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The ticking time bomb scenario is a
thought experiment A thought experiment is an imaginary scenario that is meant to elucidate or test an argument or theory. It is often an experiment that would be hard, impossible, or unethical to actually perform. It can also be an abstract hypothetical that is ...
that has been used in the
ethics Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...
debate over whether
interrogational torture Interrogational torture is the use of torture to obtain information in interrogation, as opposed to the use of torture to extract a forced confession, regardless of whether it is true or false. Torture has been used throughout history during int ...
can ever be justified. The scenario can be formulated as follows:
Suppose that a person with knowledge of an imminent
terrorist attack Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war a ...
that will kill many people is in the hands of the authorities, and he will disclose the information needed to prevent the attack only if he is tortured. Should he be tortured?
It is usually planted as the assumption of a ticking
time bomb A time bomb (or a timebomb, time-bomb) is a bomb whose detonation is triggered by a timer. The use or attempted use of time bombs has been for various purposes including insurance fraud, terrorism, assassination, sabotage and warfare. They are a ...
that still has not exploded but will happen in a short period of time. If the terrorist who placed it is detained and is forced through torture to tell where he placed it, the bomb could be deactivated, thus saving many lives. Some
consequentialist In moral philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgement about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from ...
s argue that nations, even those that legally disallow torture, can justify its use if they have a terrorist in custody who possesses critical knowledge, such as the location of a
time bomb A time bomb (or a timebomb, time-bomb) is a bomb whose detonation is triggered by a timer. The use or attempted use of time bombs has been for various purposes including insurance fraud, terrorism, assassination, sabotage and warfare. They are a ...
or a
weapon of mass destruction A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a biological, chemical, radiological, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill or significantly harm many people or cause great damage to artificial structures (e.g., buildings), natural structures ( ...
that will soon explode and kill many people. Opponents to the argument usually begin by exposing certain assumptions that tend to be hidden by initial presentations of the scenario and tend to obscure the true costs of permitting torture in "real-life" scenarios—e.g., the assumption that the person is in fact a terrorist, whereas in real life there usually remains uncertainty about whether the person is in fact a terrorist and if they have useful information—and rely on legal, philosophical/moral, and empirical grounds to reaffirm the need for the absolute prohibition of torture. There is also uncertainty about the efficacy of interrogational torture, and much opposition to torture is based on the fact it is not effective rather than any moral issue, as well as how the decision to apply (or even allow) torture, whether or not an official process exists for doing so, might figure in the game theoretical
payoff matrix In game theory, normal form is a description of a ''game''. Unlike extensive-form game, extensive form, normal-form representations are not Graph (discrete mathematics), graphical ''per se'', but rather represent the game by way of a matrix (mathe ...
of the hypothetical terrorist, or the problem framers. The ticking time bomb scenario is extremely rare in real life, but it is often cited as a reason for using torture.


Background

Philosopher
Jeremy Bentham Jeremy Bentham (; 4 February Dual dating, 1747/8 Old Style and New Style dates, O.S. 5 February 1748 Old Style and New Style dates, N.S.– 6 June 1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of mo ...
has been regarded as the "father" of the ticking time bomb argument. He wrote in his 1804 essay ''Means of extraction for extraordinary occasions'': The concept was popularized in the 1960s in the novel '' Les Centurions'' by Jean Lartéguy which is set during the
Algerian war The Algerian War (also known as the Algerian Revolution or the Algerian War of Independence) ''; '' (and sometimes in Algeria as the ''War of 1 November'') was an armed conflict between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front (Algeri ...
. The version in the novel has the following conditions: # The evidence in support of the contention that he has the relevant information would satisfy the requirements of evidence for convicting him of an offence. # There are reasonable grounds for believing that he is likely to tell the truth if severe torture is threatened, and, if necessary, applied to him. # There are reasonable grounds for believing that no other means would have the effect of compelling him to tell the truth. # There are grounds for believing that if the information is obtained quickly, there is a good chance of defusing the bomb before it goes off. # There are reasonable grounds for believing that the likely damage to be caused by the bomb will include death of many citizens, the maiming of others, including the infliction of much more severe pain on others with much more lasting effect than will be the effect of the infliction of torture on the person who has been captured; # There are reasonable grounds for believing that the torturing will not have consequences which would be worse than the damage likely to result from the bomb going off. In the novel, the hardened terrorist quickly folds under torture and reveals the location of the bombs. According to Darius Rejali, a professor of political science at
Reed College Reed College is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland, Portland, Oregon, E ...
, the possibility of sudden, massive destruction of innocent life provided French liberals with a more acceptable justification for committing torture.


