Ticking Bombs and Torturing Innocents
The Southern Journal of Philosophy (2006) Vol. XLIV
Admirable Immorality, Dirty Hands, Ticking Bombs, and Torturing Innocents Howard J. Curzer Texas Tech University Abstract Is torturing innocent people ever morally required? I rebut responses to the ticking-bomb dilemma by Slote, Williams, Walzer, and others. I argue that torturing is morally required and should be performed when it is the only way to avert disasters. In such situations, torturers act with dirty hands because torture, though required, is vicious. Conversely, refusers act wrongly, yet virtuously, thus displaying admirable immorality. Vicious, morally required acts and virtuous, morally wrong acts are odd, yet necessary to preserve the ticking-bomb dilemma’s phenomenology, the role of habituation in moral development, the virtue/continence distinction, and morality’s overridingness, consistency, and plausibility.
1. Introduction Do you think torture might be justified? – Senator J. Biden I am not going to issue or otherwise discuss hypotheticals. I will leave that to academics. – Attorney General J. Ashcroft U. S. Senate Hearing, June 8, 2004
I shall begin by debunking four mistakes about moral theory that connect in different ways to the concepts of dirty hands and admirable immorality. Then I shall advance a thesis of my
Howard J. Curzer is professor of philosophy at Texas Tech University. He specializes in ancient philosophy, ethics, and medical ethics. His recent publications include “How Good People Do Bad Things: Aristotle on the Misdeeds of the Virtuous” (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy), “The Ethics of Embryonic Stem Cell Research” (Journal of Medicine and Philosophy), “Admirable Immorality, Dirty Hands, Care Ethics, Justice Ethics, and Child Sacrifice” (Ratio), and “Aristotle’s Painful Path to Virtue” (Journal of the History of Philosophy).
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own about dirty hands and admirable immorality and draw from this thesis an unexpected and important implication about the relationship between virtue and duty. My vehicle throughout both the critical and the constructive portions of this paper shall be the consideration of a certain dilemma involving torture. So a fringe benefit of this paper will be an examination of the morality of torture. Why torture? Unfortunately, torture is no longer a matter of mere academic interest; it has moved from nightmare to newspaper. A philosophic examination of the morality of torture has become urgent. In this paper I shall take a few tentative steps towards the construction of a theoretical foundation for thinking about torture, but I shall leave the casuistical consideration of real world cases to others.1 Consider a situation in which a morally good agent (call her Harriet) has a reasonably good chance of averting a probable, terrible disaster only by torturing an innocent person. I shall call this the ticking-bomb dilemma. This scenario may seem familiar, but it differs in significant ways from many other superficially similar dilemmas that have been discussed in the philosophy and political science literature. 2 Other torture dilemmas challenge a “political leader” to authorize the torture of a “terrorist” in order to prevent an “otherwise inevitable” disaster.3 I omit these features since they may distract from my investigation. I shall waive any special rights and responsibilities that might come with political authority, for I wish to consider morality and virtue rather than the role morality and role virtue of the political role.4 I shall also waive whatever moral baggage comes with being a terrorist, for I wish to consider a case in which the torturer’s goal is solely the procurement of information, and is not in any way conflated with deterrence or desert. Finally, I shall not assume that torture is either necessary or sufficient to prevent the disaster since such certainty is seldom available. Instead, I shall assume only that the disaster is highly likely if Harriet refuses to torture and quite unlikely if she does not refuse.5 At first glance one might think that the ticking-bomb dilemma presents only two possibilities. Either (a) torturing is morally wrong, not torturing is morally required, and Harriet should therefore refrain from torturing the innocent person, or (b) torturing is morally required, not torturing is morally wrong, and Harriet should therefore go ahead and torture the innocent person. The former position follows from a principle that has been attributed to St. Paul; 6 the latter position is my own. But things are more complicated than they seem at first glance.7 A third possibility is that Harriet is morally required to perform both acts. Of course, one cannot both torture and refrain from torturing, so on this view Harriet cannot perform all of her
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moral duties. Ought does not imply can. Indeed, things are worse, for if Harriet should do incompatible things, then morality is inconsistent. Whether Harriet chooses or refuses to torture in the ticking-bomb dilemma, she will be guilty of violating one moral duty while fulfilling another.8 Michael Walzer allows that torturing is both morally wrong and morally right; so is refusing. But he also maintains that these two acts are not morally equivalent. Walzer claims that Harriet should torture the innocent person; it is the lesser evil.9 Of course, an anti-Walzer might make the opposite claim. The overridingness thesis is the claim that moral considerations trump all other considerations. Many people accept the overridingness thesis, but some deny it.10 If moral duties do not automatically trump all other considerations, then once the question of Harriet’s duty is settled, the further question of whether Harriet should do it remains. Michael Slote verges on saying that torturing is morally wrong but that Harriet should torture, anyway. 11 Bernard Williams verges on saying that torturing is morally required that but Harriet should refrain, anyway. 12 Both Slote and Williams agree that preserving one’s integrity, understood as sticking to one’s commitments, should take priority over acting morally. The views of the Pauline Principle Purist, Slote, Walzer, an anti-Walzer, and Williams each have a fair amount of popular support, both within the philosophic community and among non-philosophers. Yet none of their views hold up. In this paper I shall rebut all of their positions, thus clearing the ground for my own view of the ticking-bomb dilemma. If I am right, then the torture of innocent people cannot be completely ruled out. The question of when to torture must be settled through a pragmatic, case-by-case weighing of harms and likelihoods. In particular, I shall maintain that in the tickingbomb dilemma torturing is morally required, that morality is consistent, and that morality is overriding. Thus Harriet should torture.
Torture is morally wrong
Torture is both wrong and required
Torture is morally required
Harriet should not torture.
Pauline Principle Purists
Walzer
Williams
Harriet should torture.
