Unless we decide to incorporate its immorality into the very definition of torture — a move that appears suspiciously like cheating — there doesn't seem to be any a priori reason for condemning all kinds and instances of torture.

The issue of "waterboarding" and "torture" is among the most recent to affect a seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the Left and Right: most leftists claim that "waterboarding" is a form of torture and, thus, unacceptable, while your average rightist supports the former while denying the equation between it and the latter. 

With an eye toward the end of making an intelligent contribution to this debate, I offer the following thoughts.   

There are two fundamental questions that must be at the forefront of any debate concerning torture. The first is: what is torture? The other is: what is the moral standing of torture? The first thing of which it is imperative to take note is that these questions are both grammatically and conceptually distinct: in addressing one, we don't necessarily speak to the other. As such, they must be treated separately. 

Torture

To my knowledge, and in spite of the numerous instances of torture of which the historical record is replete, most people — including those who have routinely, systematically, and unabashedly engaged in it — have shown an acute unwillingness to defend torture per se. There are, I suspect, at least three reasons for why this is so.

First, "torture" is a term charged with profoundly negative moral connotations. The term "torture," in other words, is anything but value-neutral. This means that the prospect of defending "torture" is about as appealing, and difficult, as the prospect of defending "terrorism," "murder," "rape," or "evil."

Yet while the term "torture" is negatively charged, we must not overlook the fact that it is supposed to be, for it designates a practice that is intrinsically unpleasant. The term "killing" is negatively charged as well, and for the same reason. But just because a practice and the term that it signifies are unpleasant, or even tragic, doesn't necessarily mean that the practice is immoral. After all, the term "killing" is negatively charged as well, for the practice that it designates is similarly tragic, yet outside of absolute pacifists, there isn't one among us who holds that all instances of killing are immoral. 

Secondly, while it is as easy to define the term "killing" as it is to recognize instances of the practice that it designates, such symmetry between words and deeds, definition and recognition, sadly, simply doesn't exist when it comes to the subject of torture.  In other words, even if an account of torture that is to the mutual satisfaction of all is forthcoming, and even if all agree that torture is unconditionally wrong, there is not now, nor has there ever been, anything approaching a consensus as to exactly when and where torture has been implemented. Today's debate is a case in point: to listen to them speak, we must conclude that both Republicans and Democrats believe that torture is wrong, but they nevertheless disagree with one another, and quite vehemently, as to whether our government is guilty of torture when it engages in waterboarding: to know that such-and-such is impermissible is one matter; to know that I am guilty of such-and-such on this day and at this place and time, is something else entirely.

Thirdly, as a matter of fact, the enterprise of defining "torture" poses considerable challenges, so much so as to render highly dubious the proposition that a mutually satisfying definition of torture is attainable. Every definition of torture is likely to be beset with inadequacies.

For example, it would appear that, at a minimum, any account of torture must include appeals to (the infliction of) intense and unwanted pain. But this doesn't answer the question as to which kind of pain must be administered for it to constitute "torture." Does the pain have to be physical, psychological, or some combination of both?  No simple answer to this query is possible. Furthermore, the intensity and unmanageability of pain are going to vary from one individual to the next. As Victor Frankl, the German Jewish psychiatrist who was the lone member of his family to survive the Nazi concentration camps, remarked in his classic work, Man's Search for Meaning, pain is relative: there is no objective measure by which to measure or quantify types of pain.

Assuming that the infliction of intense and unwanted pain is a necessary condition for any account of "torture," there is another problem. People find themselves in plenty of situations in which they are the recipients of intense and unwanted pain, yet these are situations that we have never literally described as torture. Many a lover have chosen death as the bitter release from the agonies inflicted upon them from their beloved, and yet though their pain was clearly staggering, we stop short of referring to it as torture.  Punishments of all sorts, even when administered legitimately, may be experienced by their subjects as excruciatingly painful, and (in spite of what some clever philosophers have argued) are certainly unwanted.

