Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Ticking Bomb My next move should be no surprise: I take the moral permissibility of torture in the ticking time-bomb case to be self-evident; anyone who understands the details of the case would, I think, consent to the torture. If Kantianism is true, then the torture would be impermissible. But the torture is not impermissible. Therefore, Kantianism is false. Therefore we can remove it from the list of our candidate moral theories. Anyone who wishes to avoid the conclusion of this argument must deny one of its premises (since the argument is valid by modus tollens), and I do not see either premise as being challengeable: I have already argued that Kantianism is committed to opposing torture, and I really fail to see how any reasonable person could deny the permissibility of torture in the ticking time-bomb case.

(Fritz Allhoff, "A Defense of Torture: Separation of Cases, Ticking Time-bombs, and Moral Justification," International Journal of Applied Philosophy 19 [2005]: 243-64, at 259 [italics in original])

Note from KBJ: Allhoff is claiming, correctly, that the following three propositions are logically inconsistent:

  1. If Kantianism is true, then the ticking-bomb torture is impermissible.
  2. Kantianism is true.
  3. The ticking-bomb torture is permissible.
Every rational person must reject at least one of these propositions. Allhoff rejects 2. That's fine, but why does he think everyone must reject 2? A Kantian might claim that 1 is false—in other words, that Kantianism, properly understood and applied, does not have the stated implication. Many people (I will spare you the names) reject 3. Does Allhoff not realize that there are absolutists out there, at least when it comes to torture? Allhoff says that those who reject 3 are unreasonable, but that's what they say about him. No philosophical ice is cut by saying that such-and-such or so-and-so is reasonable or unreasonable. Each of us naturally thinks that his or her beliefs are reasonable and that their contraries are unreasonable. All Allhoff is saying, when you cut through the verbiage, is that he doesn't understand why others don't share his values. This is arrogance masquerading as philosophy.

Fritz Allhoff on the Ticking Bomb

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