Slote
anti-Walzer
Me
Is arguing for such a thesis dangerous? I shall lend only negligible comfort to actual torturers, for my argument justifies tor-
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ture only in ticking-bomb dilemmas, and such dilemmas are extremely rare. Torture is clearly wrong in the overwhelming majority of cases. But will merely treating the justification of torture as an open question encourage torturers? My thesis is hardly novel. It will not make a formerly unthinkable practice into a live option. The legitimacy of torture has for some time already been an open question, publicly debated in popular newspapers and magazines.13 Anyway, torture is just the focal example of this paper; my main concerns are theoretical points concerning admirable immorality and dirty hands. Although discussions of dirty hands and admirable immorality are common, definitions of these terms are surprisingly rare. I shall say that people have dirty hands when they perform acts that are both morally required and morally repugnant (and these two features are intrinsically connected). Acts are morally repugnant if they offend moral sensibilities. Moral people recoil from them. I shall say that acts are admirably immoral when they are both somehow great and also morally wrong (and these two features are intrinsically connected). Since repugnance and greatness are said in many ways, there are several sorts of dirty hands and several sorts of admirable immorality. The Pauline Principle Purist, Slote, Walzer, an anti-Walzer, and Williams agree that a good person in the ticking-bomb dilemma will feel opposite pulls. Moreover, whichever act is chosen, the agent will feel substantial psychological pain, sometimes called the remainder. 14 There is, however, an asymmetry. Torturing is repugnant, while refusing is, somehow, high-minded.15 All attempt to explain these three phenomenological facts in terms of dirty hands and admirable immorality, but they disagree among themselves about which options are dirty, which are admirable, and why. Each of their explanations fails to explain the three phenomenological facts adequately. Moreover, each denies the plausibility, overridingness, or consistency of morality. I, too, explain the three phenomenological facts of the ticking-bomb dilemma in terms of admirable immorality and dirty hands. Although I do not deny the plausibility, overridingness, or consistency of morality, my account of the ticking-bomb dilemma does challenge a widely held view about morality. I shall claim that duty and virtue diverge in the ticking-bomb dilemma. That is, the ticking-bomb dilemma yields counterexamples to the thesis that an act is virtuous if and only if it is morally right. This point about moral theory is probably the most significant contribution of this paper. With respect to torture I merely rebut some counterintuitive claims, leaving the issue just where many people thought it belonged all along. But my conclusion about the relationship between duty and virtue turns out to be surprising and far-reaching. 34
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2. Pauline Principle Purists Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy … but that it was essential to torture to death only one tiny creature—that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance … would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? – Dimitri No, I wouldn’t consent. – Alyoshai from The Brothers Karamazov by F. Dostoevsky
Assuming that the disaster to be prevented is really really really terrible, to torture the innocent person is to opt for a very bad thing instead of a much worse thing. Suppose, for example, that Harriet must choose between inflicting sharp pain for a few hours upon an innocent person and allowing the slow, agonizing death of millions by radiation poisoning. The choice seems obvious. So why doesn’t everyone accept that in the ticking-bomb dilemma torture is morally required? I shall survey some unsophisticated reasons and then take up a view sometimes attributed to St. Paul. Torture is a terrible thing. To begin with the obvious, it hurts the victim not just physically, but also psychologically; not just in the present, but also in the long term; not just medically (e.g., crushed bones, post-traumatic stress), but also emotionally (e.g., crushed self-respect, inability to trust); not just by inflicting suffering and injury, but also by inflicting degradation and dehumanization.16 Moreover, the effects of torture go beyond the immediate victim. The victim’s circle of family, friends, acquaintances, neighbors, co-workers, etc. are damaged. Their suffering is of a lesser order of magnitude, of course, but their lives are often distorted in major ways. Then there is the corrupting effect upon the torturer, the social institutions involved, and the society as a whole. In light of all of this, thinking clearly about torture is hard. Horror clouds judgment and evokes a knee-jerk “Never!” That is, some people reject the torture option before considering the cost of refusal. Yet however understandable this is, it is not the way of the philosopher. The ticking-bomb dilemma involves both torture and disaster. Some people who do weigh the options may take torture to be morally wrong in the ticking-bomb dilemma because they do not picture the disaster alternative to be sufficiently terrible. One must beware of picturing the torture in graphic, horrible detail, while considering the disaster only in the abstract. The revulsion of the pictured torture will seem to outweigh the tepid, merely intellectual, negative assessment of the abstract alternative. Both torture and disaster must be
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pictured equally concretely in order to produce a proper assessment of the dilemma. Second, one must also beware of taking the disaster to be a loss of a lesser sort of value than that destroyed by the torture. For example, one should not reason as follows. “Torture violates autonomy. Disasters only cause pain. Lost autonomy is more important than any quantity of pain. Therefore torture is wrong in ticking-bomb dilemmas.” Instead, people who take the wrongness of torture to be the violation of autonomy should picture a disaster consisting of the loss of much more autonomy. Third, occasions when torture is morally required are incredibly rare. Such occasions are much less frequent even than occasions when killing is morally required, I think. Because these occasions are so rare, they can be accidentally overlooked. Just as we do not frame building codes with an eye to possible meteor damage, so we do not frame moral codes with ticking-bomb dilemmas in mind. Nevertheless, “almost never” does not mean “never.” Moral theories should address the unlikely. Fourth, unlike justified occasions of torture, torture itself is unfortunately not rare. Torturers throughout the world typically rationalize their evil practices by claiming that the torture they perform is required for the achievement of some morally worthy objective. We become accustomed to shrugging off lines of thought used overwhelmingly by hypocrites to justify wrongdoing. Yet although the fact that a certain rationale for X is typically twisted into a rationalization for Y should make us wary, it is not a legitimate reason for rejecting the rationale outright. So far, I have mentioned some rather uncharitable explanations for the widespread view that torture is always wrong. Yet many highly sophisticated people deny that torture is ever morally required or even permissible. After all, Kant notoriously maintains that we should not lie, even to a murderer at the door when his or her intended victim is hiding in the cellar. 17 Surely, if lying is banned, so also is torture. One of Kant’s core intuitions is that it is wrong to exploit some people for the sake of others. So it seems to follow that no one should ever torture another person, even to save lives. Now as the murderer-at-the-door scenario shows, the view that all autonomy-violating acts are morally wrong and should never be performed has very counterintuitive implications. Luckily, a more charitable interpretation of Kant is available. Kant says in the Doctrine of Virtue that there can be conflicting grounds of obligation but not conflicting obligations. 18 That is, in some situations agents may have incompatible prima facie duties, but in each situation an agent has at most one actual duty. Although respect for the murderer’s autonomy is a reason for not lying to the murderer, Kant could say that we have a weightier reason to go ahead and lie, namely the duty to respect the autonomy of the intended victim. Similarly, Kant could say 36
