A Consequence Argument against Torture Interrogation - Maria Arrigo PhD

[Annces]

Since this is the topic of the day, I thought I would post this article by Professor Maria Arrigo. She is also on the advisory board of the American Psychological Association on the ethics of pyschologists involved in torture programs.


""Introduction

Since the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, much support for torture interrogation of terrorists has emerged in the public forum, largely based on the “ticking bomb” scenario. National polls have reported 45% and 32% approval; a large web-site vote indicated 65% approval. The appeal is that rare use of torture interrogation of key terrorists could thwart terrorist plans of mass destruction at minimal cost to civil liberties and democratic process. Moreover, a strictly monitored legal program is expected to replace current, illegal covert programs.

Ethicist John Rawls proposed that consequentialist moral argument for a program of action should include assessment of the practices required to implement that program. For with careful attention to implementation, there is less danger of adopting means that do not actually reach the desired ends. As a social psychologist, this is the course I pursue. I pass over foundational issues, such as the definition of “torture” and the morality of torture per se. I do not reach as far as state-level issues, such as international covenants banning torture. Rather, I draw from criminology, organizational theory, the historical record, and my own interviews to explore the design, implementation, and consequences of such a program. This strategy makes visible the mid-level social processes that lead from an official program of torture interrogation to serious dysfunctions in major institutions—health care and biomedical research, police and the judiciary, and the military and government.

Policy studies demonstrate that the quintessential element of program design and implementation is a sound causal model relating input to output. Can we send only key terrorists into the torture chamber and produce at the other end only knowledge of terrorist plans and harmless prisoners? For orderliness of exposition, I present three, increasingly realistic models of how torture interrogation leads to truth: (I) the animal instinct model, (II) the cognitive failure model, and (III) the data processing model. The inadequacies of each model lead on to the next, with increasing involvement and compromise of key social institutions—that is to say, with unintended inputs and unintended outputs of great consequence. To these causal models, I append (IV) the rogue models of outsourcing torture interrogation to foreign or illegal information services, without regard for causal explanation.

In outline:
Practical Mid-Level Considerations for Programs of Torture Interrogation of Terrorist Suspects

Causal Models of How Torture Leads to Truth



1. Animal Instinct Model

In order to escape pain or death, the subject complies with the demands of the torturer. The model fails when (a) physiological damage impairs ability to convey the truth and (b) torturers cannot control subjects’ interpretation of pain.
Prototypical Interrogation Scenarios



2. Cognitive Failure Model
The physiological and psycho-logical stress of torture renders the subject mentally incompetent to muster deception or to maintain his own interpretations of pain. The model fails due to (a) time delays and (b) torturers’ inability to distin-guish truth from deceit or delirium.


3. Data Processing Model

Torture provokes ordinary subjects to yield data (both true and false) on an opportunistic basis, for comprehensive analysis across subjects. The model fails when (a) analysts are overwhelmed by data and (b) torture motivates many new terrorists.


Non-Causal Models of How Torture Leads to Truth

4. Rogue Models

Torture is emotionally, culturally, or historically inseparable from other methods, or it is one tactic among many in a hit-or-miss approach. The model fails when (a) biases and ulterior motives of torturers invalidate results or (b) torture tactics empower competing political or criminal entities.


http://www.usafa.af.mil/jscope/JSCOPE03/Arrigo03.html

[patrice]

1. Okay, so this says:

Here are three 3 increasingly realistic models of how torture might produce truth and each model's attendant shortcomings. Realistic meaning more likely? expectations based on higher probabilities of the desired results?

[Annces]

4. Are you asking me how I interpret what she is writing?

By increasingly realistic, I would think she is saying, as opposed to an "idealistic" model.

So #3 would be the most realistic scenario of trying to obtain information in a torture situation. So that the information gained is only partially true, and also that many people who are tortured actually have no information to divulge.

[patrice]

6. Yes, I am asking that, and also just working through my own

analysis of what this means.

So #3 would be the most likely to be used, the more common one.

[Annces]

8. That is not how I read it

I think she is describing different ways of viewing torture and its effectiveness.

So #3 would not be the most used. It would be the most common scenario, (or the most realistic).

A person who is arguing in favor of torture, would like to just state flatly that torture works, because people cave under torture. She goes further into the thinking to show the fallacy of this. There are other factors involved.

1. Animal model - human beings hate pain, and will give up secrets in order to avoid pain.

2. Cognitive model - some people are such martyrs to their cause, that they will put up with torture, no matter how bad it is, until they are semi-conscious or dead.

3. Data Model - (which is the most realistic or reality based) - humans hate pain, but they will not become honest under torture. Instead they will lie and tell the truth both. Also that many innocent people may be tortured. And you won't know how to tell the innocent from the liar.

[patrice]

2. So 1. Animal instinct is the least common model for predicting output.

Because torture damages the tortured person's ability to communicate the facts

And/or

The person being tortured can adapt to the pain in ways that the torturer cannot control, thus, incidently, requiring the increase in pain creating methods up to the point of the limiting factor mentioned above, i.e. the tortured person is damaged and/or dead.

[patrice]

3. 2. Cognitive Failure next least common model for predicting output.

