(no subject)

[proximoception]

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.

Comments

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Who of us was being Danciest?

I'm not sure what to make of moral particularism, from what little I've just seen. Is it just utilitarianism in practice - constantly trying to get a new handle on where the good might be found at each fresh decision point?

Or would it come out against how I never question the principle that one should always question principles.

[toctoc.livejournal.com]

Who of us was being Danciest?

I don't think that's quite how I would frame the question.

I'm not sure what to make of moral particularism, from what little I've just seen. Is it just utilitarianism in practice - constantly trying to get a new handle on where the good might be found at each fresh decision point?

Yes & no. Variability certainly matters to it a lot, particularly the variability of reasons (its theory of reason does not see morality/ethics as a special case, only one point in a constellation of reasons/beliefs.) Like utilitarianism, it is contingent, but its contingency is more extreme in that it argues against principle entire. (Utilitarianism, as you've pointed out, is deeply involved with the principle of maximization of benefit, which is maybe one of the few principles qua principles able to give you a range of choices almost as large as (but not quite) those of moral particularism. So I could easily see an argument in favor of stopping at the singly principled utilitarianism and having done.) Again, I'm not bringing it up as prescription but as a kind of descriptive condiment.

Or would it come out against how I never question the principle that one should always question principles

Assuredly! For a moral particularist questions every principle except the principle that the use of principles is to demonstrate that one should never act on principle.

[toctoc.livejournal.com]

Shutting up now.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I think this is tangential enough to go on with - though all I have at the moment is a prophecy of the moral atomists of the 2020s, who will question even the principle that one should never act on principle.

I'm not really seeing how there can be situations where one shouldn't maximize benefit, though if this viewpoint includes all decision-making perhaps it's just saying there will be times when we're less moral. But I should probably look to Dancy himself for the explanation to that. I think I smell Davidson behind this school.