Views in favor of accepting torture in emergencies

After the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...
,
Alan Dershowitz Alan Morton Dershowitz ( ; born September 1, 1938) is an American lawyer and law professor known for his work in U.S. constitutional law, U.S. constitutional and American criminal law, criminal law. From 1964 to 2013, he taught at Harvard Law Sc ...
, a prominent American defense attorney, surprised some observers by giving limited support to the idea that torture could be justified. He argued that human nature can lead to unregulated abuse "off the books". Therefore, it would be better if there were a regulated procedure through which an interrogator could request a "torture warrant" and that requiring a warrant would establish a paper trail of accountability. Torturers, and those who authorize torture, could be held to account for excesses. Dershowitz's suggested torture warrants, similar to search warrants, arrest warrants and phone tap warrants, would spell out the limits on the techniques that interrogators may use, and the extent to which they may abridge a suspect's rights. In September 2002, when reviewing Alan Dershowitz's book, ''Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge'',
Richard Posner Richard Allen Posner (; born January 11, 1939) is an American legal scholar and retired United States circuit judge who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1981 to 2017. A senior lecturer at the University of Chicag ...
, legal scholar and judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, wrote in ''
The New Republic ''The New Republic'' (often abbreviated as ''TNR'') is an American magazine focused on domestic politics, news, culture, and the arts from a left-wing perspective. It publishes ten print magazines a year and a daily online platform. ''The New Y ...
'', "If torture is the only means of obtaining the information necessary to prevent the detonation of a
nuclear bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear exp ...
in
Times Square Times Square is a major commercial intersection, tourist destination, entertainment hub, and Neighborhoods in New York City, neighborhood in the Midtown Manhattan section of New York City. It is formed by the junction of Broadway (Manhattan), ...
, torture should be usedand will be usedto obtain the information.... No one who doubts that this is the case should be in a position of responsibility."


Views rejecting torture under all circumstances

Some human rights organizations, professional and academic experts, and military and intelligence leaders have absolutely rejected the idea that torture is ever legal or acceptable, even in a so-called ticking bomb situation. They have expressed grave concern about the way the dramatic force and artificially simple moral answers the ticking bomb thought-experiment seems to offer, have manipulated and distorted the legal and moral perceptions, reasoning and judgment of both the general population and military and law enforcement officials. They reject the proposition, implicit or explicit, that certain acts of torture are justifiable, even desirable. They believe that simplistic responses to the scenario may lead well-intentioned societies down a slippery slope to legalized and systematic torture. They point out that no evidence of any real-life situation meeting all the criteria to constitute a pure ticking bomb scenario has ever been presented to the public, and that such a situation is highly unlikely. As well, torture can be criticized as a poor vehicle for discovering truth, as people experiencing torture, once broken, are liable to make anything up in order to stop the pain and can become unable to tell the difference between fact and fiction under intense psychological pressure. Additionally, since the terrorist presumably knows that the timer is ticking, he has an excellent reason to lie and give false information under torture in order to misdirect his interrogators; merely giving a convincing answer which the investigators will waste time checking out makes it more likely that the bomb will go off, and of course once the bomb has gone off, not only has the terrorist won, but there is also no further point in torturing him, except perhaps as revenge. Others point out that the ticking-bomb torture proponents adopt an extremely short-term view, which impoverishes their
consequentialism In moral philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgement about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a ...
. Using torture—or even declaring that one is prepared to accept its use—makes other groups of people much more likely to use torture themselves in the long run. The consequence is likely to be a long-term increase in violence. This long-term effect is so serious that the person making the torture decision cannot possibly (according to this argument) make a reasonable estimate of its results. Thus the decision-maker has no grounds for certainty that the value of the lives saved from the ticking bomb will outweigh the value of the lives lost because of the subsequent disorder. He or she cannot arrive at a successful accounting of consequences. This anti-torture argument, in fact, works by positing that human knowledge has intrinsic limits. An analogous argument holds that human decision-makers are fundamentally prone in certain situations to believe that their judgment is better than it is, and that, to be ethical, they must pre-commit themselves to a particular course of action in those situations. Knowing that, under stress, they will never be able to accurately assess the likely success of torture in obtaining information needed to prevent an attack, humans thus pre-commit to not torture. In general, this family of arguments faults the "ticking-bomb" scenario for implicitly including an incorrect presumption that the decision-maker can know in advance the outcome of torture, either in the short run (likelihood that it will prevent an attack) or the long run (likelihood that it will not set off a general increase in human violence). Joe Navarro, one of the
FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...
's top experts in questioning techniques, told ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'': The United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which was adopted on December 10, 1984, and entered into force on June 26, 1987, explicitly states in Article 2.2 that:


Implausibility

Critics of the thought experiment scenario maintain that it is essentially implausible, based on simultaneous presence of numerous unlikely factors. This is particularly acute in fictional exploration of the scenario. For example, in perhaps the most common variants on the scenario, one must assume that torturers know, with a reasonable degree of certainty that some form of deadly attack is imminent, but lack a crucial component of that plan, such as its precise location. They must also have in their custody someone who they are reasonably certain has said information and would talk under torture or threat of torture. They must then be able to accurately distinguish between true and false information which the subject may supply under torture. They must then be able to use this information to form a plan of response which is effective at stopping the planned attack. All of this must occur within a limited time frame allowed by the "ticking bomb". No less importantly, there exists no historical case that satisfies all or even most of the conditions for a ticking time bomb.


