1. Definition of Torture
Torture includes such practices as searing with hot irons, burning
at the stake, electric shock treatment to the genitals, cutting out
parts of the body, e.g. tongue, entrails or genitals, severe beatings,
suspending by the legs with arms tied behind back, applying
thumbscrews, inserting a needle under the fingernails, drilling through
an unanesthetized tooth, making a person crouch for hours in the
‘Z’ position, waterboarding (submersion in water or dousing
to produce the sensation of drowning), and denying food,
water or sleep for days or weeks on
end.[3]
All of these practices presuppose that the torturer has control over
the victim's body, e.g. the victim is strapped to a chair.
Most of these practices, but not all of them, involve the infliction
of extreme physical pain. For example, sleep deprivation does not
necessarily involve the infliction of extreme physical pain.
However, all of these practices involve the infliction of extreme
physical suffering, e.g. exhaustion in the case of sleep
deprivation. Indeed, all of them involve the intentional
infliction of extreme physical suffering on some
non-consenting and defenceless person. If A
accidentally sears B with hot irons A has
not tortured B; intention is a necessary condition for
torture. Further, if A intentionally sears B with
hot irons and B consented to this action, then B has
not been tortured. Indeed, even if B did not consent, but
B could have physically prevented A from searing him
then B has not been tortured. That is, in order for it to be
an instance of torture, B has to be
defenceless.[4]
Is the intentional infliction of extreme mental suffering on
a non-consenting, defenceless person necessarily torture? Michael
Davis thinks not (2005: 163). Assume that B's friend, A,
is being tortured, e.g. A is undergoing electric shock
treatment, but that B himself is untouched — albeit
B is imprisoned in the room adjoining the torture
chamber. (Alternatively, assume that B is in a hotel room in
another country and live sounds and images of the torture are
intentionally transmitted to him in his room by the torturer in such a
way that he cannot avoid seeing and hearing them other than by leaving
the room after having already seen and heard them.) However,
A is being tortured for the purpose of causing B to
disclose certain information to the torturer. B is certainly
undergoing extreme mental suffering. Nevertheless, B is
surely not himself being tortured. To see this, reflect on the
following revised version of the scenario. Assume that A is
not in fact being tortured; rather the ‘torturer’ is only
pretending to torture A. However, B believes that
A is being tortured; so B's mental suffering is as
in the original scenario. In this revised version of the scenario the
‘torturer’ is not torturing A. In that case
surely he is not torturing B
either.[5]
On the other hand, it might be argued that some instances
of the intentional infliction of extreme mental suffering on
non-consenting, defenceless persons are cases of torture, albeit some
instances (such as the above one) are not. Consider, for example, a
mock execution or a situation in which a victim with an extreme rat
phobia lies naked on the ground with his arms and legs tied to stakes
while dozens of rats are placed all over his body and face. The
difference between the mock execution and the phobia scenario on the
one hand, and the above case of the person being made to believe that
his friend is being tortured on the other hand, is that in the latter
case the mental suffering is at one remove; it is suffering caused by
someone else's (believed) suffering. However, such suffering at
one remove is in general less palpable, and more able to be resisted
and subjected to rational control; after all, it is not my
body that is being electrocuted, my life that is being
threatened, or my uncontrollable extreme fear of rats that is
being experienced. An exception to this general rule might be cases
involving the torture of persons with whom the sufferer at one remove
has an extremely close relationship and a very strong felt duty of
care, e.g. a child and its parent. At any rate, if as appears to be the
case, there are some cases of mental torture then the above definition
will need to be extended, albeit in a manner that does not admit
all cases of the infliction of extreme mental suffering as
being instances of torture.
In various national and international laws, e.g. Convention against
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment
(United Nations 1984 — see Other Internet Resources), a
distinction is made between torture and inhumane treatment, albeit
torture is a species of inhumane treatment. Such a distinction needs
to be made. For one thing, some treatment, e.g. flogging, might be
inhumane without being sufficiently extreme to count as torture. For
another thing, some inhumane treatment does not involve physical
suffering to any great extent, and is therefore not torture, properly
speaking (albeit, the treatment in question may be as morally bad as,
or even morally worse than, torture). Some forms of the infliction of
mental suffering are a case in point, as are some forms of morally
degrading treatment, e.g. causing a prisoner to pretend to have sex
with an animal.
So torture is the intentional infliction of extreme physical
suffering on some non-consenting, defenceless person. Is this an
adequate definition of torture? Perhaps not.
