I've posted some things here about the arguments for torture. I find them unpersuasive. Many, like certain former American VP, his pundit defenders, and the current members of the Iranian government, do not:
The government has made it a practice to publicize confessions from political prisoners held without charge or legal representation, often subjected to pressure tactics like sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and torture, according to human rights groups and former political prisoners. Human rights groups estimate that hundreds of people have been detained.
Oh well.
I’m not sure what good “arguments” are for torture, anyhow. What is the truth that such an argument tries to establish? A moral truth? That said, now I’m trying to sort out how torture would fit into a virtue ethics. Did Aristotle address the topic?
J,
I don’t think Aristotle would have anything to say about torture. Anyone asking the question whether torture is wrong has not grown up with good habits in the first place. There is no decision procedure in a virtue ethics.
Now, “enhanced interrogation” is another matter. There’s something about that idea that coincides nicely with finding the appropriate mean between lax interrogation and torture.