>These things can always be reduced to a personal emotional level (imagine it was you, or imagine it was your...), but it's worth asking if a supposedly civilised society should be operated on the basis of every individual's personal emotions? It would be chaos. At some point a society must decide collectively on what it considers to be a civilised culture, and then it must live by that decision, or collectively change it. The decision about torture not belonging in a civilised society was made long ago in western society, and the general consensus has not changed as far as I can tell.
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>Now, as to the point of threatening torture, well, I have no qualms at all about lying to a suspect to get information.
In order for a threat to have any value it has to have credibility. By explicitly stating up front what you will never do and where the boundries are you give a tremendous advantage to the other side. this is true in military confrontation, business, pretty much anything.
the whole point of not explicitly banning anything is to make those threats credible.
As to 'society deciding collectively' ... I think it is more important that an individual decide personally what is important and what isn't. I am not convinced consensus is, per-se, wisdom.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