Results are affected by the fact that the subject can control what s/he says and how s/he reacts to pain up to a point, making useful output more likely, but this is limited by how long it may take relative to how much time you may have to prevent some terrorist act from occuring.

And/or

Limited by the fact that the torturer may or may not be able to sort the information it yeilds into valid types: truth, deceit, or delerium. Foot note to that: knowing which is which (true, lie, delerium) would depend upon the rest of the information the torturer has and if that information is the product of torturing too (simultaneous or otherwise) well . . . . you can see the problems with the way that identifying good information depends upon other information that you may or may not have, and how that other information is acquired.

[patrice]

5. 3. Data processing is the most common model for predicting outcomes.

Torture subjects will produce data (note: not necessarily information) when doing so does something for them that s/he wants to accomplish. The limiting factor here is quantity, because subjects are more likely to begin with the most useless data and save the more useful data for the closest approximation of whatever it is that they want to get out of the situation.

And/or

Limited by how this motivates other terrorists who, even if they do experience torture, seek to play "Let's make a Deal" too, so you end up with lots of people to torture, many of whom don't have what you need.

[bemildred]

7. I can't believe people pretend to debate this sort of drivel.

To justify torture, you must first PROVE some advantage accrues, that the prospective outcome is better than doing nothing, better than outlawing torture ever and always. This cannot be done, is not done. Ethics and morals mean nothing unless they indicate what you WILL NOT DO despite the consequences. If all you care about is the hypothetical consequences, then what one has is expediency as a guide to political affairs, that is, whatever those in power find expedient to do.

[patrice]

9. I agree. I'm just trying to figure out what the Hell!! is going on with

our Government.

I have a nephew in the Delta Force.

He is/was a "special" kid whose schools did nothing to help him develop the wherewithal to compete in our "ownership" society. This is a boy who grew up with my own 2 kids. It helps me a little to put the Monster that has him under a microscope and disect it.

Believe me, I am profoundly shocked that we have to talk about these things in the land that I used to call Home.

[Annces]

10. yes, but if you are presenting a case to military personnel

and intelligence community, they will want to have solid reasons why torture does not work. I mean in war, they go out and shoot people. So from a moral standpoint, war is wrong too.

[patrice]

11. Exactly, that's why I was attracted to the piece. We hear that

torture does not produce useful information and this is the first methodological analysis of why/how that is true that I've encountered (and it's not the sort of thing that I would go looking for). So I was taking it apart in order to figure out what it was saying.

[Annces]

13. Well this is a professional paper

and has a lot of jargon. It is kind of hard for me to decipher some of the logic. I do know she is against torture, but she is trying to use valid arguments to support that.

I knew her in college. She was a calculus teacher. She went on to study Sociology and Ethics. Absolutely fantastic teacher.

[bemildred]

12. You have it backwards.

Tactics are not determined by evaluating what has not been shown to fail yet, one looks for proven real advantage, particularly with a tactic such as torture that has clear real-world disadvantages. Torture is used by agencies that fear "missing something" more than they care about morals or ethics, i.e. they have no principles, they are driven by fear, they are ALREADY not in control of the situation. This is a recipe for neither victory nor prosperity.

[bemildred]

14. This policy did not come from the middle echelons.

It came from the top. Most military and intelligence personnel support the Geneva conventions, for the obvious reason that they offer some protection to them too. The weasels that support and authorize these policies do not expect to themselves be in line for the consequences of their decisions or their actions. You are right that war has nothing to do with morals, but I am making a pragmatic argument, the existence and exposure of such places as Abu Ghraib has done far more harm to US "interests" than whatever nominal advantage might have accrued fron information obtained by such methods, just take a look at Iraq. Is that a model for success, and if one admits that it is not, what have we gained from the torture that is worth the costs in influence and respect and moral authority?

[Annces]

16. I think that is true, that most military people believe in the Geneva

Conventions. The torture that our country has done in the past has been covert. There is the School of the Americas where they teach torture techniques, and people protest over there. However it is basically secret.

This is a paper covering the subject of torture and its effectiveness. Many countries torture, as mentioned in the paper. She discusses how Israel uses torture quite frequently. And how Turkey is notorious for torture.

[bemildred]

17. I don't have an argument with this paper or its author, as such.

I think the paper takes the approach of deconstructing torture as a policy on its own grounds, so to speak, and that seems not unreasonable. But I don't think this approach will "work", if "work" means stopping the use of these methods, and it makes the matter much too complicated and abstruse, in my view. Torture is about intimidation, not about information, so I think the premise is wrong, it validates the misdirection that torture is about information, when it is has never been about intelligence, but about terrorizing political opposition.

[Annces]

18. You may be right. Would be nice if she could answer here.

She is an academic, and this is her best way of trying to tackle this problem.

It brings the subject onto the table, whereas before it has been a subject that is ongoing but not debated.

[oppositionmember]

15. Geez what's happened to writing skills

in academia. I think I know what she's trying to say but she needs an editor.

In short: just say it!

Like: "Yeah you can torture people but you might not like what happens when you're on the receiving end some day."

Good for her, though. Support from academia is important, even if they have trouble expressing themselves.