Allhoff, Fritz. Terrorism, Ticking Time-Bombs, and Torture: A Philosophical Analysis

Abstract

Fritz Allhoff’s Terrorism, Ticking Time-Bombs, and Torture is, in many ways, a brave book. Much of the philosophical literature on torture defends an absolutist position, one that implies that there are no realistically imaginable cases in which torture is morally permissible, not even in the infamous ticking-bomb scenario (TBS). By contrast, Allhoff argues that there are “conditions under which interrogational torture could be reasonably countenanced” (76). This is not a defense of torture quite generally since Allhoff contends that no other variety of torture—say, punitive torture—“offers much moral promise” (77). Still, if Allhoff is correct, no robust version of moral absolutism about torture could be correct, a result that is at least at odds with what rather many philosophers have contended. Allhoff’s discussion links torture with terrorism (3, 40) and he defends the view that interrogational torture can be a morally permissible response to terrorism in supreme emergencies (22, 27–8, 75). And the typical TBS is a supreme emergency if there ever was one. One refreshing feature of Allhoff’s project is his refusal to stipulate that the TBS is common or even conceivable; he patiently enumerates the conditions necessary for a supreme emergency to obtain, although the occasional pithy summary of those conditions shows up from time to time as well (130, 143). Allhoff takes seriously the charge that the TBS is unrealistic at best and impossible at worst, and convincingly, I think, argues that the TBS is neither as fanciful nor as unrealistic as critics sometimes contend. I greatly appreciated Allhoff’s willingness to engage in experimental philosophy as well. He provides data concerning standard assessments of the moral permissibility of interrogational torture in response to the TBS (103–8) that suggests at least two important results. First, there is good reason to suppose that the moral culpability of the individual being tortured is relevant to judgments about torture’s permissibility: we are significantly more likely to judge that torturing an individual responsible for planting a ticking bomb is morally permissible and much less likely to judge that torturing an innocent who had nothing to do with planting the bomb is morally permissible. Second, judgments about torture’s moral permissibility seem not all that sensitive to the certainty or uncertainty of its success in preventing disaster: respondents are no less likely to judge that torture is permissible when Ethic Theory Moral Prac (2013) 16:675–676 DOI 10.1007/s10677-012-9395-y