If the definition of "torture" is more narrowly construed to include the infliction of intense and unwanted pain upon a person for the sake of realizing the goals of the torturer, other problems arise.

First, if the pain imposed must be inflicted for the torturer's purposes for it to qualify as torture, then there is no escaping the wildly counter-intuitive implication that the imposition of intense and unwanted pain for no reason at all, or (what amounts to the same thing) for the fun of it, is not torture! 

Second, if it is objected that the torturer's amusement is a purpose, then we are left with an account of torture that remains too broad to be of any use, for clearly there is all of the morally relevant difference in the world between a person who inflicts intense and unwanted pain upon another for the sake of the objective of saving the lives of untold numbers of innocent human beings and a person who does so in order to realize the goal of having some laughs. On its face, at least, the former will strike us as heroic, even if he is a tragic hero; the latter, however, we will regard as maniacal.

If the definition of "torture" is revised to include the infliction, not just of intense and unwanted pain, but pain that is, say, "excessive," then we beg the question against "torture," for if pain is excessive, then it is pointless and, hence, unacceptable. But if it wasn't precisely this point for which an argument was needed, then torture would not be a moral issue.

To the question regarding the moral standing of torture we now turn.

Is Torture Immoral?

That a definition of torture is no small thing to come by does not, of course, mean that torture isn't real. Nor, for that matter, does it imply that there aren't any instances of torture that all of us will be capable of recognizing as such. Quite the contrary, in fact, for some actions — like, say, the rack — are unambiguous cases of what we can only describe as torture.

But despite the awfulness of both the term "torture" and the activity that it references, the question regarding the moral standing of the latter, it seems to me, remains open.  "Hatred" is an ugly term, and the act of hating is not one that many of us anxiously anticipate engaging in, yet to make these concessions is not necessarily to judge hatred categorically immoral.  "Killing," once more, is also an ugly term, and the act of killing is one that, generally speaking, few people desire to perform, and yet most of us are convinced that not all instances of killing are unjustified.

"Torture," however, is a word more akin to "murder," it may be objected: just as the word "murder" reveals instantly the immorality of the activity to which it is ascribed, so "torture" exposes the practices to which it relates as categorically impermissible. In other words, just as it is analytically true that a bachelor is an unmarried male, so it is analytically true that torture is always immoral.

Yet surely this can't be correct. That a bachelor is an unmarried male is indeed self-evidently true, but torture is no more self-evidently immoral than is capital punishment, suicide, war, or any number of subjects that have and remain sources of great controversy.  It is logically impossible that there should be a bachelor who is not an unmarried male. There is no logical impossibility, though, in there being an instance of torture that is not immoral. The statement: "There are bachelors who are not unmarried males" is self-contradictory," but the proposition "It is not immoral to torture terrorists so as to extract from them intelligence that will save the lives of thousands of innocent human beings," is clearly not.

So, is torture immoral or not?  Again, unless we decide to incorporate its immorality into the very definition of torture — a move that appears suspiciously like cheating — there doesn't seem to be any a priori reasons for condemning all kinds and instances of torture.  Torture, in other words, may, under the right circumstances, be morally appropriate.

I believe that relatively few in their heart of hearts will take exception to my conclusion. For example, rare is the parent who would raise moral objections against law enforcement agents subjecting a suspect in the disappearance of their child to excruciating pain — i.e., torture — if such "enhanced interrogation techniques" promised the child's safe return. That is, under such conditions torture would be deemed morally permissible.

Even upon conceding the powerful likelihood that parents would indeed endorse torture if it was the means by which their children's lives could be spared, from this, critics will contend, it does not necessarily follow that these parents affirm the positive moral worth of torture. This point is sound enough: that, say, John Gotti resists being gunned down by his rivals surely proves not in the least that he had any moral objections against mafia shootings per se. Furthermore, to test whether such parents genuinely hold that torture is permissible, we must judge how they would react to the prospect of the government employing torture when they aren't personally involved.

