Terrorism, torture discussed at two-day workshop

By Ranchithaa Antatory

and Daing S. Nasir

Western Herald

Jo Wei Looi/Western Herald (Left to right) Vishal Garg, Fritz Alhoff, Jeremy Wisnewski, Jessica Wolfendale, and Michael Davis were panelists in the two-day discussion about Western Michigan University philosophy professor Fritz Alhoff’s book: “Terrorism, Ticking Time Bombs, and Torture.”

A two-day workshop was held to discuss chapters in a forthcoming book by Western Michigan University philosophy professor Fritz Allhoff, “Terrorism, Ticking Time-Bombs, and Torture.”

At 2:30 p.m. on Feb. 12, Vishal Garg, a graduate student from the philosophy department, gave his response to Chapter Eight, “ Civil Disobedience, Torture Warrants, and Necessity.”

Garg discussed each of three options on the legal status of torture: civil disobedience (which maintains an absolute legal prohibition against torture), torture warrants (which allow for torture in instances where it is pre-approved by judges), and the necessity defense (in which torture is illegal, but can be excused or justified in a court of law after the torture has taken place).

“The main point of my presentation was that the best option for the legal status of torture is one that maintains an absolute legal prohibition,” Garg said. “That is, I argued that we should not legalize torture, and that torture should not be excused or justified by way of the necessity defense.

“This is in contrast to the position defended in Allhoff’s book, where he argues that it would be preferable for torture to be illegal, but that torturers should be allowed to legally justify their actions by way of the necessity defense.”

Christopher Boss, also a graduate student in philosophy at WMU, presented on Allhoff’s first chapter, “What is Terrorism?” on Thursday. According to Boss, Allhoff seeks to provide a specific definition of terrorism. Boss said he tried to demonstrate that Allhoff’s definition was too restrictive and did not allow for certain actions that we all would intuitively consider as terrorism.

“I didn’t think he was wrong, but simply needed to further clarify specific parts of his definition,” Boss said. “Torture is deeply embedded within the context of terrorism, and because this debate is so sensitive, all aspects must be covered.”

“Fritz [Allhoff] does a great job at covering all of his bases with well-reasoned arguments and with the sort of sensitivity needed for such a topic,” Boss added.

“But what people need to know, and what I wanted them to get from my presentation, is that these topics, specifically terrorism, is not as clear-cut as people seem to make it out to be. I did this by showing that even when a lot of time and effort is put into coming up with a definition for terrorism, there are instances that fail to be covered, and we must continue the dialogue.”

The final panel for the workshop “Terrorism, Ticking Time Bombs, and Torture” was held Feb. 12 at 4 p.m.

The panel included Michael Davis, Ph.D., professor of philosophy and senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at Illinois Institute of Technology; Jeremy Wisnewski, Ph.D., assistant professor of philosophy at Hartwick College; and Jessica Wolfendale, Ph.D., assistant professor of philosophy at West Virginia University. These philosophers have worked in applied ethics and have published work on torture that was also presented during the lecture series.

The panel began after Allhoff made a short introduction about his manuscript.

“Some people, [such] as myself, defend the moral [permissibility] of torture,” Allhoff said.

The first to speak was Wolfendale, who explained how the language used to describe torture can change one’s attitude towards torture, and that the ticking time bomb scenario is a mere justification of torture.

Wolfendale spoke of absolutism and how torturers have come to be seen as “noble” and as people who actually think torture is bad. She explained that as much as torturers are portrayed as heroes, obligated to the duty of saving lives and protecting the state, they really are only doing it as a job.

“The idea of a ‘noble’ rapist as a noble torturer is laughable,” Wolfendale said, in justification of ideas against noble torturers.

Allholf responded, “I think it is justifiable if it involves saving a thousand people.”

Wisnewski also touched on a few issues with torture. He said it has been proven that the difficulty to predict pain response makes physical torture ineffective.

“The most effective tortures take a long time,” Wisnewski said. “Time you don’t have in a ticking-time-bomb scenario.”

Among some of the concerns that Wisnewski discussed were racism and moral absolutism. He highlighted experiments done by the psychology department of Harvard University, which showed an implicit bias as far as race is concerned. He said that every individual has a racist in them.

“We don’t have to be someone who associates Arab and Muslim identity to terrorists; it doesn’t have to be an explicit thought process,” Wisnewski said.

The final speaker from the panel was Davis, who first noted that torture is illegal in the United States and international law.

“How do you go about justifying something that is on the record illegal?” Davis asked. “Many people think torture is immoral; I think they are right. All torture is cruel, degrading and inhuman.”

Davis went on to compare the concept of torture to that of inhumane treatment of animals. He also explained that it is a fact about humans that decisions made in emergency situations are usually wrong. This, he said, makes torture unjustifiable in ticking-time-bomb scenarios.

“It [torture] is inhumane and because it is inhumane it is absolutely morally wrong in practice,” Davis said.

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