Ticking time bomb scenario

Is torture justified when interrogating a terrorist who planted a ticking time bomb?

The ticking time bomb scenario is a thought experiment used to justify torture even though it is typically viewed as so barbaric, immoral, and unreliable every developed nation has agreed to stop practicing it. The thought experiment is often presented as:

A terrorist has planted a nuclear bomb which will detonate in five hours somewhere in the heart of a major city. Because the city is so populated, evacuation is impossible, and hoping to find the bomb through random searching is hopeless. Luckily, the terrorist was been caught, but he won't divulge to bomb's location.

In this scenario, is torture justified, and, aren't you morally obligated to use it?

A scenario such as this has occurred in various forms of fiction with successful results in the TV shows 24 and American Dad, and negative results in the film The Siege.

Criticisms

Many people have no problem favoring torture when presented in such a clear-cut way, but there are criticisms to this thought experiment.

Despite happening frequently in fiction, critics have argued that this scenario never happens in real life. When terrorism succeeds, it is almost entirely unpredictable, but when it is thwarted, it is not because of torture, but through the surveillance of suspects, the inability of would-be terrorists to obtain destructive materials, or the incompetence of the terrorist. When groups like the US government tortures people, they don't do it because they know the person is hiding a key piece of information, but on the off-chance that the victim will have some as-of-yet unknown information. And, since the torturers don't know the validity of the confession, it won't be reliable. A more realistic telling of the experiment might go like this:

An anonymous tipster calls the CIA and warns them of a terrorist planting a time bomb in the New York subway terminal that will go off in an hour. Police are dispatched to the busy area and arrest three suspects, each belongs to a hate-group like the KKK and Aryan Brotherhood and has prior convictions of violent crime, but there isn't any concrete evidence that they planted a bomb, and they each deny it. A thorough background check would take too long. If there is a bomb, scores of lives are at risk, and it's possible one of these men planted it.

In a more realistic scenario, torture seems less like and imperative and more like a possible human-rights violation. It's not difficult to argue in favor of torture in the highly contrived case in the original example because you're 100% sure the terrorist has the answer you need and millions of lives are at stake. But it's not too far down that slippery slope to justify torturing people when you're only 35% sure. And there is no simple way to calculate certainty and any attempt at setting a limit would be arbitrary anyway.

Variations

Torturing an Innocent

An alternate form of this thought experiment involves introducing an innocent party:

The terrorist is caught, but his dossier describes him as being highly resilient to torture, so it's unlikely that any amount of suffering will get him to confess before the bomb goes off. However, the dossier also explains that the terrorist is also very attached to his children. His three children, aged three, five, and six, who are oblivious to their father's crimes, are brought in and the captors say he will be forced to watch them torture the kids until he gives up the location of the bomb.

For most people, it is much easier to accept torture when it's conducted against a violent criminal, but that causes to them to conflate torture with punishment. Adding an innocent third party into the mix helps to eliminate punishment leaving only torture to be discussed. Can we justify torturing innocent people when thousands of lives are at risk? What about hundreds or only a dozen?

Uncertainty

This variation addresses the common criticisms of the though experiment. Instead of being 100% sure the person is a terrorist, you're only 75% or 50% sure. At what level of certainty does it stop being a moral imperative and start becoming a human rights violation? Likewise, instead of a million potential victims, what if there are only 1,000, 100, or even 1. Are the two factors related, so that an increase in one cancels out a decrease in the other? And, if so, what ratio should be used to indicate morality?

Links

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticking_time_bomb_scenario - Wikipedia.