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that, although respect for the innocent person’s autonomy is a reason for not torturing him or her, Harriet has a weightier reason to go ahead and torture the innocent person, namely, respect for the autonomy of the disaster victims. Of course, Harriet should do so reluctantly and only after carefully searching for alternatives. Nevertheless under some circumstances, the duty of mutual aid trumps the duty to refrain from lying or torturing despite Kant’s unfortunate statement to the contrary.19 Disdaining this line of thought, some Kantians as well as many philosophers from various other camps converge upon the view that some things are always morally wrong and should simply never be done no matter what the benefit. Not just academics but numerous nonphilosophers also say that good ends never justify bad means. No prima facie wrong acts are ever justified by their intended consequences. Alan Donagan states this principle as follows: “Evil is not to be done that good may come of it.” He calls it the Pauline Principle, suggesting that it can be traced back at least to the New Testament. 20 If the Pauline Principle rules out anything, it must surely rule out the torture of innocent people. 21 So to Pauline Principle Purists, “Torture is wrong” is an exceptionless, untrumpable moral principle. Harriet acts wrongly if she tortures; rightly if she refuses. Moreover, since Harriet’s refusal would not be morally wrong, she would be in no way responsible for a disaster that occurs when she opts to not torture. She should feel great remorse, of course, but no guilt. She should not even feel agent-regret. Arguments for the Pauline Principle are rare. Certainly some prima facie wrong acts have good consequences that are nevertheless insufficient to justify these acts, and we must beware of using these good consequences to rationalize these wrong acts. However, this point hardly shows that prima facie wrong acts are never justified by their consequences. Nevertheless, many people take the Pauline Principle to be true. Others take it to be a good rule of thumb, an approximation of the more complex moral truth. I shall show that the Pauline Principle is not even close to true. I shall argue that it is far too strict in some respects and far too lenient in other respects. Like the uncompromising Kantianism rejected above, the Pauline Principle has dramatically counterintuitive implications. Promise-breaking and deception are prima facie wrong, so if murderous Mickey demands that Markey return his borrowed machete and report Mary’s present whereabouts, then Markey must withhold neither Mickey’s machete nor Mary’s location. Theft and coercion are prima facie wrong, so when Mickey attacks Mary, the Pauline Principle would not permit Mary to defend herself by grabbing Maggie’s baseball bat without permission, for that would be theft. Nor may Mary threaten to 37
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clobber Mickey with it, for that would be coercion. In general, many obviously morally permissible actions are ruled out by the Pauline Principle. But to rule out such acts is to rule out way too much. The Pauline Principle requires too much of us in another sense, too. Because of the interconnection of everything one cannot live in the modern world without participating in morally repugnant practices. Do you wear clothing made by underpaid children in the third world? Do you own stock in corporations that pollute the environment? Do you unprotestingly support unjust policies with your tax dollars? Do you use more than your share of the world’s resources? Of course you do. We cannot even keep track of the numerous, morally repugnant practices in which we participate. Thus, the Pauline Principle is too strict. I assume that “Ought implies can,” but we cannot follow the Pauline Principle. Thus it cannot be a moral requirement without serious qualification. The Pauline Principle also asks too little of us. By allowing (indeed requiring) us to keep our hands clean, to avoid morally repugnant acts done for the greater good, it frees us from the doubt and agent-regret that accompany such choices. In this respect the Pauline Principle would make our moral life simple and painless. But this contravenes common sense and our own experience. Our moral duty is often complicated and agonizing. This is one way in which life is tragic. To achieve a greater good we must sometimes do things that challenge our ability to make moral decisions and to live with ourselves afterwards. The concern to keep one’s own hands clean is a selfish concern, an abdication of duty. In some situations, we should place the welfare of others ahead of our own. In some situations, we have a duty to shoulder a moral burden in order to spare others. We should sometimes sully our conscience by doing morally repugnant things for the sake of other people. Sometimes one has to torture in order to prevent disasters. The Pauline Principle holds us responsible for what we do but not for what we merely allow to happen while keeping our hands clean. However, doing nothing is doing something. We are blameworthy if we negligently refrain from acting. By allowing us to avoid responsibility for what we allow to happen by inaction, the Pauline Principle holds us responsible for too little. I have been treating the Pauline Principle as if it pertained to all immoral acts, but perhaps it applies only to a subset. For example, Claudia Card defines evils as “foreseeable intolerable harms produced by culpable wrongdoings.” 22 Perhaps the Pauline Principle should be understood to say that prima facie evils (in Card’s sense) are never morally justifiable, but prima facie wrongs that are not evil are justifiable by consequences. 38
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Alternatively, perhaps we should restrict the Pauline Principle to terrifically harmful wrongdoing. Either of these restrictions would eliminate at least most of the counterintuitive implications of the Pauline Principle. Could some such restriction rehabilitate the Pauline Principle? No. Such restrictions would be arbitrary. If prima facie wrong but nonevil acts can be justified by good consequences, then there seems to be no reason why prima facie evil acts cannot also be justified by good consequences. So Card’s distinction between evil and nonevil wrongs will not save the Pauline Principle. Similarly, if mildly harmful and moderately harmful prima facie wrong acts can be justified by good consequences that greatly outweigh the harm that they do, then presumably it follows that terrifically harmful prima facie wrong acts are also justifiable if their consequences greatly outweigh the harm done. Thus, the Pauline Principle is a simplistic, unworkable, counterintuitive, selfish principle that is better forgotten. 23 Acts that are morally repugnant because they are prima facie wrong are sometimes morally required. In addition to the general problems of the Pauline Principle, it also handles the phenomenology of the ticking-bomb dilemma poorly. According to the Pauline Principle, torture is simply wrong. Why then does Harriet feel tempted to torture, and why does she feel pain if she refuses? Pauline Principle Purists might try to accommodate the opposite pulls and the remainder in various ways. They might maintain that the attraction of torture in the ticking-bomb dilemma and the pain Harriet feels upon refusing arise from mistaken or irrational impulses, or lingering worry that her choice was wrong, or inappropriate agent regret. But these moves have a counterintuitive, repugnant implication. Pauline Principle Purists must applaud agents in the ticking-bomb dilemma who do not experience the opposite pulls and the remainder. Common sense would take the lack of ambivalence and pain while others suffer preventable horrors to indicate some problem of intellect or character rather than as a sign of moral saintliness. Alternatively, Pauline Principle Purists might maintain that the ticking-bomb dilemma creates a clash between two sorts of values: political and moral. Just as Kierkegaard’s Abraham must choose between religious and moral duties, and Slote’s Gauguin must choose between aesthetic and moral duties, so Harriet must choose between political and moral duties. But this move fails to capture the phenomenology. If Harriet is a good person, then she will experience the opposite pulls and the remainder even if she is not an agent of the state and has no political duties. She will experience them even if torture turns out to be morally right in this situation, so that political and moral duties do not conflict. 39
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In summary, neither sophomoric errors nor extreme Kantianism nor the Pauline Principle can rule out the torture of innocent people a priori.24
3. Slote Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what’s right. – Salvor Hardin from Foundation by I. Asimov
