>>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.
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>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.
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>the whole point of not explicitly banning anything is to make those threats credible.
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>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.

It may not be. But isn't the notion of everyone deciding individually what justice is a step in the direction of anarchy? Collective laws came about because individual ones weren't working.