Michael Levin's The Case For Torture

Torture is it morally acceptable? Many have debated this argument but I would like to bring up two main conflicting view points from Michael Levin, and Marzieh Ghisai. Michael Levin is a Jewish law professor who wrote The Case for Torture where he advocates where torture is acceptable in some circumstances. Marzieh Ghiasi is a female Muslim college student who wrote a rebuttal to Levin 's Case for Torture where she uses logic to deconstruct his argument and prove that torture is not an acceptable practice. Both of their papers are good arguments and have great points to support them, but ultimately, I would say that Levin’s argument on torture being morally acceptable is the better argument. Levin uses many examples and devices to fill his article with Pathos as Ghiasi has a Logos approach but doesn’t have very many devices throughout her article to support her argument.

In Michael Levin’s “The Case for Torture”, he uses many cases of emotional appeal to persuade the reader that torture is necessary in extreme cases. There are many terms/statements that stick with the reader throughout the essay so that they will have more attachment to what is being said. Levin is particularly leaning to an audience based in the United States because he uses an allusion to reference an event that happened within the states and will better relate to the people that were impacted by it. The emotional appeals used in this essay are used for the purpose of persuading the reader to agree that in extreme instances torture is necessary and the United States should begin considering it as a tactic for future cases of extremity.

In the end, talking about torture is not about black or white and right or wrong, but it is more of justifying the means of its practice. Torture can be justified only to rare circumstances that have a certain degree of importance and during a pressured time frame. Justifying torture should be seen from the light of human nature that seeks for the least harmless outcome; inflicting harm to an agent as the mean of saving bigger number of people. Justifying torture is needed so that it can be well executed, supervised and

I feel as if the pain that a criminal would feel from being tortured, without any moral or ethical considerations, is worth it if it saves a life that would otherwise be lost. One response to the Dirty Case is that interrogative torture, such as the technique used by the officer on the kidnapper, is not effective. Steinhoff argues that this is incorrect because sometimes the torturer does get what he is looking for as in the Dirty Harry case. To further defend against this response, Stein a One-Million-Pains-To-One-Kill-Gun argument. With this argument, essentially a person is being shot at by an aggressor and is eventually going to be hit unless they were to fire a gun with a 1 in 1 million chance of immediately stunning the aggressor to avoid being killed. The other 999,999 will not stun the aggressor quick enough so the assault victim will die and the assailant will suffer a lot of pain after the fact. Steinhoff argues that even though the chances of survival are only 1 in 1 million, someone would still take that chance even if the could cause pain to the assailant. Tying that into a scenario such as the Dirty Harry case, even though the chances of the kidnapper actually giving up the girls location are

In this paper I will discuss the issue of torture. More precisely, i will be looking at “The abolition of torture” by Sullivan and “The truth about torture: it’s time to be honest about doing a terrible thing” by Krauthammer. I will be arguing that Sullivan presents a better case than Krauthammer on the issue of whether a liberal democratic community ought to ever resort to torture, because i feel that Sullivan presents strong points and Krauthammer presents weak ones. I will begin by outlining the key points in Krauthammer’s argument, and then outline the points in Sullivan’s argument. I will then continue to outline why Sullivan’s argument are strong to the objection of torture in a liberal democratic community while also consider objections to my

The readers can tell that in the book The Case Torture the author is for one side of the story and the arguments he makes through the whole story makes the readers think about the side that he chose. Just like in the first paragraph when the author said “suppose a terrorist has hidden an atomic bomb on Manhattan island which will detonate at noon on July 4 unless… (Here follow the usual demands for money and release of his friends from jail). Suppose, further, that he is caught at 10 A.M. of the fateful day, but- preferring death to failure- won’t disclose where the bomb is.”(Lavin 605) The author give an example of when he feels like it would be right to use torture as a of getting the truth out, and in this example he is trying to persuade

Imagine helping your country out of debt, or helping innocent people and save them from years and years of trauma. The history of torture goes all the back to to before christ was born and yet people still use it to this day like the united states, china, north korea, and mexico. From country to country people torture other humans for information and services. The definition is the same world wide which means to inflict severe pain on a another human to force them to say something or provide a service. The topic is so controversial because every human has the same rights as other humans and no human should be put through terrifying torture experiences.Torture does work sometimes but most of the time it only angers the other person gives them false information which will waste billions of dollars, human life, and time that could be used to help save lives. Cia torture is a useless tactic because it provides useless information, it is expensive and is inhumane.