The view that torturing is morally wrong but Harriet should do it anyhow may be popular among those who hold morality in disdain, but to the rest of us this view seems to have nothing going for it, at first glance. What could possibly justify torture if it is not morally required? Surprisingly, Michael Slote comes close to defending this view. Slote pictures Harriet as a person who deeply believes that torture in the ticking-bomb dilemma is wrong yet who nevertheless opts to torture. Slote does not explicitly say that Harriet should torture, but he does say that Harriet’s “ability to overcome personal aversion and the pangs of conscience” (an ability Slote calls “moral stomach”) is admirable because it enables Harriet to do a deed that is necessary in order to produce a “great humanitarian good.” On the other hand, Slote observes that the trait of moral stomach is immoral because it enables Harriet to contravene her moral principles. We might say that it enables Harriet to violate her integrity, if integrity is understood as sticking to one’s moral principles.25 Unlike the Pauline Principle Purist, Slote offers an initially plausible explanation of the opposite pulls and the remainder experienced by the good agent in the ticking-bomb dilemma. Slote suggests that refusing is morally required, but the ability to torture in this situation is admirable because it enables Harriet to forward another important value, namely, humanitarianism. Slote takes this admirable immorality to provide evidence against the overridingness thesis. Thus, in order to explain the phenomenology of the ticking-bomb dilemma, Slote portrays morality not as a trump or boundary constraint on action but, rather, as one among several competing systems of value. I shall argue that Slote’s explanation fails, first because it does not correctly capture the phenomenology of the tickingbomb dilemma and, more fundamentally, because moral stomach is not actually admirably immoral. Slote’s account explains the opposite pulls and the remainder by postulating competing values. Slote says that if torturing is morally wrong, yet worth doing, then going through with it is admirably immoral. It follows that refusing is a dirty hands act, for it is morally right, yet repugnant. But this view gets the 40
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phenomenological asymmetry backwards. It is torturing that is actually experienced as dirty; refusing presents itself as highminded or admirable. So Slote’s account of the ticking-bomb dilemma has a counterintuitive phenomenological implication. Slote’s view that in the ticking-bomb dilemma torture is admirably immoral depends upon several equivocations. Why should Harriet do the humanitarian deed? Suppose torture is necessary in some nonmoral sense. Then if Harriet opts to torture, she displays the ability to overcome the pangs of conscience, to subordinate morality to some other sort of value. This ability is immoral, all right, but hardly admirable. It is not rare either. Many wrongdoers exhibit this trait, at least until they become “hardened” and don’t have any more pangs of conscience to overcome. On the other hand, suppose torture is morally necessary. Then by opting to torture, Harriet does not display the ability to overcome the pangs of conscience but, rather, displays the ability to overcome personal aversion to an icky task. This lack of squeamishness is admirable, all right, but hardly immoral. It is the ability to force oneself to do something quite unpleasant for the sake of duty, like jumping into a stinking sewer in order to save a child. Could the combination of “ability to overcome the pangs of conscience” plus “lack of squeamishness” be the admirable immorality Slote has in mind? No. That combination is “ability to overcome the squeamishness generated by pangs of conscience.” And that is no different than mere “ability to overcome the pangs of conscience” alone. As Marcia Baron observes, the trait of moral stomach only seems to be admirably immoral because it is vaguely described. There are at least two reasons for violating one’s principles. One can violate them because it is prudent to do so or because one comes to recognize that they are wrong. Thus, there are at least two character traits that would enable Harriet to perform the necessary torture. That is, if moral stomach is the trait of reliably sacrificing one’s firmest principles whenever one thinks it would be prudent to do so, then moral stomach is simply hypocrisy. And it is a vice even though it happens to allow Harriet to perform a morally required and/or admirable act in this extraordinary situation. Moral stomach would be neither moral nor admirable but merely expedient. On the other hand, moral stomach might be the trait of reliably sacrificing one’s firmest principles when one comes to see that they are wrong. If Harriet tortures because, although she used to think that torture was always evil, she now recognizes that torture is morally required in a few circumstances including this one, then she is exhibiting the admirable moral virtue of being open-minded about her principles. Thus, moral stomach is either repugnant and immoral, or admirable and moral. Contra Slote, neither version of moral stomach is both admirable and immoral.26 41
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When Slote assumes that a trait enabling one to violate one’s own moral principles is an immoral trait, he lapses into a common, unfortunate tendency to think that a good person sticks to his or her principles no matter what. A resolution to stick to one’s principles can certainly be a bulwark against moral backsliding. But like many other character traits, this stick-to-your-principles sort of integrity can lead to immoral acts when combined with wrong principles or defective characters. Sticking to one’s own principles is not necessarily the same as sticking to the right principles.27 And if one has rotten principles, then it is better not to stick to them. It is possible (alas common) for a person to build a life around morally flawed principles that should be violated. Just as we do not respect a person who commits a daring holdup for “not chickening out,” so we do not respect Bennet’s Himmler for “being true to himself.”28 Bravery and integrity reliably produce morally good acts only when they are combined with the right package of other traits and beliefs. If Harriet refuses to torture, she will not be acting upon totally rotten principles, of course. But she will have adopted a marginally mistaken principle, a principle that works well in almost all cases but that goes wrong in a few, very unusual cases (like Newton’s laws of motion which work just fine except at near-light speeds where they go wrong). Just as integrity built upon rotten principles should not be preserved, so Harriet should violate her marginally mistaken principle, “Never torture,” in this rare case where torture is morally required. Of course, practical reasons for sticking to more or less simple, merely marginally mistaken principles abound. After all, once people start making exceptions, both confusion and rationalization become serious concerns. People may act rightly more often if they stick to simple, approximately correct principles than if they try to act on much more complicated, but only slightly more accurate moral principles. However, if Harriet sticks to her approximately correct principles, then in rare cases like the ticking-bomb dilemma she does what she morally should not do.
4. Williams To thine own self be true. – Polonius from Hamlet by Shakespeare
Bernard Williams does not comment directly on the tickingbomb dilemma, but he presents an equivalent scenario in which Pedro threatens to shoot twenty innocent people unless Jim shoots one.29 Like many in the Existentialist tradition, Williams 42
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maintains that a person is best understood as building his or her life around projects and principles. These core commitments constitute the meaning of a person’s life. They are central to who one is, to one’s self-identity, to one’s essence. Integrity, for Williams, is preserving oneself by sticking to one’s core commitments. People who violate their core commitments undermine not only their personal identities, but also their potential for flourishing. It would be “absurd to demand” that one do that, even for the sake of acting morally, thinks Williams. 30 In particular, Williams thinks that it is far from obvious that Jim should violate his deep commitment to the principle that killing is wrong, even when he has the moral duty to do so. Presumably, Williams would also say that if Harriet is deeply committed to the principle that torturing is wrong, then she should not torture, even if morality requires torture in the ticking-bomb dilemma.31 In some respects Slote and Williams hold opposite positions. Slote assumes that, in the ticking-bomb dilemma, torturing is morally wrong; Williams thinks it is right. Slote thinks that integrity and morality coincide; Williams thinks they conflict. Slote suggests that Harriet should torture; Williams thinks that she should refuse. Thus, while Slote suggests that it would be admirably immoral for Harriet to violate her integrity by torturing, Williams thinks that it would be admirably immoral for Harriet to preserve her integrity by not torturing. Williams and Slote do agree that the ticking-bomb dilemma discloses the existence of an admirable immorality that constitutes a counterexample to the overridingness of morality. Like Slote, Williams explains the facts that Harriet feels opposite pulls and experiences a remainder by claiming that in this situation, morality is opposed by another morally admirable value. (For Williams, this other value is integrity rather than humanitarianism.) And like Slote, Williams goes wrong with respect to both the phenomenology and the admirable immorality of the ticking-bomb dilemma. Consider how Jim and Harriet might violate their core commitments. Integrity is not compromised when just any commitment is broken, for some commitments are trivial. Only identity-conferring commitments are crucial to integrity. But which of Jim’s identity-conferring commitments does morality require him to violate in the kill-one-to-save-twenty dilemma? Which of Harriet’s identity-conferring commitments does morality require her to violate in the ticking-bomb dilemma? If Jim’s commitments and Harriet’s commitments are to morality itself, to always doing what is right, then these dilemmas present no conflict between integrity and morality. If Jim and Harriet act in accord with their commitments, then their acts are admirable but not immoral. 43