It is logically possible that torture could be undertaken
simply because the torturer enjoys making other sentient beings endure
extreme physical suffering, i.e., quite independently of whether or not
the victim suffers a loss of autonomy. Consider children who enjoy
tearing the wings off flies. Nevertheless, in the case of the torture
of human beings it is in practice impossible to inflict
extreme physical suffering of the kind endured by the victims of
torture without at the same time intentionally curtailing the
victim's exercise of his autonomy during the torturing process.
At the very least the torturer is intentionally exercising control over
the victim's body and his attendant physical sensations, e.g.
extreme pain. Indeed, in an important sense the victim's body and
attendant physical sensations cease to be his own instrument, but
rather have become the instrument of the torturer. Moreover, by virtue
of his control over the victim's body and physical sensations,
the torturer is able to heavily influence other aspects of the
victim's mental life, including his stream of consciousness;
after all, the victim can now think of little else but his extreme
suffering and the torturer. In short, torturers who torture human
beings do so with the (realised) intention of substantially
curtailing the autonomy of their victims.
So torture is: (a) the intentional infliction of extreme physical
suffering on some non-consenting, defenceless person, and; (b) the
intentional, substantial curtailment of the exercise of the
person's autonomy (achieved by means of (a)). Is this now an
adequate definition of torture? Perhaps not.
Here we need to consider the purpose or point of torture.
The above-mentioned U.N. Convention identifies four reasons for
torture, namely: (1) to obtain a confession; (2) to obtain information;
(3) to punish; (4) to coerce the sufferer or others to act in certain
ways. Certainly, these are all possible purposes of
torture.[6]
It seems that in general torture is undertaken for the
purpose of breaking the victim's
will.[7]
If true, this distinguishes
torture for the sake of breaking the victim's will from the other
four purposes mentioned above. For with respect to each one of these
four purposes, it is not the case that in general torture is
undertaken for that purpose, e.g. in most contemporary societies
torture is not generally undertaken for the purpose of punishing the
victim.
One consideration in favour of the proposition that breaking the
victim's will is a purpose central to the practice of torture is
that achieving the purpose of breaking the victim's will is very
often a necessary condition for the achievement of the other four
identified purposes. In the case of interrogatory torture of an enemy
spy, for example, in order to obtain the desired information the
torturer must first break the will of the victim. And when torture
— as opposed to, for example, flogging as a form of corporal
punishment — is used as a form of punishment it typically has as
a proximate, and in part constitutive, purpose to break the
victim's will. Hence torture as punishment does not consist
— as do other forms of punishment — of a determinate set of
specific, pre-determined and publicly known acts administered over a
definite and limited time period.
A second consideration is as follows. We have seen that torture
involves substantially curtailing the victim's autonomy. However,
to substantially curtail someone's autonomy is not necessarily to
break their will. Consider the torture victim who holds out and refuses
to confess or provide the information sought by the torturer.
Nevertheless, a proximate logical endpoint of the process of curtailing
the exercise of a person's autonomy is the breaking of their
will, at least for a time and in relation to certain matters.
These two considerations taken together render it plausible that in
general torture has as a purpose to break the victim's will.
Accordingly, we arrive at the following definition. Torture is: (a)
the intentional infliction of extreme physical suffering on some
non-consenting, defenceless person; (b) the intentional, substantial
curtailment of the exercise of the person's autonomy (achieved by
means of (a)); (c) in general, undertaken for the purpose of
breaking the victim's will.
Note that breaking a person's will is short of entirely
destroying or subsuming their autonomy. Sussman implausibly holds the
latter to be definitive of torture: “The victim of torture finds
within herself a surrogate of the torturer, a surrogate who does not
merely advance a particular demand for information, denunciation or
confession. Rather, the victim's whole perspective is given over
to that surrogate, to the extent that the only thing that matters to
her is pleasing this other person who appears infinitely distant,
important, inscrutable, powerful and free. The will of the torturer is
thus cast as something like the source of all value in his
victim's world” (Sussman 2005: 26). Such self-abnegation
might be the purpose of some forms of torture, as indeed it is of some
forms of slavery and brainwashing, but it is certainly not definitive
of torture.
Consider victims of torture who are able to resist so that their
wills are not broken. An example from the history of Australian
policing is that of the notorious criminal and hard-man, James Finch:
“He [Finch] was handcuffed to a chair and we knocked the shit out
of him. Siddy Atkinson was pretty fit then and gave him a terrible
hiding….no matter what we did to Finch, the bastard
wouldn't talk” (Stannard 1988: 40). Again, consider the
famous case of Steve Biko who it seems was prepared to die rather than
allow his torturers to break his will (Arnold 1984:
281-2).[8]
Here breaking a person's will can be understood in a
minimalist or a maximalist sense. This is not to say that the
boundaries between these two senses can be sharply drawn.
