Sans Authoritas wrote:
Torture is using coercion to break someone's free will until they give away information. Someone who disseminates serious and potentially lethal information because of a piece of chocolate cake has no free will to begin with, as he is a slave to his lower passions.
TexasRifleman wrote:
So if I question a criminal suspect and I offer him the choice of life in prison or a free walk if he drops a dime on the guy above him then it's now torture?
He's free to walk but he faces eternal confinement. Is that now "torture"?
Is that coercion? Is justice really being done by letting a guilty man go for what he did?
The only reason for prison is to keep someone who is dangerous out of society. That's it. It's not a moral bargaining chip. If he's not dangerous, let him go. You're not God's jailer. You don't work his infinite justice on earth by imprisoning people temporally. That's not the main point of punishment on earth. The main point of capital punishment is not to make another person say, "I'd better not kill someone, because he forefeited his life in the act of killing someone and was permanently neutralized as a threat to society." The point is to permanently neutralize a threat to society.
You cannot morally make such a bargain with someone to begin with, so your point is moot.
But let us take a similar example. Say someone comes and tries to break into and steal your car. You pull out a pistol and say, "If you steal my car, I will shoot you." Is that torture? Is that coercing his will? No. You are laying out the consequence to his action. He can either get shot, or not get shot. You're not making him not get shot, and you're not making him get shot.
A torturer trying to extract information, on the other hand, offers no choice. "You will confess or you will continue to be tortured." Torture uses coercing the will as a directed means to an end, whereas you defending your property is an end to itself.
Torturing someone to stop the jingoist, phantasmic "ticking bomb " is using the means of coercion of the will to accomplish the end of "saving America." Shooting someone does not require that his will be coerced in order to accomplish the good end. Shooting someone physically stops him from pursuing his end, whether or not he wants to. It merely stops him from pursuing his unjust action.
TexasRifleman wrote:
That's what I am saying, the whole thing is subjective and now my Second Amendment rights are being interpreted by the same folks.
You keep on insisting that it's subjective. It's not something you can blow off so easily. I've seen all these arguments of yours before from other people, Texas. I've answered them all before. Coercing the will is not a subjective feeling. It is an objective action. Just like "rape" is not a subjective feeling, it is an objective action: having sex with someone
against that person's will.
-Sans Authoritas
