thread. I have met just about all of your objections.

The ability to construct a hypothetical scenario in which torture might be justified in a consequentialist sense (the ticking time bomb) is no defense of the legalization or institutionalization of the practice.

The quote from Froomkin is a smart one. I agree. Don't institutionalize it.

But for those pu8shing the absolutist line, don't go out there pushing the absolutist position in every hypothetical case either. It just makes you look like a reckless pacifist.

The fact is, the law is the supreme position of strength here...There is no need for me to abandon a position that is both correct and effective.

Oh really? The law wasn't supremely strong enough to stop those evil fucks in the first place, now, was it? Ask the guys in Gitmo how effective your position is. Ask the 25-100 or so who died. Public opinion matters.

We have to put an end to this evil. We have to fight strong. Our arguments have to be strong.