Ticking Bomb Argumentative Analysis

Marcia Baron and Alan Dershowitz both have different views as to what the permissibility of torture should be, especially with regards to the famed Ticking Bomb Hypothetical which has been used on multiple occasions to permit and even encourage torture as an information gathering tactic. Baron makes it clear that she recognizes there might be extreme cases where torture is understood as the lesser of two evils, but that the Ticking Bomb Hypothetical should not be considered a viable hypothetical to use to think over circumstances of necessary torture. Dershowitz also agrees that the Ticking Bomb hypothetical is too realistic to act as a true hypothetical, that any torture allowed would eventually grow and spread to all forms of information …show more content…
This hypothetical does not remove the examiner from the confines of reality in order to truly examine the base aspects of the thought experiment. A true hypothetical is one where it sets aside the majority of facts concerning a situation and leaves the examiner with only the barest of skeletons to examine morally. “…It is hard to see why it would be helpful to set aside relevant facts about torture since the matter under consideration is the moral permissibility of the practice of interrogational torture” (Baron, 631). The Ticking Bomb hypothetical, instead, forces the examiner to set aside important truths about torture while leaving behind the majority of the situation surrounding the usage, acting as if it is an incomplete hypothetical while claiming otherwise. Baron brings up the Human Seeds Hypothetical to show the differences between a true thought provoking hypothetical and the Ticking Bomb hypothetical which require only the slight distortion of reality to make its case. The Human Seed Hypothetical asks the examiner to imagine the world where seeds that grow into people fly all over the world and if they enter your home they sprout on your carpet and then asks if you would be morally responsible for allowing the human seed to grow on your carpet. One is a fantastical situation which would never happen to force the examiner to consider abortion, and the other is a railroad …show more content…
In his travels, Dershowitz found evidence where it was acting as a “…moral, intellectual, and legal justification for a pervasive system of coercive interrogation” (Dershowitz, 618). The individuals that were utilizing the hypothetical in this sense were seeing the costs and benefits in a sole utilitarianism sense. Those who examined the hypothetical with only a utilitarianism gaze only saw the situations as mathematical problems, where in order to get the solutions to save lives we have to input nonlethal pain on a subject or subjects. “…Anything goes as long as the number of people tortured or killed does not exceed the number that would be saved” (Dershowitz, 620). “Pain,” to these individuals, “…is a lesser and more remediable harm than death” (Dershowitz, 619). And they are correct. We have pain killers for a reason. It is only due to lack of success in medical labs that we do not also have ‘death killers’ as well, I am sure. An important point to make, however, which Dershowitz highlights and I agree with, is that these individuals have not considered the long-term effects of their choices to approve torture in the Ticking Bomb Hypothetical. If we were to approve of torture in this moment, concerning this exact situation, how could we not then be influenced to approve of it in lesser, still terrible