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Moreover, if Jim and Harriet are committed to morality, then not only does Williams’s description of the admirable immorality fail, but also his explanation of the opposite pulls and remainder fails. Unless Jim and Harriet are confused about morality’s requirements here, they will experience no conflict, let alone a remainder. On the other hand, if Jim’s commitment is to the principle “Never kill” and Harriet’s commitment is to the principle “Never torture,” then we are back to the naiveté and selfishness of the Pauline Principle. Their integrity does conflict with morality in these dilemmas, for “Never kill” and “Never torture” are not really moral principles. At best, they are shorthand versions of longer principles replete with exceptions. If Jim and Harriet act to preserve their integrity despite morality’s demand, then they are just acting selfishly, putting their own integrity and happiness above their duty. Jim’s act and Harriet’s act would be immoral, all right, but not admirable. Maintaining integrity would be just a nice phrase for following one’s identity-conferring desires, however evil these may be. On the other hand, if Jim and Harriet act morally, they will be undermining their integrity, all right, but that is not a bad thing. If one violates one’s core principles because one realizes that they are wrong, then one is becoming a new and better person. Even if performing morally required acts transforms Jim and Harriet into somewhat different people, they will not be losers thereby. On this picture, too, Williams’s claim that the ticking-bomb dilemma exhibits admirable immorality is false. Moreover, his account does not correctly describe the phenomenology. Here Jim and Harriet do experience a conflict, but it is a simple conflict between doing the admirable, morally right act, on the one hand, and the selfish, morally wrong act, on the other. Jim and Harriet do not feel opposite moral pulls, let alone remainders. Williams errs by using and glorifying an overly simple concept of integrity. He seems to think that integrity should be understood simply as sticking to one’s identity-conferring projects or principles or commitments no matter what. Instead, integrity is better understood as the disposition to resist only certain sorts of temptations to violate one’s core projects or principles or commitments. People who abandon their selfidentity just to gain wealth, conformity, power, status, etc. lack integrity, but people who change their minds in the light of new reasons or evidence are revising, not violating, their projects or principles or commitments. 32 Courage is not simply standing fast in battle no matter what, but is instead standing fast at the right times, in the right way, etc. Similarly, integrity is not simply holding fast to one’s commitments no matter what, but is instead holding fast to the right commitments, at the right times, etc. 44
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5. Walzer Choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil. – Jerry Garcia
We have all been in situations where we seem to be morally required to perform incompatible actions so that all choices seem morally wrong. Some people take it as an article of faith that this is always an illusion, that we are never really required to do incompatible things, that there is always at least one morally acceptable option in every situation. Others such as Michael Walzer allow that sometimes people really do find themselves to be caught in such tragic situations. It is not always an illusion. Some situations really do offer too many, and thus too few, morally right courses of action. Critics of Walzer accuse him of accepting the existence of such irresolvable dilemmas because his moral principles are too simplistic to cover enough cases. If one sticks to principles such as “Torture is always wrong” and “Sacrifice the rights of the few to avert horrible harm to the many,” then dilemmas where the innocent cannot be protected without torturing someone seem irresolvable. 33 But the need to postulate the incoherence of morality can easily be avoided by simply supposing that morality has two levels or stages: a level of simple, prima facie principles that may contradict each other, and a level of more complicated, all-things-considered principles that are consistent. On this view, the true moral principle governing torture is something like “Never torture except when necessary to avert horrible harm to the many” instead of “Never torture.” Equivalently, the consistency of morality can be saved by maintaining that morality consists of various simple, prima facie duties of different stringency plus the meta-rule, “Perform the higher priority prima facie duty.” 34 Yet it is uncharitable to accuse Walzer of naïvely assuming that moral principles are simple. More likely, Walzer accepts the existence of tragic situations in order to explain the phenomenology of the ticking-bomb dilemma. Walzer’s explanation for the fact that Harriet feels pulled in two directions by morality is that she is pulled in two directions by morality. Both torturing and refusing exert a moral pull on Harriet. She acts rightly if she tortures, but she is neglecting her moral duty to refuse. Similarly, refusing to torture is also both right and wrong. That is why whatever she does Harriet will be doing what morally should be done, yet as a good person she will feel terrible. In the ticking-bomb dilemma Harriet’s remainder is not remorse or agent regret or some other exotic sort of pain. Her pain is simple guilt. Like Slote and Williams, Walzer thinks the ticking-bomb dilemma reveals a problem with morality. But whereas Slote and 45
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Williams think that the problem is that morality is not overriding, that other values sometimes outweigh moral values, Walzer takes the problem to be that morality is internally inconsistent. In such irresolvable, duty-versus-duty dilemmas the agent cannot avoid wrongdoing. On Walzer’s view, torturing is a dirty hands act. It is morally repugnant because it is morally wrong, but it is also morally required. Conversely, it follows that if Harriet refuses to torture anyone, she also has dirty hands. Her refusal is also both wrong and right. Moreover, each act is not only a dirty hands act, but also an admirably immoral act. Each is admirable because it is morally required, yet each is immoral, too. Walzer cannot stop here without leaving the asymmetry in the phenomenology of the ticking-bomb dilemma unexplained. Thus, Walzer goes on to maintain that Harriet morally should opt to torture. He takes torture to be the lesser evil, the greater requirement. (One could easily imagine an anti-Walzer who assigns the moral principle “Never torture” a higher priority than “Sacrifice the rights of the few to avert horrible harm to the many.” An anti-Walzer would thus maintain that, although torture is morally both wrong and right in this situation, Harriet morally should refuse because refusing is the lesser evil. Of course, the analysis of this position mirrors the analysis of Walzer’s position.) Unfortunately, Walzer’s position has now become incoherent. Walzer is now committed not only to the claim that both acts are morally required, but also to the claim that torturing has a higher moral priority than refusing. However, if a person morally should do one act rather than the other, then the first act becomes his or her moral duty, and the second act becomes morally wrong. Period. It makes no sense to say both that (a) Harriet morally should do both acts and also that (b) Harriet morally should do only one. On my interpretation, Walzer takes the need to explain the phenomenology of the ticking-bomb dilemma very seriously. He is willing to deny the consistency of morality in order to explain the fact that Harriet experiences opposite moral pulls and corresponding psychological pains. Walzer’s position gains its plausibility by explaining the phenomenology of the ticking-bomb dilemma. However, Walzer’s assertion that there are moral no-win situations is a move of desperation. And Walzer’s attempt to specify a lesser evil undercuts his claim that the ticking-bomb dilemma is a moral no-win situation.