Understood in its minimal sense, breaking a person's will is
causing that person to abandon autonomous decision-making in relation
to some narrowly circumscribed area of life and for a limited
period.[9]
Consider, for
example, a thief deciding to disclose or not disclose to the police
torturing him where he has hidden the goods he has stolen (a torturing
practice frequently used by police in
India).[10]
Suppose further that he knows
that he can only be legally held in custody for a twenty-four hour
period, and that the police are not able to infringe this particular
law. By torturing the thief the police might break his will and,
against his will, cause him to disclose the whereabouts of the stolen
goods.
Understood in its maximal sense, breaking a person's will involves
reaching the endpoint of the kind of process Sussman describes above,
i.e., the point at which the victim's will is subsumed by the will of
the torturer. Winston Smith in George Orwell's 1984 is, as
Sussman notes, an instance of the latter extreme endpoint of some
processes of torture. Smith ends up willingly betraying what is
dearest and most important to him, i.e., his loved one Julia.
Moreover, there are numerous examples of long term damage to
individual autonomy and identity caused by torture, to some extent
irrespective of whether the victim's will was broken. For example,
some victims of prolonged torture in prisons in authoritarian states
are so psychologically damaged that even when released they are unable
to function as normal adult persons, i.e. as rational choosers
pursuing their projects in a variety of standard interpersonal
contexts such as work and family.
Given the above definition of torture, we can distinguish torture
from the following practices.
Firstly, we need to distinguish torture from coercion. In the case
of coercion, people are coerced into doing what they don't want
to do. This is consistent with their retaining control over their
actions and making a rational decision to, say, hand over their wallet
when told to do so by a knife-wielding robber. So coercion does not
necessarily involve torture. Does torture necessarily involve coercion?
No doubt the threat of torture, and torture in its preliminary stages,
simply functions as a form of coercion in this sense. However, torture
proper has as its starting point the failure of coercion, or that
coercion is not even going to be attempted. As we have seen, torture
proper targets autonomy itself, and seeks to overwhelm the capacity of
the victims to exercise rational control over their decisions —
at least in relation to certain matters for a limited period of time
— by literally terrorising them into submission. Hence there is a
close affinity between terrorism and torture. Indeed, arguably torture
is a terrorist tactic. However, it is one that can be used by groups
other than terrorists, e.g. it can be used against enemy combatants by
armies fighting conventional wars and deploying conventional military
strategies. In relation to the claim that torture is not coercion, it
might be responded that at least some forms or instances of torture
involve coercion, namely those in which the torturer is seeking
something from the victim, e.g. information, and in which some degree
of rational control to comply or not with the torturer's wishes
is retained by the victim. This response is plausible. However, even if
the response is accepted, there will remain instances of torture in
which these above-mentioned conditions do not obtain; presumably, these
will not be instances of coercion.
Secondly, torture needs to be distinguished from excruciatingly
painful medical procedures. Consider the case of a rock-climber who
amputates a fellow climber's arm, which got caught in a crevice in
an isolated and inhospitable mountain area. These kinds of case differ
from torture in a number of respects. For example, such medical
procedures are consensual and not undertaken to break some persons'
will, but rather to promote their physical wellbeing or even to save
their life.
Thirdly, there is corporal punishment. Corporal punishment is, or
ought to be, administered only to persons who have committed some legal
and/or moral offence for the purpose of punishing them. By contrast,
torture is not — as is corporal punishment — limited by
normative definition to the guilty; and in general torture, but not
corporal punishment, has as its purpose the breaking of a
person's will. Moreover, unlike torture, corporal punishment will
normally consist of a determinate set of specific, pre-determined and
publicly known acts administered during a definite and limited time
period, e.g. ten lashes of the cat-o-nine-tails for theft.
Fourthly, there are ordeals involving the infliction of severe pain.
Consider Gordon Liddy who reportedly held his hand over a burning
candle till his flesh burnt in order to test his will. Ordeals have as
their primary purpose to test a person's will, but are not
undertaken to break a person's will. Moreover, ordeals — as
the Liddy example illustrates — can be voluntary, unlike
torture.
sorry about the wall of text but THAT is torture.... a taser is a tool for compliance because cops pulling a gun is effective but is almost always lethal with the training they get. cops are taught to double tap in the middle of the chest.... almost always 100% lethal.
and in the definition it says electric shock treatment... what they mean by that is like what happens to Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon 1 or what happens to Chuck Norris in Missing In Action 3.
