Utilitarian Argument For Torture In Ticking-Bomb Ethical Essay

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Act- Utilitarianism is the rightness of actions depends entirely on how they impact welfare or happiness, by attempting to maximize each. Utilitarianism sees no action is bad in itself because morality is decided by consequences of actions. The ‘good’ of saving the innocent people must be weighed up against the ‘bad’ (torturing the suspect) in order to make a decision on the correct course of action. Bentham calls this method of moral evaluation the ‘principal of utility. Whereas for deontologists, they believe our moral obligations do not entirely depend on the consequences of our actions. Some actions are wrong or right in themselves, regardless of the consequences. This means that there are some things which are always wrong (even if they …show more content…

First, the ticking-bomb scenarios are cases in which torturing the terrorist will save many innocent lives at the cost of non-lethal suffering to one individual. Torturing the terrorist would thus produce the most happiness/well-being. This approach has great strengths but also creates complex questions: is torture still the lesser evil if it only saves one person? Is it morally right to torture a person’s children to extract a confession? Is it morally right to torture ninety-nine people in an attempt to save one-hundred others? In theory this type of thinking can justify extreme inhumanity as long as it is calculated as the lesser evil. Secondly, one ought to do what produces the most happiness/well-being. Despite the wider case against torture, a person confronted with the immediate choices in the ‘ticking bomb’ case is unlikely to take these issues into account; ‘interrogators will still use coercion because in some cases they will deem it worth the consequence. Few people would be unable to see a moral basis for torture if it was carried out in a reasonably clear ‘ticking bomb’ case and if the intention of the torturer was to ‘do the right thing.’ The difficulties of the immediate choice between carrying out torture and allowing deaths make it difficult to morally condemn the unfortunate person charged with deciding. Therefore, one ought to torture terrorists in such scenarios. The only pragmatic concern would be that torture does not

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