In the debate about torture, the notorious “ticking bomb” argument enlists our intuitions against absolutism. This argument deploys the familiar hypothetical example in which we have captured a terrorist who we know has planted a nuclear bomb in a city. The bomb will detonate soon unless we disable it, but the terrorist will not tell us where it is hidden. Our only hope of finding it is to torture him.
If nothing else, this example exposes the intuitive implausibility of absolutism about torture. Opponents of torture are often evasive in addressing the question whether torture would be morally permissible in this case. I do not, however, think that it aids the credibility of the anti-torture case either to deny that torture would be permissible in this example or to refuse to address the question, as many opponents of torture do. We should concede that torture would be morally permissible, or perhaps even morally required, in this hypothetical case and then ask what implications that concession has for matters of policy and law. I will shortly try to show that advocates and opponents of torture alike tend to exaggerate the significance of the example and to misinterpret its intuitive force.
Opponents of torture tend to argue that the ticking bomb example is unrealistic, as indeed it is. It presupposes a high degree of reliability in the belief that there really is a nuclear bomb that will otherwise detonate, that the person we hold captive planted it, or at least knows where it is, that torture will be effective in getting him to reveal its location, and so on. But pointing out that actual cases have neither the epistemic features nor the all-or-nothing character of the make-believe example leaves it open that actual cases may nevertheless raise similar challenges.
(Jeff McMahan, "Torture in Principle and in Practice," Public Affairs Quarterly 22 [April 2008]: 91-108, at 94-5)
Note from KBJ: McMahan is a superb philosopher, unlike some of the others who write about torture. That an example is unrealistic is neither here nor there, as far as philosophy is concerned. The point of unrealistic examples is to test the limits of our principles. Most of the great examples in philosophy, from Thomas Hobbes's state of nature to Roderick Firth's ideal observer to Philippa Foot's trolley to Judith Jarvis Thomson's people seeds to John Rawls's original position to Bernard Williams's case of Jim and Pedro to Ronald Dworkin's judge Hercules to Robert Nozick's experience machine to Joel Feinberg's ride on the bus to Peter Singer's case of Bob and his Bugatti, are unrealistic, but they make their point. I find it interesting that two prominent absolutists about torture—Jeremy Waldron and Jamie Mayerfeld—have no philosophical credentials (beyond a bachelor's degree, in the case of Waldron). Waldron is a lawyer and Mayerfeld a political scientist. If they had studied philosophy, they would know that it's never a good move to say, of someone's example, that it's unrealistic. That cuts no philosophical ice.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 