proximoception (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
proximoception) wrote2010-12-15 04:18 pm
proximoception) wrote2010-12-15 04:18 pm
(no subject)
I find incoherent Zizek's critique of Harris' argument, in The End of Faith, that torture should be permissible on utilitarian principles - i.e. in cases where there's reason to think the harm done while torturing will be less than the harm diverted by whatever info's obtained. Zizek claims this makes other people objects, not Neighbors, thus disregarding "the abyss of the infinity that pertains to a subject." But math can be done using infinites, after all - allowing X number of people to die abandons X numbers of infinite abysses to implode (or evanesce or whatever) for the sake of not harming X+1 minus X. That's so obvious even he must see it - he must ultimately mean some kind of sacredness should be respected. Which of course it should, but that doesn't help with questions of setting things right when it hasn't been, when questions of suffering in abyssal subjectivities are live. Harris wasn't arguing for punitive torture, after all. So how can this line of thought not fall apart? Unless he's suggesting, which he never seems to be, that "suffering shares the nature of infinity" (Wordsworth) but death is no big deal. Is Zizek an idiot? I don't know enough about Zizek, though he did print a good piece on European atheism in the wake of this that put him a lot closer to Harris et al. than to (e.g.) Eagleton and Mieville.
Personally, I accept that Harris is correct, but would argue that this is never a right we should cede to Them, the people that would be in charge of the permitted torture. We need it to not become a precedent, in fact need the punishment of people caught ordering and committing it to be the precedent, not because torture could never hypothetically work to prevent greater harm, but because we're too likely to be lied to by those in charge about the circumstances warranting the torture. Like we are about war, of course, but the threat of being able to wage war is probably foundational for states, hence until states have imploded or evanesced is a power necessarily yielded to the (delegated) ruling Few, whereas torture is not - unless you include any form of imprisonment under the torture umbrella.
We can of course vividly imagine examples where a state's very identity is threatened by knowledge withheld by some single, torturable individual - someone who knows the location of a nuclear weapon set to wipe out central D.C. or Manhattan, is the standard thought problem. But we can even more vividly imagine, having seen it, how a state's very identity can be threatened by the mission creep of treating situations that can lead to that hypothetical situation as being on par with it. And of course since the criminal code is ultimately aimed at a) disincentivizing dire misbehavior and, relatedly, b) empowering discretionary suppression of dire misbehavior, if That Situation ever does happen then presumably legal disincentives, and whatever law enforcers are on hand, will not stop the law-breaking torturer. The possible disincentives won't outweigh the obvious, exigent incentives to torture, for one thing, and any law enforcers in the room will likely help. If it can be made at all clear to anyone what you meant to accomplish by the torture, the Greater Good defense will be a shoe-in. Utilitarianism's built into, or rather laid under, the law already.
Hell, there should probably be a jury system in place to decide whether we should go to war. Alongside every other control we've been ignoring in the U.S. for sixty years.
Personally, I accept that Harris is correct, but would argue that this is never a right we should cede to Them, the people that would be in charge of the permitted torture. We need it to not become a precedent, in fact need the punishment of people caught ordering and committing it to be the precedent, not because torture could never hypothetically work to prevent greater harm, but because we're too likely to be lied to by those in charge about the circumstances warranting the torture. Like we are about war, of course, but the threat of being able to wage war is probably foundational for states, hence until states have imploded or evanesced is a power necessarily yielded to the (delegated) ruling Few, whereas torture is not - unless you include any form of imprisonment under the torture umbrella.
We can of course vividly imagine examples where a state's very identity is threatened by knowledge withheld by some single, torturable individual - someone who knows the location of a nuclear weapon set to wipe out central D.C. or Manhattan, is the standard thought problem. But we can even more vividly imagine, having seen it, how a state's very identity can be threatened by the mission creep of treating situations that can lead to that hypothetical situation as being on par with it. And of course since the criminal code is ultimately aimed at a) disincentivizing dire misbehavior and, relatedly, b) empowering discretionary suppression of dire misbehavior, if That Situation ever does happen then presumably legal disincentives, and whatever law enforcers are on hand, will not stop the law-breaking torturer. The possible disincentives won't outweigh the obvious, exigent incentives to torture, for one thing, and any law enforcers in the room will likely help. If it can be made at all clear to anyone what you meant to accomplish by the torture, the Greater Good defense will be a shoe-in. Utilitarianism's built into, or rather laid under, the law already.
Hell, there should probably be a jury system in place to decide whether we should go to war. Alongside every other control we've been ignoring in the U.S. for sixty years.
no subject
I did answer your thought experiment. A jihadist decides to commit mass murder, you decide to commit torture, you want to save your friends, he waants to save his country, you both have ideological aims and not rational ones. You do not know that if in torturing this person you will end up hurting more people down the line. You have only your hope. Both you and the jihadist would be morally reprehensible for the action.
Saying that the decision is "practical" does not save it. You could say that bombing new york is "practical" from a radical moslem standpoint, that would not save it either.
I agree with some of your stated opinions because of my own opinions, which are opinions, in that they are unproven, untested and based on things like hope and faith. I hope that all of humanity can act like one brotherhood. I do not know if this is possible. I don't know if this is even desirable, or if the yearing for this would only lead to some soviet dystopia. I would never claim that because of my held opinion I had the right to take a life or imprison a mind.
You also have your own definition of "educated," since, for example, the mess of racists who support the Tea Party has on average more education than the average democratic supporter. Or are you equating "educated" with "moral" again?
no subject
Let's alter the thought experiment so that you no longer think I want to save my little buddies. Suppose the apprehended person is Dick Cheney, who has a nuclear bomb hidden in Tehran if it isn't found and disarmed. It's hypothetically possible that this nuking of Tehran will stop nuclear war in the future - be impossible to disprove, after all. But do you stop him?
I haven't yet used the word practical, pragmatic, you'll notice, though I'm not sure what the problem with those is either.
I do not care about any 'standpoint' that does not make sense, except to talk sense into the person holding it until it's replaced. The radical Muslim standpoint is based on lies, and I can tell you exactly what many of lies are. except I wouldn't bother because you already know them. You know the Christian lies, the non-radical Muslim lies, the Jewish lies, the Hindu lies, the racist lies, the Dick Cheney lies. These are not 'standpoints' in the sense of being different, equally valid vantage points of some vast, dark truth in an inaccessible middle.
How is anything I'm saying based on the hope that humanity can act in brotherhood? I don't understand why you're even bringing that up.
College educations are getting pretty worthless in some quarters, I agree, so conceivably having a BA might not be proof against Tea Partitude (though I highly suspect you'll find that correlation if you just look at the demographic). Anything above a BA and there is one hell of a correlation, though. And obviously countries whose school systems are better than ours will tend to have governments - both as cause and effect - diametrically opposed to the Tea Party philosophy in most respects.
no subject