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6. Me There are situations in which torture is not merely permissible but morally mandatory. Some day soon a terrorist will threaten tens of thousands of lives, and torture will be the only way to save them. We had better start thinking about this. – Michael Levin in Newsweek, 1982
I began by observing that not just Consequentialists but even Kantians should endorse Harriet’s decision to torture in the ticking-bomb dilemma. Indeed, any moral theories that allow the prioritizing of prima facie duties should do so. After all, if the disaster to be prevented by torturing is truly terrible, then the duty to prevent it outweighs the duty to refrain from torture. In extremely unusual circumstances an act that is normally morally impermissible, even ghastly, may turn out to be perfectly morally acceptable, even required. Next, I argued against the Pauline Principle Purist that a blanket refusal to torture is self-indulgently squeamish rather than righteous. Torturing in the ticking-bomb dilemma is dirty, but not wrong. Against Slote I argued that the ability to violate moral principles for the sake of other values is not admirable. Morality is overriding even in the ticking-bomb dilemma. Against Williams I argued that torturing in the ticking-bomb dilemma would not undermine Harriet’s integrity, rightly understood. Contra Williams, torturing is not a dirty hands act because it is morally required, yet bad by other standards. Nor is it admirably immoral because it is morally wrong, yet good by other standards, as Slote maintains. The default position with which I began, the position that Harriet should torture the innocent person because torturing is morally required in the ticking-bomb dilemma, remains unrefuted. There is no doubt that torture grossly offends the moral sensibilities of moral people. So the act of torturing is always morally repugnant. If Harriet opts to torture in the ticking-bomb dilemma, she acts with dirty hands. (She might be called Dirty Harriet after a character in several movies.) Moreover, morally good people do not merely believe that torture is generally wrong. Morally good people also desire never to torture, are disposed to avoid torturing others, perceive torture as wrong, and feel visceral distress if they do torture. This is part of what makes morally good people morally good. Now a disposition to believe, desire, perceive, feel, and act in ways characteristic of morally good people is a moral virtue. Thus, a comprehensive, extreme aversion to torturing is a moral virtue (or part of a moral virtue). So Harriet is pulled away from torturing by a virtue. What pulls Harriet in the other direction is mere moral reasoning, unsupported by a set of dispositions. It is dispassion47
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ate reasoning that tells her to torture while every nerve screams at her to refuse. Harriet’s head says “yes”; her gut says “no.” This is my explanation of the opposite pulls on Harriet in the ticking-bomb dilemma. Why not say that just a virtue pushes Harriet away from torturing, so the virtue of benevolence, rather than mere duty, pulls Harriet toward torturing? Why not say that her feeling for the potential victims of the disaster, rather than her mere dispassionate reasoning, motivates her to save those victims by torturing the innocent person? Understanding the ticking-bomb dilemma as a virtue-versus-virtue conflict rather than as a virtue-versus-duty conflict would leave the asymmetry of the ticking-bomb dilemma unexplained. If Harriet opts to torture because her horror at torturing is outweighed by a greater horror at allowing the disaster to occur, then torturing in the ticking-bomb dilemma would not present itself to her as repugnant, nor would refusing seem high-minded. Indeed, refusing would seem repugnant, and torturing might even seem high-minded. Thus, a virtue-versus-virtue interpretation of the ticking-bomb dilemma is incompatible with the phenomenological facts as I earlier described them. Conversely, the refusal to perform morally repugnant acts is always admirable, even when doing so is immoral. Such a refusal indicates a sort of high-mindedness, a refined moral sensibility. If Harriet refuses to torture, then her act is, therefore, admirably immoral. I suggest that this refusal is admirable because it is the sort of act that is evidence of a moral virtue. Refusing to torture is the sort of act that virtuous people are disposed to perform. Call such acts virtuous acts. Similarly, I suggest that the act of torturing is repugnant because torture is the sort of act that typically flows from some vice (or pathology) rather than from a virtue. Torture is the sort of act that vicious (or pathological) people are disposed to perform and that virtuous people are disposed to avoid and abhor. Call such acts vicious acts. I have now arrived at the odd-sounding suggestion that the act of refusing to torture is admirably immoral because it is a virtuous, morally wrong act. And the act of torturing is a case of dirty hands because it is a vicious, morally required act. 35 Harriet can dutifully torture the innocent person, or she can virtuously refuse. This is my explanation of the asymmetry of the ticking-bomb dilemma. Note that on my view, the dirtiness of torturing provides no evidence for the inconsistency of morality, since torturing and refusing are not conflicting duties. Torturing is required; refusing is just evidence of virtue. However, although my suggestion explains the dirtiness of torturing and the admirableness of refusing without postulating a direct contradiction within morality, Walzer is partially right. The nightmare of tragic dilemmas 48
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is evoked by situations where the dispositions of virtue and the demands of duty clash. In these situations good people are morally required to do what they have habituated themselves to loathe. Alas, we occasionally find ourselves in dilemmas where we must choose between acts that we are disposed to perform and different acts that, to our dispassionate reason, seem clearly to be right. Harriet will feel conflicted about whatever she does. If Harriet refuses to torture, then her action will flow from a virtue. She will feel no revulsion. But Harriet will feel guilty because she will be acting wrongly. The disposition to refuse to torture works just fine for the vast majority of cases, but it yields the wrong answer in the very rare case where the choice to refrain from torturing ignores the morally much more important needs of the community as a whole. On the other hand, if Harriet tortures, then she will be acting rightly, so she will feel no guilt. Yet Harriet will feel revulsion because she is performing a vicious act. This is my explanation of the remainder in the ticking-bomb dilemma. Furthermore, the admirableness of the act of refusing to torture provides no evidence for the overridingness thesis, since this act does not involve subordinating moral considerations to non-moral ones. The only values in play here are moral ones. Nevertheless, Slote is close. The ability to overcome a virtuous disposition in order to perform morally required acts is a morally admirable ability. And this ability is similar to, though not quite the same as, the ability to overcome one’s moral principles in order to perform humanitarian acts, the character trait that Slote calls moral stomach. Finally, if Harriet is a good person, a person committed to always acting morally, then she does not betray any of her core commitments by opting to torture in the ticking-bomb dilemma. She is doing what is morally right, after all. Nevertheless, Williams is partially right. Situations in which morality requires us to act against our habitual ways of acting, desiring, feeling, perceiving, thinking, etc. are situations that can undermine our virtuous character traits, in several ways. In particular, once Harriet’s psychological barrier against torture is breached, torture may become a bit easier for her. More perilous, yet potentially more positive, is this: Situations that pit duty against virtue challenge us to understand and/or to question our habits, to think and/or rethink our values and commitments. By shaking us out of our routines of action and passion, such situations can cause existential crises. They threaten our identity, our integrity, not by tempting us to hypocrisy as Williams suggests but, rather, by calling us to authenticity. Whether we change our habits or merely come to understand and reaffirm them, confronting a situation like the ticking-bomb dilemma is a lifetransforming experience.