Effect of fiction

Works of fiction, such as the television series '' 24'', often rely on ticking time bomb scenarios for dramatic effect. According to the
Parents Television Council The Parents Television and Media Council (PTMC), formerly the Parents Television Council (PTC), is an American media advocacy group founded by Conservatism in the United States, conservative political pundit L. Brent Bozell III in 1995, which ...
, given that each season represents a 24-hour period,
Jack Bauer Jack Bauer is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Fox television series '' 24''. Throughout the majority of the series' running, Bauer serves as a key member of the fictional CTU and other institutions. Bauer's job usually involv ...
encounters someone who needs torturing to reveal a ticking bomb on average 12 times per day.
Michael Chertoff Michael Chertoff (born November 28, 1953) is an American attorney who was the second United States Secretary of Homeland Security to serve under President George W. Bush. Chertoff also served for one additional day under President Barack Obama. ...
, the
Secretary of Homeland Security The United States secretary of homeland security is the head of the United States Department of Homeland Security, the federal department tasked with ensuring public safety in the United States. The secretary is a member of the Cabinet of the U ...
under the
George W. Bush administration George W. Bush's tenure as the 43rd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2001, and ended on January 20, 2009. Bush, a Republican from Texas, took office following his narrow electoral college vict ...
, declared that '' 24'' "reflects real life."
John Yoo John Choon Yoo (; born July 10, 1967) is a South Korean-born American legal scholar and former government official who serves as the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Yoo became known for his legal opi ...
, the former
Justice Department A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice, is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...
lawyer who produced the
torture memos A set of legal memoranda known as the "Torture Memos" (officially the Memorandum Regarding Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside The United States) were drafted by John Yoo as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the ...
cited Bauer in support, while
Supreme Court In most legal jurisdictions, a supreme court, also known as a court of last resort, apex court, high (or final) court of appeal, and court of final appeal, is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
Justice In its broadest sense, justice is the idea that individuals should be treated fairly. According to the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', the most plausible candidate for a core definition comes from the ''Institutes (Justinian), Inst ...
Antonin Scalia Antonin Gregory Scalia (March 11, 1936 – February 13, 2016) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectual an ...
went further, arguing "Jack Bauer saved
Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?". In contrast, one of the show's creators has stated: The show uses the same techniques that are used by the U.S. against terrorist suspects during the War on Terror. U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the
United States Military Academy The United States Military Academy (USMA), commonly known as West Point, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York that educates cadets for service as Officer_(armed_forces)#United_States, comm ...
at
West Point The United States Military Academy (USMA), commonly known as West Point, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York that educates cadets for service as Officer_(armed_forces)#United_States, comm ...
, and others, objected to the central theme of the show—that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country’s security—as it had an adverse effect on the training of actual American soldiers by advocating unethical and illegal behavior. As Finnegan said: He continued, The "ticking time bomb scenario" is subject of the drama ''The Dershowitz Protocol'' by Canadian author Robert Fothergill. In that play, the American government has established a protocol of "intensified interrogation" for terrorist suspects which requires participation of the
FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...
,
CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
and the Department of Justice. The drama deals with the psychological pressure and the tense triangle of competences under the overriding importance that each participant has to negotiate the actions with his conscience.


See also

* Ethics of torture * Murder of Jakob von Metzler * Slippery slope#Domino fallacy *
False dilemma A false dilemma, also referred to as false dichotomy or false binary, is an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available. The source of the fallacy lies not in an invalid form of inference but in a false ...
* Principle of double effect * Psychology of torture *
Trolley problem The trolley problem is a series of thought experiments in ethics, psychology, and artificial intelligence involving stylized ethical dilemmas of whether to sacrifice one person to save a larger number. The series usually begins with a Scenario ...


In fiction

*''
Dirty Harry ''Dirty Harry'' is a 1971 American action-thriller film produced and directed by Don Siegel, the first in the Dirty Harry (film series), ''Dirty Harry'' series. Clint Eastwood plays the title role, in his first appearance as San Francisco Polic ...
'' *'' The Siege'' *'' 24'' *'' Unthinkable'' *'' Call of Duty: Black Ops'' *'' The 100'' *'' American Dad''


Notes


References

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External links

* * * * * * *{{cite journal , last1=Spino , first1=Joseph , last2=Cummins , first2=Denise Dellarosa , title=The Ticking Time Bomb: When the Use of Torture Is and Is Not Endorsed , journal=Review of Philosophy and Psychology , date=2014 , volume=5 , issue=4 , pages=543–563 , doi=10.1007/s13164-014-0199-y, s2cid=41294581 Torture Thought experiments in ethics Terrorism in fiction Justification (epistemology)