Torture, though it may never have a solid answer, is at times justified through morals or thought to be necessary. As a form of capital punishment, persecution is wrong because each human being not only has rights, but is unique and precious. In the perspective that cruelty happening to save the lives of other human beings, the question of whether torture is acceptable then is raised. The topic of torture can be seen in many various perspectives, but four of those include utilitarianism, Kantian duty-based ethics, virtue ethics, and Christian-principle based ethics.

Torture should never be justified and is in no way moral. The discussion of whether or not torture should ever be okay, has been heatedly debated. Torture is illegal, it demoralizes humans rights, devalues a person, changes one’s views, and is very ineffective the majority of the time. As previously said you can either be an absolutist or one that agrees or disagrees. Which one do you believe is

The best exemplification of that argument adopted by people sharing this view is a hypothetical scenario known as the “ticking-bomb”; whereby an interrogator is informed that there is an imminent attack threatening a huge population of people and there is clear evidence that the person being interrogated is withholding vital information regarding the place of the bomb. What is more, the interrogator is proficient at torture techniques and through causing physical and psychological suffering can extract the required information that will save the lives of countless people. Hence the question to be asked is whether or not to move forward with torture. This leaves the people who believe that torture is wrong with a moral dilemma, for if they were to say “no” then they are placing their moral correctness ahead of the lives of those in danger. By following such narcissistic reasoning they have failed to be compliant with their moral values; however, there are others that believe that the moral thing to do is to sacrifice ourselves. So it seems that those who deny the moral permissibility of torture, in such cases, are conceding to the moral permissibility of killing.

Torture was used as a device in order to extract confessions, prolong death, force confessions, punish suspects, satisfy personal hatred, or even frighten opponents. Today, interrogations are used in order to obtain the data needed. Interrogation is the act of questioning a suspect either formally or aggressively. The more aggressive side of interrogations involve techniques that put the suspect under a series of distress. Medieval torture techniques influence today’s interrogations.

My favorite example of torture being effective is the “rough interrogation of several detainees who produced intelligence that led to location of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, terror attacks”(Broder). I enjoy reading that because Osama bin Laden planned and killed so many Americans in such inhumane ways, and we were able to find where he was trough torturing his comrades who cracked under our torture techniques. One of the biggest arguments for anti-torture is that many think it is inhumane to harm others for answers. But in my opinion no American should complain how “inhumane” torture is when terrorists are flying airplanes into buildings and making hard working innocent citizens choose to burn to death or jump 100 floors to end their lives quicker. No American should be able to say no to torture after so much American blood was shed because of the terror attacks that happened on 9/11 and on all other attacks on the United States that could have been prevented. No American should be able to say no to torture after so much American blood was shed because of the terror attacks that happened on 9/11 and on all other attacks on the United States that could have been prevented from usual information gained by

In modern society, where human rights are highly protected, torture is considered as a hideous crime that makes us feel repugnant. In fact, in a few circumstances, as an interrogation technique, some people are of the opinion that the use of torture is justified. However, torture should still not be legalized because not only the information gathered from it is usually unreliable, but also its effects on both victims and perpetrators are unacceptable.

Therefore, torture and the TBS in political public debate brings us to the outcome that whilst some politicians still believe that torture can be justified in hypothetical situations, a majority take the stance that using the TBS as justification shouldn’t be the basis of decisions on such a serious matter. In the real world of the “war on terrorism”, torture can never be justified. Thoughts like the TBS should be avoided, and instead politicians should be concentrating on ways in which terrorist attacks can be realistically

    Some people say that torture can save lives. If you sacrifice one life you could save hundreds or thousands of lives. Torture does not guarantee accurate information. The person who is being tortured will only say what the person who is torturing them wants to hear so the pain will stop. The success rate for the U.S. torturing a terrorist is only 53%. That is not where it should be because the other 47% of the time when torturing a terrorist,