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7. Vicious, Morally Required Acts and Virtuous, Morally Wrong Acts We need to disentangle the admirable from the right. A mode of conduct may be admirable in that it points to a virtuous character trait and yet wrong. – from Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology by M. Baron
Unfortunately, my suggestion requires the acceptance of some rather odd acts that announce a tension between virtues and duties. Now harmony between virtues and duties could be restored. The troubling classes of vicious, morally required acts and virtuous, morally wrong acts could be definitionally eliminated. For ethicists who define virtues to be merely dispositions to follow moral rules, a virtuous act in a given situation turns out to be a right act, an act that conforms to the rules.36 Alternatively, for virtue ethicists who define duties in terms of virtues, a morally right act in a situation turns out to be a virtuous act, an act that a virtuous person acting in character would do in the situation. 37 These definitions are in some sense opposites, but each implies the following biconditional: even in very unusual situations an act is virtuous if and only if it is morally right. Now this biconditional seems to fit Aristotle’s famous dictum that virtuous acts are relative to the situation (Nicomachean Ethics, NE 1106a36-b7). According to the biconditional, torture is not a vicious act, simpliciter. Instead, torture is a vicious act in most situations, but a virtuous act in just those situations where it is morally right, just as Aristotle’s dictum stipulates. The biconditional also seems to fit Aristotle’s dictum that the virtuous person is the standard of what is noble, pleasant, healthy, etc. Aristotle says that people may disagree about which objects have which sorts of value, but the virtuous person has the correct view. In particular, the virtuous person is right about which acts are morally right (NE 1113a31-34, 1176a1518). According to the biconditional, the virtuous person chooses to torture in a certain situation, if and only if torture is the right thing to do in that situation, just as Aristotle’s dictum stipulates. However, the biconditional is incompatible with Aristotle’s dictum that virtues are dispositions arising predominately through habituation (NE 1105a18-19). One can become habituated to stand fast when the odds of winning are reasonable, and to run when they are minuscule. But one cannot become habituated to torture in those vanishingly rare situations where torture is appropriate. One simply does not get enough practice. So if the act of torturing the innocent person is virtuous as well as right, then virtues are not habits of action, passion, perception, desire, etc. 50
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Moreover, the biconditional is incompatible with Aristotle’s distinction between the virtuous and the continent. Aristotle draws the distinction in the following way. Continent people overcome contrary desires and passions in order to perform virtuous acts. They experience psychological pain upon the performance of virtuous acts and pleasure upon the performance of vicious acts. Virtuous people, by contrast, perform virtuous acts with inner harmony and pleasure, and vicious acts with inner conflict and pain (NE 1121a1-7, 1151b34-1152a6). If torturing were virtuous as well as morally right, as the biconditional says, then virtuous people would torture with inner harmony and with pleasure. Continent people, on the other hand, would experience both inner conflict and pain when they torture because they have wayward desires and passions. But this is wildly counterintuitive. A person who unhesitatingly and gleefully tortures is hardly a virtuous person. Rather the person who tortures despite inner conflict and pain is the one with the good character. Harriet is not morally flawed because she experiences opposite pulls and a remainder when she tortures. Indeed, she would be morally flawed if she did not.38 A third objection to the biconditional is this: Vicious, morally required acts and virtuous, morally wrong acts explain the phenomenology of the ticking-bomb dilemma, the dirty hands of the torturer, and the admirable immorality of the refuser without denying the overridingness or the consistency of morality. Accepting the biconditional forces us either to fall back upon these unsavory claims about morality or to reopen the question of how to explain the ticking-bomb dilemma’s phenomenology. If torturing is both virtuous and morally required, then why is it repugnant? Why is this act performed by good people only reluctantly and with pain? And if refusing is both vicious and morally wrong, then why is it admirable? What aspect of this act is left for a good person to appreciate? So let us abandon the biconditional. Let us not define duties in terms of virtues or virtues in terms of duties. Instead, let us define duties and virtues independently. A virtuous act in a given situation is an act of the sort that would flow from the disposition of a virtuous person in that situation. A virtuous act is what a virtuous person is disposed to do; it is what a virtuous person does when he or she is acting in character. A right act in a given situation is determined by reason rather than habituated desires, perceptions, etc. We apply moral principles to particular situations in order to discover our duties. Usually virtuous action and right action coincide. But in extraordinary situations people are sometimes morally required to act out of character. A person may have a duty to act viciously. Although virtues alone can guide us through life quite well most of the time, virtues unsupplemented by moral principles are not precise enough tools to handle very unusual 51
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cases. In such situations a virtuous person will experience a conflict between his or her second nature and his or her moral reasoning. When virtuous action and right action diverge, performing the right act produces dirty hands because the act, being vicious, feels repugnant to virtuous people. It offends the sensibilities and tendencies that constitute their virtues. Virtuous people perform the act with difficulty and pain. They are motivated by reason but hindered by passion and desire. Conversely, choosing to act virtuously in such situations yields immoral acts that are admirable because they cohere with virtue. These acts therefore feel fine to virtuous people. They are emotionally satisfying and flow easily and naturally from habituated dispositions. Yet these acts are intellectually troubling. They are contrary to the moral reasoning of good, thoughtful people. What of the dictum that virtuous acts are relative to the situation? Well, I do not deny that virtuous acts are relative to the situation; I merely deny that they are always the morally right thing to do. What of the dictum that virtuous people are the standards of value? Again, I do not deny this dictum. Virtuous people know what is virtuous, what is right, and when these differ. They know when they are morally required to act out of character.
8. Conclusion Many are the Fates which Zeus in Olympus dispenses Many matters the gods bring to surprising ends. The things we thought would happen do not happen; The unexpected God makes possible; And such is the conclusion of this story. – Chorus in Medea, Bacchae, Alcestis, Andromache, and Helen by Euripides
As a precaution against this paper being put to improper use, I now emphasize what I have not shown. My arguments lend no legitimacy at all to the overwhelming majority of torture cases. I have not justified, or even discussed, torture whose goal is deterrence or retribution, let alone subordination. I have addressed only torture performed for the sole purpose of gaining information. Nor have I justified all interrogational torture. Since real life situations almost never attain to the level of certainty and benefit required to constitute a tickingbomb dilemma, my paper is relevant only to a miniscule number of situations. Moreover, I have not undertaken the crucial business of balancing lives saved against physical and psychological damage to innocent individuals, precedents set, horrors unleashed, etc. Instead, I have focused on matters of high 52
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theory concerning admirable immorality and dirty hands, staying safely away from the scary, nitty-gritty issues. My arguments are far too abstract to justify any particular instance of torture. At most, I have merely cleared away some infelicitous ways of thinking about torture and suggested a theoretical view of the ticking-bomb dilemma that leaves the question just where most people expect to find it. Torture cannot be ruled out completely. It is almost always, but not quite always, morally wrong. I have argued that torturing an innocent person in order to avert a terrible disaster is a morally required, though vicious, action if the disaster is terrible enough, the likelihood of gaining the relevant information through torture is high enough, and the alternative ways of averting the disaster are ineffectual enough. With respect to moral theory this paper has made more progress. I have used the ticking-bomb dilemma to argue for the following claims. The Pauline Principle is selfish, simplistic, and incorrect. The ability to override one’s moral qualms is not an admirable ability, although the ability to override one’s virtues in the name of morality is admirable. Virtue-versus-duty conflicts do cause crises of integrity, although they do so predominately by provoking us to rethink our commitments rather than tempting us to violate them. Torture is never both morally right and morally wrong, although it is sometimes both morally right and vicious. The ticking-bomb dilemma does not show morality to be overridden, contradictory, or simple. Instead, the phenomenology of the ticking-bomb dilemma is best explained by the existence of vicious, morally required acts and virtuous, morally wrong acts. That is, a tension between duty and virtue explains why torture is repugnant while refusal is high-minded in the ticking-bomb dilemma. The same tension explains why good agents experience a moral pull in both directions, and why good agents feel residual pain whatever they choose. Vicious, morally required acts and virtuous, morally wrong acts constitute counterexamples to a claim common to many Utilitarians, Deontologists, and contemporary Virtue Ethicists: the claim that acts are virtuous if and only if they are right. These odd acts cannot be defined away without denying the role of habituation in moral development, collapsing the virtue/continence distinction, and leaving the phenomenology of the ticking-bomb dilemma unexplained. Surprisingly, virtuous people are sometimes morally required to act out of character.
Notes 1 I shall not discuss the contested definitions of torture or the legality of torture. For the record, my view is that all forms of torture, even so-called torture-lite, should be illegal. This does not imply that torture should never be used. Just as theft should be against the law,
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Howard J. Curzer even though some thefts are justified by extraordinary circumstances and should not be prosecuted, so I think torture should be illegal even if it is sometimes morally acceptable or even morally required. For one thing, the law serves as something of a deterrent against unjustifiable torture. Potential torturers should expect to have to justify their torture in court. See H. Shue, “Torture,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 7 (1978): 143. For those interested in the history of torture, a good starting point is E. Peters, Torture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985). 2 Some people use the term “dilemma” to mean a situation in which incompatible acts are morally required, but I use the term in a wider way to mean any situation in which what to do is not obvious because there are two or more significant moral pulls on the agent. 3 G. Jones, “On the Permissibility of Torture,” Journal of Medical Ethics 6 (1980): 11–13; T. Nagel, “War and Massacre,” Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 53–74; Shue, “Torture,” 124–43; M. Stocker, “Moral Immorality,” Plural and Conflicting Values (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990),19 ff; M. Walzer, “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1973): 160–80. 4 Although issues concerning dirty hands are often raised and posed in political contexts, I do not think that they are limited or intrinsically connected to the political sphere. See R. Rynard and D. Shugarman ed. Cruelty and Deception (Broadview Press, 2000). 5 C. Tindale, “The Logic of Torture: A Critical Examination,” Social Theory and Practice 22 (1996): 349–74. 6 I, myself, am reluctant to attribute this view to St. Paul. So I shall call those who hold it in the strong form sketched below “Pauline Principle Purists.” 7 Another possibility is that both acts are morally permissible, and Harriet might choose to torture or not to torture on nonmoral grounds. But this possibility is too remote for me to take seriously. 8 I am assuming that if an act is morally required, then it is morally wrong to perform some other act instead. Thus, the third possibility might be equivalently expressed by saying that each option in the ticking-bomb dilemma is morally wrong. A dilemma presenting too many morally required options may also be seen as a dilemma presenting no morally acceptable options at all. The half full glass is half empty. Some dilemmas present themselves to the agent in one way; some in the other. The difference in presentation may have significant implications, but I do not think it necessary to treat them separately in this paper. 9 Walzer, “Political Action,” 160–80. 10 The contemporary literature on moral overridingness is large. For starters, see O. Flanagan, “Admirable Immorality and Admirable Imperfection,” Journal of Philosophy 83 (1986): 41–60; P. Foot, “Are Moral Considerations Overriding?” Virtues and Vices (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), 181–88; B. Williams, “Moral Luck,” Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 20–39; S. Wolf, “Moral Saints,” Journal of Philosophy 79 (1982): 419–39. 11 M. Slote, “Admirable Immorality,” Goods and Virtues (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 97–100. 12 B. Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” Utilitarianism: For and Against, ed. J. J. C. Smart and B. Williams (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 98–99.
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See, for example, J. Alter, “Time to Think About Torture,” Newsweek (11/5/2001); M. Bowden, “The Dark Art of Interrogation,” The Atlantic Monthly 292 (2003); A. Dershowitz, “Is There a Torturous Road to Justice?” Los Angeles Times (11/8/2001); M. Levin, “The Case for Torture,” Newsweek 7 (June 1982), 13; A. Lewis, “Making Torture Legal,” The New York Review of Books (6/15/04), 4–8. Indeed, even Harry Potter uses torture. See J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Arthur Levine Books, 2003), 810. As Shue said in 1978, “Pandora’s box is open” (Shue, “Torture,” 124). 14 Williams first called attention to the fact that when a morally good agent opts for the morally best course of action in a situation where two moral “oughts” conflict, the agent nevertheless feels regret for neglecting the other ought. This regret is what I am calling “the remainder.” See B. Williams, “Ethical Consistency,” Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 179. 15 This asymmetry is initially puzzling because, while both torture and refusal have bad consequences, the consequences of the refusal are worse. Of course, the torture happens because the agent does something, while the disaster happens because the agent does nothing. But I shall argue below that this is not the explanation of the asymmetry. 16 An interesting recent account of the wrongness of torture is provided by D. Sussman, “What’s Wrong with Torture,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 33 (2005): 1–33. 17 I. Kant, “On a Supposed Right to Lie because of Philanthropic Concerns,” trans. J. Ellington, in Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 3rd. ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), 64. 18 I. Kant, Doctrine of Virtue, trans. M. Gregor (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), in Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 3rd. ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), 23. 19 T. Hill, “Moral Purity and the Lesser Evil,” Autonomy and SelfRespect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 67–84; C. Korsgaard, “The Right to Lie: Kant on Dealing with Evil,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 15 (1986): 338–40. 20 A. Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 149, 188. 21 Surprisingly, Donagen, himself, does not see torture as one of the absolutely prohibited acts. Indeed, though he does not endorse torturing the innocent, Donagen suggests that torture is morally acceptable in Walzer’s original dilemma if the person to be tortured is at least partially responsible for the situation. 22 C. Card, The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 3. By borrowing Card’s distinction between evils and other wrongs I do not mean to suggest that she is a Pauline Principle Purist. 23 I would like to express my appreciation to Anne Epstein for helping me to work out these criticisms of the Pauline Principle. 24 Even Robert Nozick, hardly a corner-cutter with respect to individual rights, declines to rule out the possibility that side constraints may be morally violated in order to prevent “catastrophic moral horror.” See R. Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 30n. 25 Slote, “Admirable Immorality,” 97–100. 26 M. Baron, “On Admirable Immorality,” Ethics 96 (1986): 565.
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C. Calhoun, “Standing For Something,” Journal of Philosophy 92 (1995): 248; N. Schauber, “Integrity, Commitment and the Concept of a Person,” American Philosophical Quarterly 33 (1996): 124. 28 J. Bennett, “The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn,” Philosophy 49 (1974): 123–34. 29 Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” 98–99. 30 Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” 116. 31 Here, and in what follows, I am extrapolating from what Williams says about the kill-one-to-save-twenty dilemma to what he would say about the ticking-bomb dilemma. I am also expressing Williams’s view somewhat less tentatively than does Williams, himself. 32 Calhoun, “Standing For Something,” 235–60; L. McFall, “Integrity,” Ethics 98 (1987): 5–20. For a more detailed and sympathetic, but ultimately critical interpretation of Williams, see E. Ashford, “Utilitarianism, Integrity, and Partiality,” Journal of Philosophy 97 (2000): 421– 39. 33 Walzer, “Political Action,” 160. Walzer is far from alone. The existence of moral no-win situations has been much debated. See C. Gowans, ed., Moral Dilemmas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); P. Greenspan, Practical Guilt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); H. Mason, ed., Moral Dilemmas and Moral Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 34 K. Nielsen, “There is No Dilemma of Dirty Hands,” in Cruelty and Deception, ed. R. Rynard and D. Shugarman (Broadview Press, 2000), 139–55. 35 Extrapolation suggests that other odd combinations are possible: morally optional yet virtuous acts; supererogatory yet vicious acts, etc. 36 For a different critique, see W. Schaller, “Are Virtues No More Than Dispositions to Obey Moral Rules?” Philosophia 20 (1996): 195– 207. 37 R. Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 28. 38 Karen Stohr makes a similar point. However, her analysis of the pain and hesitation differs from mine. See K. Stohr, “Moral Cacophony: When Continence is a Virtue,” The Journal of Ethics 7 (2003): 339–63.
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