Ticking time bomb scenario - Wikipedia. The ticking time bomb scenario is a thought experiment that has been used in the ethics debate over whether torture can ever be justified. As a thought experiment, there is no need that the scenario be plausible; it need only serve to highlight ethical considerations. The scenario can be formulated as follows: Suppose that a person with knowledge of an imminent terrorist attack, that will kill many people, is in the hands of the authorities and that he will disclose the information needed to prevent the attack only if he is tortured. Should he be tortured? Opponents to the argument usually begin by exposing certain assumptions that tend to be hidden by initial presentations of the scenario and tend to obscure the true costs of permitting torture in . There is also uncertainty about the effectiveness of torture, and much opposition to torture is based on the fact it is not effective rather than any moral issue.
Log in with either your Library Card Number or EZ Login. Library Card Number or EZ Username PIN or EZ Password. 1 (Spring / Summer 2002) The Four Waves of Rebel Terror and September 11 David C. Rapoport Department of Political Science University of. You have successfully connected your account to Time Out. You may sign in with this account in future. Please confirm your account details. Title Screen : Film Genre(s), Title, Year, (Country), Length, Director, Description : Amadeus (1984), 158 minutes, D: Milos Forman. A Continental History, 1750-1804. The American Revolution is often portrayed as a high-minded, orderly event whose capstone, the.
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Background. The version in the novel has the following conditions. He argued that human nature can lead to unregulated abuse . Therefore, it would be better if there were a regulated procedure through which an interrogator could request a . Torturers, and those who authorize torture, could be held to account for excesses. Dershowitz's suggested torture warrants, similar to search warrants and phone tap warrants, would spell out the limits on the techniques that interrogators may use, and the extent to which they may abridge a suspect's rights. In September 2. 00. Alan Dershowitz's book, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge, Richard Posner, legal scholar and judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, wrote in The New Republic, .
No one who doubts that this is the case should be in a position of responsibility. We have captured a terrorist, but he is a hardened character.
We cannot be certain that he will crack in time. We have also captured his wife and children'. After much agonising, I have come to the conclusion that there is only one answer to Sydney Kentridge's question.
Torture the wife and children. They reject the proposition, implicit or explicit, that certain acts of torture are justifiable, even desirable.
They believe that simplistic responses to the scenario may lead well- intentioned societies down a slippery slope to legalized and systematic torture. They point out that no evidence of any real- life situation meeting all the criteria to constitute a pure ticking bomb scenario has ever been presented to the public, and that such a situation is highly unlikely.
Additionally, since the terrorist presumably knows that the timer is ticking, he has an excellent reason to lie and give false information under torture in order to misdirect his interrogators; merely giving a convincing answer which the investigators will waste time checking out makes it more likely that the bomb will go off, and of course once the bomb has gone off, not only has the terrorist won, but there is also no further point in torturing him, except perhaps as revenge. Others point out that the ticking- bomb torture proponents adopt an extremely short- term view, which impoverishes their consequentialism. The consequence is likely to be a long- term increase in violence. This long- term effect is so serious that the person making the torture decision cannot possibly (according to this argument) make a reasonable estimate of its results. Thus the decision- maker has no grounds for certainty that the value of the lives saved from the ticking bomb will outweigh the value of the lives lost because of the subsequent disorder.
He or she cannot arrive at a successful accounting of consequences. This anti- torture argument, in fact, works by positing that human knowledge has intrinsic limits.
An analogous argument holds that human decision- makers are fundamentally prone in certain situations to believe that their judgment is better than it is, and that, to be ethical, they must pre- commit themselves to a particular course of action in those situations. Knowing that, under stress, they will never be able to accurately assess the likely success of torture in obtaining information needed to prevent an attack, humans thus pre- commit to not torture. In general, this family of arguments faults the .
They are untrustworthy, and tend to have grotesque other problems. This is particularly acute in fictional exploration of the scenario. They must also have in their custody someone who they are reasonably certain has said information and would talk under torture or threat of torture. They must then be able to accurately distinguish between true and false information which the subject may supply under torture. They must then be able to use this information to form a plan of response which is effective at stopping the planned attack.
All of this must occur within a limited time frame allowed by the . According to the Parents Television Council, given that each season represents a 2.
Jack Bauer encounters someone who needs torturing to reveal a ticking bomb on average 1. Bush administration, declared that 2. He saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?
But on our show it happens every week. Army. Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, and others, objected to the central theme of the show. As Finnegan said: The kids see it, and say, 'If torture is wrong, what about . In that play, the American government has established a protocol of . The drama deals with the psychological pressure and the tense triangle of competences under the overriding importance that each participant has to negotiate the actions with his conscience.
See also. These claims were later repeated in August 2. FOX news interview and are still cited as valid examples.
However, in 2. 00. CIA memos were investigated by the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility and heavily criticized. The Department of Justice report, released in February 2. Zubaydah had supplied the information before he was tortured and that no further credible information had been obtained from the torture itself. In the case of Mohammed, the attack on Los Angeles had already been exposed before his capture and his admissions under torture were little more than white noise given to end it.
References. Review of Philosophy and Psychology. The politics of the man behind .
We have a duty, Bruce Anderson, The Independent, 1. February 2. 01. 0^. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.