To this line of reasoning, the following remarks are in order.

First, that these same parents are not likely to advocate the killing or torturing of innocents, even if these were the only means of returning their children to them, indicates that their desire to torture one who imperils their loved ones is not clearly motivated by some raw, selfish, and irrational desire to protect their own. To state it simply, however badly a parent desires the preservation of her child, there is a line that she refuses to cross.

Second, while it is true that immersion in a morally problematic situation can (and does) all too easily dispose agents to rationalize courses of action that greater distance would enable them to recognize as immoral, great distance can just as easily produce the same effect. Many an observer has remarked on the inseparable mixture of blessings and curses provided by modern technology, at least as it pertains to warfare. It isn't just that the weaponry developed within the modern era is exponentially more destructive than any that has existed heretofore. Rather, it is by virtue of the Other's invisibility that our technological innovations have rendered inescapable that killing and maiming have become easier than they would be otherwise: when thousands of human beings register as a blip on an air fighter radar, the inhibition to annihilate them simply isn't as keenly felt as it would be if the mission required facing those humans before (and while) destroying them.

Similarly, as long as one views a terrorist attack as an abstract and, hence, remote, possibility, and the chances of one and one's loved ones being caught in that attack an even more remote possibility, the average person isn't likely to respond to the government's measures to prevent that attack with the seriousness of thought that it richly deserves. At the very least, it could quite plausibly be a morally unacceptable lack of empathy for strangers that accounts for a person's readiness to encourage torture when it is his own child's life that could be saved by it while disallowing torture when it is strangers' whose safety is at stake. To put the point another way, the "calm," "cool," and "dispassionate" perspective toward moral issues, whether torture or anything else, championed by those who aspire to push emotions to the periphery of the moral life could — and I believe far too often does — serve as a smokescreen to conceal what actually boils down to a crass selfishness, a narcissistic inability on the part of the person to whom that perspective is ascribed to relate to anything or anyone that doesn't impact them personally.

Finally, let us assume that the critics are correct and the frantic parent's willingness to torture the one person who can save her child is not informed by that parent's belief that torture is morally acceptable. Torture is indeed an evil, the parent acknowledges, but, she continues, it is a necessary evil.

The notion of a "necessary evil" is a problematic one, for sure, but the paradoxes to which it gives rise aren't necessarily insoluble. To these paradoxes I won't speak at present. For the moment, it will suffice to point out that the notion of a necessary evil resonates with our (unreflective) intuitions. Whether it is a terrorist hijacked airliner full of American passengers that our government shoots out of the sky in order to prevent another attack; the war-time bombing of a civilian population center that falls behind enemy lines; or American citizens on 9/11 committing suicide by choosing to jump to their deaths from the top of the World Trade Center rather than burn alive, such events — and there are many more — can arguably be described as necessary evils.

However, even though an act is an evil, if it is a necessary evil, or the less of two (or more) evils, then the implication is that, paradoxically, there is a moral obligation to engage in it. Now whether torturing terrorists is a necessary evil, whether it is the lesser of two evils, the other being the destruction of innocent lives, is something that I will leave the reader to ponder.

Those, like our President, who oppose the torture of terrorists, will doubtless respond that I set up a false dichotomy in envisioning a scenario in which the only alternative to a terrorist attack is the torturing of terrorists. Torture, they confidently maintain, "doesn't work."

Certainly, it is anything but a foregone conclusion that torture should always, or even usually, be successful in procuring its objectives. Yet neither is it axiomatic that torture never, or even usually doesn't, achieves its goals. Only the worst sort of ideologue could with a straight face assert either of these propositions. But my answer to President Obama and his allies on this issue (which, not insignificantly, includes Republicans like John McCain), is that my hypothetical scenario is in principle far from impossible.

Since, all of his talk against torture notwithstanding, the President has reserved to himself the authority to determine which "interrogation procedures" should be employed as circumstances unfold, it would seem that, in his heart of hearts behind all of the rhetoric, he agrees with me.