>Bill,
>
>there are independent (of results of torture) reasons to (a) believe
>that witches do not exist and (b) terrorists and their plans of
>mayhem do.
You miss the point, which is that there is no evidence that torture works to get reliable information.
>I agree with the moral position =8-O that torture is just a bad, bad
>path to go down. The argument against Chris, IMHO, has to proceed
>either from this axiom, or it has to be tackled on the front of
>whether torture is effective in yielding information of worth
Which was my point. I apologise that I was not clear. Unfortunately I have a tendency to get a bit facetious when people persist in saying silly things. It goes without saying that torture is morally repulsive, but my point is that is also doesn't work as a way of obtaining intelligence.
> and if that justifies the torture. It's not valid, in this
>instance, to argue that the argument in favour of torture is
>circular... it's not necessarily so.
I was not suggesting any circular logic. In fact I can't discern any logic at all in Chris's defense of torture. I was rather drawing attention to the contradiction of Chris arguing that torture yields reliable intelligence, while at the same time disputing the reliability of the most historically infamous instance of intelligence gained through torture, the identification of thousands of European witches.
Trying to do it in a witty way was probably where I went wrong. Dodn't get the the delivery quite right. Happens to me a lot. Cross out stand-up comedy from my list of possible future career options then, I guess. D-oh!
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas