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The Speech Privilege

Morally, speech is a privilege. That is, speech is not morally neutral, and since there is no moral right to commit evil there is no moral right to free speech. Materially evil speech has no privileges. (Note that this is a moral point, not a political point).

A person who refuses to unequivocally concede that cutting a living four-month fetus to pieces in a woman's womb is an immoral act of murder has no standing to speak on the subject of abortion. He may engage in all sorts of casuistry about ectopic pregnancies and difficult scenarios for pregnant women; he may be genuinely conflicted in his own subjective interior intellection; he may, indeed, be in need of apologetical help in order to see the error of his ways. But his speech on the subject is the banging of a gong, emptiness poured into the void.

Same with the subject of torture, for someone unwilling to concede that waterboarding KSM was unequivocally immoral torture. [Note: I've retracted "and a war crime", which I had originally written - Z]

(Cross-posted)

Comments (100)

I read this as "Shut up, he explained."

The point at issue is whether or not abortion and waterboarding are, in fact, equivalent in terms of being gravely immoral. Somehow, "Shut up," doesn't really answer that question.

OK. So shut up.

Zippy, my friend -- and I mean that sincerely -- what the hell is this? Are you going for broke or something?

Please, take a deep breath.

what the hell is this?
This is a post pointing out that speech is not morally neutral, that some kinds of speech are harmful, and that therefore people should not engage in it.

Matteo's characterization of it as "shut up" is not far off the mark, along with the further observation that sometimes "shut up" is both the right thing to say and the right thing to do.

Zippy:

Speaking clearly what is obviously true? What part of "Keep the conventions. Break the Commandments" do you not understand, my dear fellow?

A person who refuses to unequivocally concede that hijacking airliners filled with innocent civilians and crashing these into densely populated areas filled with innocent people (which so happens to include babies, the helpless elderly, various personal family members & friends, etc.) is an immoral act of MASS MURDER OF ONE OF THE WORST KIND, that opposing these mass murdering monsters who aggressively seek to repeat not merely another but several similar instances of MASS KILLINGS OF THE INNOCENT, has no standing to speak on the subject of anything (including ABORTION) pertaining to the very PROTECTION OF THE INNOCENT.

You might as well defend & promote the Pro-Abortionist rights to mass murder innocent babies since you deem it dogmatically acceptable to do thus on behalf of these wretched terrorists who are wont to commit similar, if not, far worse unspeakable evils.

Get a family, will ya?

See if perhaps you would be so willing to sacrifice even your own offspring to these most vicious of mass murderers all because of some petty self-righteousness that seems bent on issuing Anathema Sits on virtually any effort that would so oppose these demons who violently seek to devestate & ultimately destroy entire American civilian populations.

Yet another victim of Andrew Sullivan Syndrome (I'll let y'all work out the acronym). It's seldom claimed a better mind than Zippy's. Very sad indeed.

Oh yeah, I forgot - I'd better just shut up if I know what's good for me. What was I thinking?

A person who refuses to unequivocally concede that hijacking airliners filled with innocent civilians and crashing these into densely populated areas filled with innocent people (which so happens to include babies, the helpless elderly, various personal family members & friends, etc.) is an immoral act of MASS MURDER OF ONE OF THE WORST KIND, that opposing these mass murdering monsters who aggressively seek to repeat not merely another but several similar instances of MASS KILLINGS OF THE INNOCENT, has no standing to speak on the subject of anything (including ABORTION) pertaining to the very PROTECTION OF THE INNOCENT
I agree.

Me too.

Shea,

Just where does it happen to say that interrogating terrorists is practically the equivalent to murdering babies?

Instead of you & yours spewing such hateful rhetoric towards our patriotic government agents who happened to protect you and members of your own family from similar 9/11 atrocities by engaging in such measures, why don't you simply thank them for allowing you and your family the opportunity of living out another day free from terrorist attack?

Ingrates.

Better to say: Protecting the terrorists is equivalent to actually being one!

Just where does it happen to say that interrogating terrorists is practically the equivalent to murdering babies?

Nowhere. Which is why I've never said it. I have said that consequentialist arguments for torture deploy he same faulty logic as consequentialist arguments for abortion. It's because I oppose the monstrous crime of abortion that I think it gravely foolish for prolifers to embrace consequentialism, since it undergirds the entire case for abortion.

OK, so you're telling me to shut up, is that it? That because I have said that it is not obvious that waterboarding KSM was immoral torture, I should just shut up. Also (and the reason for the "shut up" recommendation) that I have no moral right even to speak freely on this subject, i.e. to debate and discuss my position. Do I understand you correctly? That even the fact that I have said that waterboarding should not be done unless and until such time as the Church makes clear that it is morally acceptable is not enough to afford me such a right: I must also agree with you that it is obviously intrinsically immoral, or I have no moral right even to speak about the issue, and should just shut up. Correct?

Also that people like Fr. Harrison, Jimmy Akin, Fr. Sirico, and the like have no moral right to speak freely on this subject either, and should just shut up. Not to mention the various commenters, Catholic and non-Catholic, who have disagreed with you on this particular subject in the comboxes.

Do I understand your view correctly?

I beg everyone's pardon, but I'm recycling this from the bottom of the "It's just so obvious!" thread because the pertinent discussion seems to be occuring here now.

Zippy wrote:

I think discussions like this one, taking place all over and throughout on the political Right for that last six years, have

(1) Handed Obama and the Left a huge political victory on a silver platter; and

(2) Are poisoning the pro-life movement from within.

I think everyone who participates in them should give that meta-point about this kind of discussion some careful thought. Speech acts are not morally neutral.

Ironically, this is very similar to the point I made to Mark Shea in my letter to him of a few days ago which helped to precipitate a wave of controversy at his blog and which now has erupted here. The relevant passage reads as follows:

I was very pleased to see that Fr. Sirico of The Acton Institute granted an interview on EWTN's The World Over Live last Friday night in which he refused to condemn waterboarding as torture. Fr. Sirico recognizes that any statement of his which denounced Bush & Co. as being in violation of the moral law would be seen as him lending his pastoral support to a certain pacifist interpretation of Catholic social doctrine, which would not only hinder our country in dealing with its foreign policy challenges, but would throw fuel on the flames of a partisan divide such that the side least likely to advance a genuine moral agenda would reap the net advantage. This conflict is dividing the Church, sadly, into many subversive or misguidedly pacifist Catholics on one side, many pseudo-tough Mel Gibson-like "conservative" Catholic charlatans on the other, with hotheads on each side arrogantly approriating for themselves the title of "magisterium of the day." Since my concern is for the integrity of the Church, the leavening of the world, and the protection of the country (in that order), I can only applaud Fr. Sirico's suave handling of the question, in which he effectively told the blogosphere to "mind its own business."

Even though we disagree on the issue in question, it seems we both have made statements indicating that the subject could benefit from some amount of benign neglect. Very interesting.

Ed:

Pretty close. I don't think people who are incapable of bringing themselves to concede that waterboarding KSM was an immoral act of torture and a war crime should speak publicly on the subject of torture in our present context, because I think such speech is in fact (independent of anyone's intentions) poisoning the pro-life movement.

My post doesn't impose a "it is obvious that it is true that ..." requirement on the acknowledgment though; just explicit acknowledgment that it is true. I acknowledge myself that it is not (apparently) obvious to everyone of good will. I think they ought to do the work to convince themselves of the point before speaking.

There are lots of things that I think people should not talk about publicly except under certain conditions. Acts of speech are moral acts like any other, not neutral acts. This is a meta-post about the moral dimensions of a public discussion, as opposed to the concrete subject matter of the discussion itself. People may disagree with my particular judgment here, but that sometimes "shut up" is both the right thing to say and the right thing to do should hopefully be uncontroversial.

And yeah, those other guys should shut up too if they can't bring themselves to publicly concede the particular factual point.

Does

and a war crime.

mean, "Anybody who did it and/or authorized it should be prosecuted"?

Because I've always agreed with you on the definite immorality of waterboarding, Zippy, but "and a war crime" takes things a notch up and seems to have implications for what we have to do about this, now, to specific people. And I'm not at all sure I'm ready to go there with ya'.

I connect this, too, with your comment in the other thread to the effect that you aren't interested in the interesting casuistical discussion until after people are prosecuted. That doesn't seem correct to me, if for no other reason than that some people might have done or authorized some things but not others (e.g., some interrogator might have put a caterpillar in a cell or awakened a prisoner at 3 a.m. but waterboarded nobody), so the casuistry may be a necessary precursor, *even on your own view that some people should be prosecuted*, to deciding whom to prosecute.

Zippy & Shea:

I agree

Yeah -- right.

Is there something else you would have done to these terrorists as far as their interrogation is concerned that would employ something other than the mere application of kiddie gloves or plush accomdations at the local Four Seasons?

Clarification:

By "benign neglect," I do not mean to say that anyone ought to shut up because there views on the matter render them unfit to have a rational conversation with. I mean that perhaps the Catholic laity ought to realize that its job is not to do the ecclesia's work for it, and that perhaps they ought to simmer down and let the professionals work on the problem. They laity has a very important place, but it is not the pulpit.

Well, that was depressing.

Lydia:

I suppose I would stop short at the acknowledgment that it was most definitely immoral torture. But this discussion has at least made me consider the possibility that the further acknowledgment might be necessary for the sake of the common good, given the depth of the pathology.

It is worthwhile acknowledging the further, complex, and independent prudential considerations involved in publicly acknowledging that it was a war crime, even though it obviously was illegal under current law. So I overstated it in that respect, and I retract that part. Thanks for the correction.

I wonder what a Martin Luther vs. Aristocles debate would've looked like, I cant help but think it'd be colorful. I mean that respectfully, btw.

My post doesn't impose a "it is obvious that it is true that ..." requirement on the acknowledgment though; just explicit acknowledgment that it is true.

Again that notorious rigorism (most likely, adopted from the Master) that similarly declared then that "it is obvious that it is true that Voting for McCain is a Mortal Sin" and that "it is obvious that it is true that a person who gets a vasectomy cannot engage in sexual relations with his spouse even after penance", etc.

If anything were ever to be considered the very living embodiment of anti-Catholic parody, it would be this.

Jack Chic's got nothing on ZC.

That adamantly draconian magesterialism that would basically reduce things to nothing more than black/white, good/evil reductionist un-reality is but a sinister parody of the Catholic Faith, not its essence, as even then Cardinal Ratzinger had explained in his theological works concerning agents who would dare treat matters with such pharisaic simplicity and unreasonable as well as inhuman legal severity.

Ari:

I didn't say that either of those things are obvious; in fact I don't even think they are true.

They laity has a very important place, but it is not the pulpit.

Change the "but" to "and," and we have an excellent defense of the efforts of Catholics like Mark and Zippy to oppose the world's wisdom regarding torture.

Ari:
Feel free to rave at me as you please w.r.t. the subject matter of the post; but keep it on topic.

Zippy,

It was on topic.

The fact that my subsequent comments were so revealing of that sort of rigorism characteristic of your person which produced many similar pronouncements then (now apparently deleted) was meant solely to demonstrate to you how perhaps in all that self-assured, seemingly infallible certainty by which you hold & declare such things as being thus; that perhaps maybe -- just maybe -- you might consider yourself possibly entertaining erroneous notions to just how black/white things really are concerning such matters.

Yet another victim of Andrew Sullivan Syndrome (I'll let y'all work out the acronym). It's seldom claimed a better mind than Zippy's. Very sad indeed.

Oh yeah, I forgot - I'd better just shut up if I know what's good for me. What was I thinking?

I suppose I should point out that what my commenter colorfully characterized as "shut up" is not some blanket statement that everyone who disagrees with me about anything should shut up. For example, I don't think someone who thinks I am suffering from Andrew Sullivan Syndrome should necessarily shut up about that. Saying that may be helpful or harmful, could even be true on some understanding of the syndrome, and is an entirely different concrete proposition from the one my post addresses in particular.

Suppose I were to say "I don't think anyone who is incapable of publicly acknowledging that there is no 'life of the mother' exception for abortion should publicly speak on the morality of treatments of ectopic pregnancy". (In fact, I think this is true: if "no life of the mother exception" does not come easily to the lips, one ought not broach the subject publicly in our current context).

Now, disagreeing with me that there is no life of the mother exception is different from disagreeing with me that one should not speak unless the acknowledgment comes easily to the lips. So while the colorful characterization of my point as "shut up" does have some truth to it, as I try to acknowledge rather than denying or avoiding, it is not a simple version of "shut up".

Zippy, I've thought about it, and I disagree with the metalevel point of the post, even taking into account your modification thereof. I'm trying to decide how much to say about my reasons. I think I'll just stick to one reason:

Since there are degrees of gravity even among intrinsically immoral acts, and since waterboarding KSM was less gravely immoral than the murder of unborn children, it is (IMO) more harmful to conservatism and the pro-life movement to alienate and divide allies on the abortion issue by telling some of them that they should "shut up" publicly on the issue of waterboarding than it is to have them around in the same group of conservatives saying that they aren't convinced that waterboarding KSM was intrinsically immoral and discussing that opinion.

Nobody has ever accused me of being a big-tent conservative, that's for sure! (I guess there's a first for everything.) But I'm very glad to be on the same team--on a number of issues, not only on abortion--with people like Ed Feser and Keith Pavlischek *as well as with Zippy Catholic*, and I think it would be folly for any of us on that team to be alienating others with strong push-away statements, like, for instance, "You shouldn't even be talking about this publicly."

The trouble with your position is not the "shut up" stuff, Zippy. It's the arrogance of assuming that you have done anything to show that the case at hand is analogous to abortion in the first place. After all the considerations from natural law, Scripture, tradition, and the Magisterium in general that I and others have marshaled to show that things are not as simple in the case at hand as you are assuming -- considerations that have no parallel in the case of abortion -- it seems to me that we only ever just keep circling back around to this deeply felt intution you have that waterboarding KSM was intrinsically immoral. None of these considerations make a dent in you because you simply refuse to consider even the possibility that they could conflict with this intuition of yours. The intuition is taken by you to be an unshakable datum, a hub around which the entire moral and theological universe -- natural law, Scripture, tradition, the statements of the Magisterium -- must turn. Even those of us who agree with you that waterboarding shouldn't be used are to be considered morally corrupt to the extent that we don't share this particular intuition of yours.

In short, for Harrison, Akin, myself, and many others, natural law, Scripture, tradition, and the Magisterium in general shape our moral intuitions. For you, your moral intuitions -- or this one, anyway -- shape your understanding of natural law, Scripture, tradition, and the Magisterium. That's sure how it seems, anyway.

Furthermore, while you no doubt regard this as an unfair characterization, it never occurs to you that you might be unfair in your judgment of Harrison, Akin, myself, and others. It never occurs to you that you might yourself be committing grave moral harm by publicly declaring that some of your fellow Catholics -- Catholics who by every independent standard strive to be loyal to the Magisterium -- are so morally and/or intellectually corrupt vis-a-vis this subject that they have no moral right even to speak publicly about it (a very nasty thing to say about someone if it is untrue). It never occurs to you that you might have no moral right to make this claim about them. The Great Intuition guarantees your infallibility.

And so, it seems to me you are lost in the rankest subjectivism. I am happy to be proven wrong, but keep in mind that as a matter of logic you will only be begging the question if you either (a) just repeat without argument that it is obvious, or clear, or needs no argument, or whatever, to say that waterboarding KSM was intrinsically immoral, or (b) launch into a longer chain of reasoning that ultimately only circles back to this same claim about what is obvious, clear, needs no argument, etc. vis-a-vis waterboarding KSM. (You've said that you're not appealing to strategy (a). And yet anytime we get into matters of natural law, Scripture, tradition, Magisterial documents, etc., it seems to me that you simply insist that they must be interpreted in light of what you take to be obvious etc. about the KSM case, in which case you are just appealing to strategy (b). Begging the question is still begging the question even when you beat around the bush to do it.)

Anyway, that's enough for now. Gotta go look around to see if someone left a TV set on, 'cause I think I can hear the Twilight Zone theme in the background.

"Pretty close. I don't think people who are incapable of bringing themselves to concede that waterboarding KSM was an immoral act of torture and a war crime should speak publicly on the subject of torture in our present context, because I think such speech is in fact (independent of anyone's intentions) poisoning the pro-life movement."

It seems just as possible to me that rhetorically equating or linking the abortion question in any way, shape, or form to the "torture" of KSM via waterboarding is itself a poisoning of the pro-life movement. For if abortion is merely on a par with waterboarding KSM, then abortion is really not much of an outrage, is it? If it is just as wrong to discomfort the born as it is to kill the unborn, why then I guess a "woman's right to choose" really would be a valid principle, yes?

Ari,

I can identify with your position, but only in a visceral sense. I am a father and a husband. Instinctively I know exactly how I feel about these terrorists. I would feel like killing them and making them suffer. However, by the Grace of God I see that this is not the only way to see things. Also, I am Roman Catholic and ultimately by Faith I trust the Church more than myself- I seek to do this even when I do not understand the Church's teaching.

Now, my question for you is this: Are the ones who commit "unspeakable evil"- whether the terrorists or Dr. Tiller the baby killer etc... still seen by you as persons? Or, have they somehow lost the God given dignity of their personhood? Also, does this even enter into the equation for you with regard to how we as christians should treat them because of their evil acts.

Zippy noted earlier:

There are lots of things that I think people should not talk about publicly except under certain conditions. Acts of speech are moral acts like any other, not neutral acts. This is a meta-post about the moral dimensions of a public discussion, as opposed to the concrete subject matter of the discussion itself. People may disagree with my particular judgment here, but that sometimes "shut up" is both the right thing to say and the right thing to do should hopefully be uncontroversial.

And yeah, those other guys should shut up too if they can't bring themselves to publicly concede the particular factual point.


What's so remarkably (and even, in a way, entertainingly) ironic about this particular post from Zippy is how it is essentially the same kind of meta-point a certain Harvard lawyer critic of his, Jonathan Prejean, basically uttered concerning the ole Zipster some years back:

"The theory begets the result: people who disagree with his rigorism are immoral for doing so; therefore, they are condemned of personal fault in the concrete. That's what positivism in the moral sphere produces. So the personalization in this instance was simply a concrete instance of the theory working itself out. Irritation at me might have provoked it, but what he did was just par for the course for someone who disagrees with his theory. There has to be some ethical violation involved in dissenting from his theory; it can't possibly be his fault. Ironically, the whole anonymity schtick is the ultimate depersonalization; he has made himself into a theory, since we cannot create any personal context.

I think he's in a dangerous situation, and as someone holding out himself (albeit anonymously) with the name "Catholic" on several sites, I think he has some responsibility to correct it. I tried my best to remedy that situation and failed. But I don't think we can gloss over the problem as being personal. This sort of thing corrodes discussion among Catholics and creates a bad impression for non-Catholics. If you're going to define yourself by the label "Catholic," you have a greater responsibility not to do those sorts of things, and I certainly consider that with everything I post on my blog. And of course, people know my name, and they can speak to me personally when I deviate from their expectations."

Zippy,

I will grant you this, that acceptance of Ed Feser's thesis, even though he says he's against torture in practice, does provide sufficient justification for those who are in favor of torture in practice.


Like me.

Pat,

I would feel like killing them and making them suffer.

That's exactly the same sort of awful caricature (and, in some intances, even accusation) typically hurled by pro-terrorist rights groups upon those who happen to support interrogation measures that would yield actual life-saving information from these terrorists.

They mistakenly believe that we merely want vengeance upon those who killed several of our own loved ones; never thinking about the fact that what is being sought is the prevention of yet another similar terrorist attack that would result in similar devestation and tragedy.

IOW: The point of all this is not some sort of fulfillment of the interrogator's (or even the intended victim's) sadist fantasies but, more precisely, the saving of various innocent lives, which unfortunately seems lost on many.

...it seems to me that we only ever just keep circling back around to this deeply felt intution you have that waterboarding KSM was intrinsically immoral.
Nota bene: my criteria was not public acknowledgment that it was intrinsically immoral, a rather technical claim of moral theology, but rather that it was immoral torture.

Zippy,

Nota bene: my criteria was not public acknowledgment that it was intrinsically immoral, a rather technical claim of moral theology, but rather that it was immoral torture.

Originally, you had held torture to the level of actually being instrinsically evil.

Am I right in detecting some softening in your initial stance from that original position?

Ari:

I do hold torture to be intrinsically evil. The acknowledgment my post calls for is much more circumscribed: that the waterboarding of KSM specifically was an instance if immoral torture.

You really aren't going to understand me unless you pay attention to the actual, specific things I say.

Zippy writes:

"since there is no moral right to commit evil there is no moral right to free speech."

This is what, back in philosophy grad school, we would have called an "interesting but under-described" claim.

Zippy seems a bit tired & emotional, at the moment, but I hope he'll find time to expand on this point later, as his patience allows.

Hi Aristocles, I agree and in fact think that the interrogator can and ought to hate is job, but his duty to love righteuosness and hate evil compels him to do the ugly work before him in love. Not love toward the guilty, but toward innocence.

Someone, I dont remember who in maybe WW2 was quoted as saying something like this: "I despise you for making me do what I have to do", as they fought for good. This is the type of interrogator I argue for, not the twisted type who'd actually enjoy his job.

Lydia:

I think it would be folly for any of us on that team to be alienating others with strong push-away statements, like, for instance, "You shouldn't even be talking about this publicly."
It is true, and interesting, and Matteo also raises the same point if I understand him correctly, that

(1) I could be right in my thesis here: that someone who cannot sign up to the immorality of KSM's waterboarding should not speak publicly on the matter, because doing so is poisoning the pro-life movement;

... and, at the same time, it could also be true that:

(2) It is damaging rather than helpful for me to state this thesis publicly.

I don't think (2) is true, or I wouldn't have stated it, but it is certainly an open consideration.

I also am happy and proud to stand with Ed/Keith/etc against the abortion holocaust, etc.

I will grant you this, that acceptance of Ed Feser's thesis, even though he says he's against torture in practice, does provide sufficient justification for those who are in favor of torture in practice.

That's granting quite a bit, George. It'll be interesting to see whether Dr. Feser agrees with you.

This is what, back in philosophy grad school, we would have called an "interesting but under-described" claim.
Well, again, it is expressly not a political claim: there is a non-trivial difference (to say the least) between "one ought not say X" and "saying X should be legally proscribed". To have a moral right to say X it must be the case that it is not morally wrong to say X. (To have a political right to say X is for it to be the case that legal proscription of saying X is itself illegal).

But saying things is a human act like any other, and will always have a moral dimension. An example drawing from the Tradition is calumny and detraction. Calumny is straightforwardly wrong because it involves telling damaging lies about someone. Detraction is more interesting: detraction is also morally wrong speech, but it is true speech. Detraction is unnecessarily saying true things about a person which are damaging to his good name, etc. Both are moral wrongs.

More generally, every speech act has a moral dimension, since every speech act, like every other act, has effects in the world, some of which are good effects and some of which are bad. So even true speech can be imprudent; and if it is imprudent, one ought not do it.

Therefore there is no general moral right to free speech even in a context where there is a broad (and good, and prudent, and even necessary) political right to free speech. By making the distinction I was trying - perhaps too tersely - to preempt "free speech" objections to the line of thought, which is a line of thought about the morality of speech acts, that is, whether we ought or ought not say a particular thing, independent of what we think about that particular thing.

That I don't agree with it, William, should be crystal clear from what I've written here over the last few days. You might try reading it, instead of reading things into it.

Zippy and Lydia, I am of course also happy and proud to stand by you, Keith, Mark Shea, et al. against those things.

I think we've gone past the point of diminishing returns in these threads. Can we agree on that much too?

If perhaps we do turn away from the specifics of the torture debate, I think ZC's original statement and his 11:09 response to steve burton's question are just as interesting. I'm not an expert on speech act theory (and so will happily defer to those who know more about it), but it seems to me that the term is being thrown a bit carelessly. If I remember my Austen correctly (a risky proposition), not every utterance is necessarily a speech act, but only those that actually do something (as when I say "I promise...") and so not every utterance has an impact on the world, i.e. changes a state of affairs (or as the Stanford Encylopedia puts it, "speech acts are not to be confused with acts of speech"). If I say "that chair is blue" nothing changes, but if I say "I promise to pay you" then I've taken an action. So part of the question is whether we are using speech act theory here and whether Dr. Feser's argument is really a speech act or something else.

But this leads to the other interesting question, which is what kind of acts of speech should we not do. The opening post suggests that it is 'materially evil' speech which we should not do, which requires, of course, that we make the case that Dr. Feser's arguments are materially evil, which seems to be pretty high bar to cross (it would seem to, at minimum, require an intention to do harm, rather than to convince someone of a true proposition -- the consequences wouldn't necessarily matter). Though at 11:09 ZC seems to suggest that it is a matter of prudence -- and here I think the consequences might matter in the consideration of what one says. Though I should note, that at least with regard to Aquinas, the kind of speech he finds immoral under vices against prudence(ST II-II QQ. 72-76) seem to be more personal than the kind of argument Dr. Feser made.

I'm asking these not as a 'gotcha' kind of question, but because I think the issues are interesting and would like to know what others think about this. When should one refrain from making an argument that one thinks is true and important? That seem to really be the crux of the issue on this particular post.

(it would seem to, at minimum, require an intention to do harm, rather than to convince someone of a true proposition -- the consequences wouldn't necessarily matter)
The term "material" as I used it here is a term of art in moral theology. (My credentials in moral theology are that I am some guy on the Internet with a goofy pseudonym. Something to always keep in mind).

"Material" specifically means "without reference to what is intended", as in "material cooperation with evil". Someone can have perfectly good intentions and nevertheless materially cooperate with evil: the cab driver who gives an alcoholic a ride to the pub materially cooperates with evil. Indeed, I used the term precisely to avoid saying anything bad about anyone's intentions, sincerity, etc and my argument doesn't impute bad intentions or insincerity to anyone. It addresses what we objectively ought or ought not do (or say, which is a kind of doing something).

I agree with you that some speech acts, like other acts (say consciously scratching one's nose) are trivial and probably have no moral dimension, certainly not one worth worrying about.

Public discussions about politics, morality, etc - particularly in a context where the issues under discussion are of immediate import and gravity because of real things taking place - do have consequences which require that they fall under a prudential moral evaluation. (Naturally intentions matter too, but I'm not addressing that here). It isn't enough to stipulate that what is said is sincere, or even that it is true. Even for sincere statements and true statements it remains the case that saying it may or may not be prudent in a particular context. And if saying it is imprudent in a particular context, then we shouldn't say it: the upshot is that it is right or wrong to engage in speech act X.

I agree with what you said about Aquinas' examples being more personal, but do realize that this is the Internet age, that I am specifically referring to speech in the Internet age, and that in Aquinas' age virtually all speech was more personal and less public.

Finally, I wasn't trying to pick on Ed specifically, and wasn't even addressing him as particularly as his post addressed me. In the interest of staying on the meta-point rather than getting back into the torture stuff that's all I'll say about that.

It seems to me that we are missing two important subjects in this discussion: the torturer and the one being tortured. I guess to my mind, and I suspect it might be on Zippy's, is that the very act of torture, at the very least, damages the soul of the torturer. Some people may allow their consciences to carry the burden of torture approval, but I don't think that Christ wishes for that to occur among His children.

Zippy, thanks for your response -- I'm a Thomist, so when I hear 'material' I tend to understand the term a little differently. Your explanation clarified things for me. Following your explanation, I take it, then, that your belief is that making an argument that torture may be licit in some circumstances is a form of mediate material cooperation with evil in that it can be used by abortion proponents to argue that life is not sacred (or something along those lines). Would you accept this definition of the material cooperation you are describing? (taken from: http://www.ascensionhealth.org/ethics/public/key_principles/cooperation.asp) It seems to be what you are getting at.

Mediate Material Cooperation. Mediate material cooperation occurs when the cooperator participates in circumstances that are not essential to the commission of an action, such that the action could occur even without this cooperation. Mediate material cooperation in an immoral act might be justifiable under three basic conditions:

1. If there is a proportionately serious reason for the cooperation (i.e., for the sake of protecting an important good or for avoiding a worse harm); the graver the evil the more serious a reason required for the cooperation;

2. The importance of the reason for cooperation must be proportionate to the causal proximity of the cooperator’s action to the action of the principal agent (the distinction between proximate and remote);

3. The danger of scandal (i.e., leading others into doing evil, leading others into error, or spreading confusion) must be avoided.

By the way, the dialogue in Aquinas' time may have lacked the immediacy of the internet age, but it was no less contentious or public. The very format of theological education was disputational and letters and arguments were ofter circulated in public. The question that may interest you, however, is Aquinas' discussion on heresy in ST II-II q.11. Not to suggest that anyone has been making heretical arguments, but only that Aquinas is concerned that what we say can be used against us:

Wherefore inordinate words about matters of faith may lead to corruption of the faith; and hence it is that Pope Leo says in a letter to Proterius, Bishop of Alexandria: "The enemies of Christ's cross lie in wait for our every deed and word, so that, if we but give them the slightest pretext, they may accuse us mendaciously of agreeing with Nestorius."
(article 2, reply to objection 2)

Again, I'm not sure that anything that's been said here is even in the neighborhood of heresy, but I take your concern instead to be that we don't want to give ammunition to those opposed to our stands on life.

Whether or not this is the actual case is perhaps the real question.

Baconboy, that's all fair enough. As I've emphasized in my original post and my comments, my main motivation in everything I've said, and I believe also in what writers like Fr. Harrison and Jimmy Akin have said, is to show that there is continuity in Catholic tradition and that the Church has not "reversed" past teaching (as opposed to applying it differently to new circumstances). Anything that might suggest otherwise gives aid and comfort to "progressives" who claim that since the Church has (they allege) reversed herself on torture, capital punishment, slavery, religious liberty, usury, etc., it follows (they further allege) that she has been in error in the past and therefore (they conclude) might be in error now vis-a-vis their pet issues (abortion, ordaining women, homosexuality, etc.) As Bonifacius's quotes (in the other thread) from Cardinal Dulles's review of John Noonan illustrate, this is a real problem, not a hypothetical one. People push the "the Church has taught moral error and reversed herself" line all the time, and cite torture as an example. Hence, Zippy has in my view been way too glib in dismissing, as if it were a merely academic question, my concern that any way we read texts like Veritatis Splendor has to be consistent with e.g. Scripture.

So, it is silly to pretend that it is people like Harrison, Akin, and myself who are in danger of causing scandal or giving "ammunition" to the other side, while Zippy's side is somehow scandal- and ammunition-free. If one is going to discuss these things responsibly, in a way that makes it clear that the Bible, and the Church in the past, have not taught error in matters of faith and morals (as they cannot, according to the Church's own self-understanding), one needs to address all the considerations people like Akin, Harrison, and myself have raised. But when one does that, one sees that things are not as simple as Zippy supposes -- and that to pretend otherwise threatens to give scandal and ammunition to the other side, if anything does.

And no, I am not saying that it is therefore Zippy who should "shut up." I am saying that all this talk about telling people to "shut up" in this context is deeply wrongheaded and should be dropped. Both sides are trying to be faithful to the Magisterium. The only side threatening to give scandal is the one that pretends otherwise.

Actually, Dr. Feser, I pretty much agree with you, but I was always taught to make sure I completely understood the other side before I disagreed with it. So I was trying to make sure I really understood what was at issue for Zippy, since his first post and his 11:09 post seemed to put the problem in different spheres -- one on the deontological realm and one in the realm of virtues. It seems to me that if you want to make it a matter of prudence then you can (and just did) make the argument that showing continuity within the tradition is a prudential move for just the reasons you've outlined.

But I was also trying to move the discussion away from the 'shut up' mode because I think that obscured the more interesting question of when we are morally responsible to restrain our speech.

By the way, the irony of Aquinas' question on heresy is that he calls for the death penalty for heretics, which seems to be worse than torture and done purely as a means of preventing the evil of spreading the heresy.

I hesitate to offer anything here because I haven't read all the umpty-ump comments on the other torture threads here and at all the other Catholic blogs where torture is now under discussion (I have a day job). But Zippy's post at the top of this thread caught my attention, and I've been ruminating upon it since I first read it, and I have some thoughts. My apologies if they have already been shown elsewhere to be inapposite or incoherent.

I'm specifically interested in Zippy's meta-question. As to waterboarding or any other infliction of discomfort other than as a means to the ends either of the moral correction of a criminal or the destruction of an enemy, it seems wrong ipso facto. It may seem the height of casuistry to say so, but there is a difference that matters, I think, between, "We shall x you to death as punishment" and "We shall x you to gain information." There is even an important difference between, "We shall x you to death as punishment, although if you provide us with useful information at any time in the process we may see fit to commute the sentence of death," and, "We shall x you until you provide us the information we seek."

But is it, as Zippy insists (he'll correct me if I misinterpret him, I am sure) a moral wrong to utter an opinion on the question of whether x is immoral, unless one is convinced that x is in fact immoral? I'll make the question more acute by generalizing: is it immoral to raise the question whether x is immoral? Or, more succinctly still: is moral philosophy moral?

I don't think it is coherent to suppose that it is not: "X is immoral" is inescapably a proposition in moral philosophy, even if x = "moral philosophy". You can't say moral philosophy is immoral without doing moral philosophy. So likewise with the statement that "raising questions about the morality of x is immoral." To say that raising questions about x is immoral implicitly entails noticing the question whether x is immoral; it implicitly raises the question in the process of batting it down. There would be no batting down of the question to be done, if the question were not salient, and open to discussion.

So I don't think it is correct that one ought not opine upon torture unless one has already accepted its immorality. I think torture is indeed immoral; but I do not think that talking about whether torture is immoral is itself immoral.

That I don't agree with it, William, should be crystal clear from what I've written here over the last few days.

Yes, it's crystal clear. I just wanted George to hear it from the horse's mouth.

You might try reading it, instead of reading things into it.

I did read it all, you condescending snot. And you can see the profit people like George took from it.

Kristor:

But is it, as Zippy insists (he'll correct me if I misinterpret him, I am sure) a moral wrong to utter an opinion on the question of whether x is immoral, unless one is convinced that x is in fact immoral?
The contention is that silence is the right course of action, in that instance, when the proposition in question is "dangerous to impious ears" or whatever terminology the old Holy Office would have used to make the same point I am contending applies here.

baconboy:
Yes, that is how I am using the term "material".

This kind of disputation among clerics and scholars was of course public in Aquinas' time, but being public among clerics and scholars is, I would argue, qualitatively different from being public not merely post-Gutenberg but in the present Internet age.

I've spent six years watching people like our friend George here invoke Fr. Harrison and Jimmy Akin. Ed has added himself to the list of people who will be invoked in countless comboxes and tweets, whether he wants to be on that list or no. It isn't so much that it provides rhetorical aid and comfort to Obamacaths, although it does do that. Rather, it is (as I mentioned to Kristor) that it falls into the category of things which are corrupting to impious ears or whatever. I'm as against presentism and what I call ultramontane moral relativism as the next medieval reactionary, but the Catechism - not exactly a blurb from the USCCB secretary - directly addresses the issue of presentism on this question:

2298 In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors.
Ed's characterization of the conclusion I think anyone who would speak publicly on the matter ought to sign up to as mere intuition is a long, long way from being a fair characterization. But I never once doubted that his motive was to plant a stake in the heart of the lefty progs to whom the Bush Administration handed a genuine moral victory here. We just don't agree - at all - about what this kind of Internet casuistry on torture is doing to the pro-life cause itself: not its enemies, but itself. It is the corruption of the good guys, rather than rhetorical victories for the bad guys, which is the main concern. The Bush torture project is vile wickedness, and material aid and comfort to it - whatever motivates the discussion - is poison.

Bill Luse,

I already knew that Dr. Feser disagreed with me on that point.

You are correct in saying that those like me who hold that torture is justified in some cases can take profit from what he said. However, this was not his intention.

I believe that what he was trying to do, among other things, was to substitute a rational anti-torture position for Zippy's and your irrational one. That in doing this he also provided those in the pro-torture camp some room to maneuver is an effect over which he has no control.

By the way, it's useless to call a college professor a "condescending snot". They've all built up an immunity to that particular insult long ago.

My high school juniors are mad at the lot of you for not having these discussions on torture before school let out for AP Exams. The number of issues raised here that relate directly to our topics in class is amazing.

Context: I teach them ethics straight out of ST I-II, followed by Pieper's work on the Cardinal Virtues. For that reason I am sensitive to this issue of casuistry and hair splitting, something that Pieper savages repeatedly. Indulge me to share something from the notes I've been compiling on my efforts to define torture in terms of I-II Q6. They deal directly with some of the meta-questions:

7. A lot of the ugly back-and-forth at WWWtW has hinged on accusations of casuistry...after blasting the idea that we can order and outline all possible cases for a moral action, taming the quasi-infinite variety of circumstances, my students always have a pointed question: as soon as I identify a “moral value” as they call it, they accuse me of casuistry. Why isn’t it so, they say? At which point I draw for them a distinction between casuistry and understanding (or stating) the proportionality of object to agent. The latter is absolutely vital, and this is where I always regret NOT spending more time having them read the difference between essential accidents and accidental accidents (they do love that phrase though).

8. I am powerfully convinced that THIS is the debate that tore through WWWtW regarding torture: one side trying to understand why/how an object is disproportionate to the agent, while the other side is convinced that this exercise is casuistry. I think you could clear a lot of that up in a few short lines about essential vs. accidental circumstances. A few people turned to an analogy with hairsplitting in the context of adultery or faithlessness. I think that example is perfect for showing the difference between essential and accidental circumstances, for there is one married woman with whom I may engage in sexual contact—my wife. That she is MY wife and not the wife of ANOTHER is an essential circumstance: it bears directly on the object. The circumstances condemned as hairsplitting become irrelevant (or nearly so) once that one is established.

9. However, if you reduce all such discussion to casuistry vs. a simplistic notion of prudence, then you end up with this thread on who should (not) speak: if you are prudent you will see it, if you don’t see it you are not prudent and shouldn’t speak until you are. But it is PRECISELY the debate that would help the imprudent see it, because at some level there MUST be a "torture principle" that can be proffered and understood. Once you know THAT, then categorizing any act as torture or not becomes easy...maybe so easy as to be called "obvious." This is why I don't indulge in "case studies" in Ethics class...not only is it boring, it's pointless when you can go directly to the principle and solve from there.

Ok, that's more than long enough. Thanks to all for the incredibly useful material for my class.

Matteo:

Your 8.50pm post is a knockout blow. Yes, in no possible moral world should anyone compare or cause to compare the sufferings of an innocent foetus to that of the well deserved suffering of scheming mass murderers like KSM. This is why Shea was compelled to bring up the Daughter of Perdition scenario in the earlier thread. In the real world nobody but nobody gives a damn about KSM.

I don't care if I get banned but you Zippy, have as aristocles said forfeited any right to speak on the abortion issue for the gross error of trivialising it for your own solecisms. A blunder that you would have avoided had you taken Fesser's advice to heart.


For our Nyssan Thomist:
I think that example is perfect for showing the difference between essential and accidental circumstances, for there is one married woman with whom I may engage in sexual contact—my wife. That she is MY wife and not the wife of ANOTHER is an essential circumstance: it bears directly on the object.

Let me explain the difficulty, because I think it will be apparent to you. You are probably familiar with the following statement in Veritatis Splendor 79:
"One must therefore reject the thesis, characteristic of teleological and proportionalist theories, which holds that it is impossible to qualify as morally evil according to its species — its 'object' — the deliberate choice of certain kinds of behaviour or specific acts, apart from a consideration of the intention for which the choice is made or the totality of the foreseeable consequences of that act for all persons concerned."

I suspect you also recognize to the extent that what routinely might be called "intentions" or "circumstances" are not considered "intentions" or "circumstances" for purposes of moral theology, which specifically uses these terms to refer to accidental intentions or circumstances not essential to the moral object. Thus, for some species of moral acts, what I intend to accomplish (my aim, if you will) in undertaking a concrete bodily action is essential to defining the species of act, in which case it isn't an "intention" or "circumstance" for purposes of the phrase above, but rather simply part of the moral object from the perspective of the acting person.

Now suppose somebody instead understood the situation like this:
A human act is understood morally in terms of its object, intentions, and circumstances. The object (c.f. Veritatis Splendour) is the behavior the acting subject is choosing: roughly what, in a way inextricably connected to the potentialities he chooses to make actual through his body and will. The intention is the thing at which he aims in choosing that behavior: roughly why. An object is specified in terms of intention-independent facts: the object of the act is intended only in the sense that it is a behavior that the acting subject is choosing, so we have to put ourselves in his perspective and see what he knows he is choosing in order to specify the object.

Intrinsically evil acts are evil in their object; formal cooperation with evil is evil in intention; imprudence is evil because of circumstances.

Do you see the difficulty?

Needless to say, I consider the latter position gravely erroneous, not even just as a matter of correctness, but in the sense of being a mischievous sort of error that leads to the condemnation of orthodox moral theology as immoral (specifically, as being condemned by VS's prohibition on teleological/proportionalist theories).

Typo alert: "Intrinsically evil acts are evil in their object; formal cooperation with evil is evil in intention; imprudence is evil because of circumstances" should have been italicized in my previous post.

I care about KSM. The loss of his soul to hell would be as tragic as the loss of yours. I hope to embrace him in heaven with relief and tell him how happy I am to see him because I really didn't know if he would make it.

I don't care if I get banned but you Zippy, have as aristocles said forfeited any right to speak on the abortion issue for the gross error of trivialising it for your own solecisms. A blunder that you would have avoided had you taken Fesser's advice to heart.
That is a straw man, though, because I expressly don't compare the gravity of the abortion holocaust to the gravity of the Bush torture regime. The gravity of mass murder is quite a lot greater than the gravity of (say) a single contracepted sexual act; but that doesn't make the latter good, or an acceptable choice -- or even an acceptable choice if it were necessary in order to stop someone else from committing the former.

I've stated publicly before, and I'll state publicly again, that given a choice of licit actions to end one and only one of the two, ending the abortion holocaust wins in a heartbeat. It is clearly far more grave.

But that can't excuse torture.

Typo alert: "Intrinsically evil acts are evil in their object; formal cooperation with evil is evil in intention; imprudence is evil because of circumstances" should have been italicized in my previous post.
Fixed.

When you use <i>italics</i> tags here, for whatever reason you have to put them around each paragraph. A line break automatically closes a preceding italics tag, it appears.

The Nyssan:

FWIW, I don't use "casuistry" in a perjorative sense. Casuistry is a perfectly legitimate intellectual and moral exercise, and a noble endeavor generally. As with anything good, of course, casuistry can be corrupted. As JPII says in Veritatis Splendour:

Although the [Catholic moral tradition] did witness the development of a casuistry which tried to assess the best ways to achieve the good in certain concrete situations, it is nonetheless true that this casuistry concerned only cases in which the law was uncertain, and thus the absolute validity of negative moral precepts, which oblige without exception, was not called into question. The faithful are obliged to acknowledge and respect the specific moral precepts declared and taught by the Church in the name of God, the Creator and Lord.
The general point of the post is not that casuistry is bad, but that public speech on the Internet is a moral act like any other act and is not always justified, depending on the context. The more specific point of the post is that, given that our country has deliberately turned its back on prohibition of torture and embarked on a regime of torturing prisoners for information, and that the political Right, which is the home of any existing genuine pro-life movement at present, is infected with widespread support for this new torture regime, there are certain conditions which govern prudent public speech in the Internet age on the subject of torture; one of which (that is, one specific condition of prudent public speech on the matter) I propose.

Jonathan:

I realize that you disagree with me about the moral theology of intrinsically immoral acts generally. But that is a quite different matter from whether there is, specifically, any doubt whatsoever whether using water torture to extract information from captives is immoral torture. It might be reasonable to disagree about boundary conditions as to what is and is not pornography, how the underlying moral theology works, and how that plays out in those boundary conditions. But if we can't both look at Deep Throat and conclude that it is immoral pornography there is something more basic wrong than differing takes on the moral theology of Veritatis Splendour.

I did read it all, you condescending snot

William, in your most recent comment on the other thread, you still maintain the fiction that there are people defending the manifest self-contradiction that "Water torture is not torture," even after all the many times I have explained why it is silly and unjust to make such a charge. If that accusation of yours isn't condescending and snotty, I don't know what is. And it was with that very solid piece of evidence in mind that I concluded that you have not been reading what I have been writing.

So, spare me your outrage.

Jonathan Prejean:
Most common complaint my students have: "You keep saying these words don't mean what we think they mean!" So yes, I see the difficulty. The more I teach Aquinas the more convinced I am that I should (continue to) spend my time imbibing his way of thinking and speaking.

Zippy:
I also acknowledge the utility of casuistry, although I might be a little more pessimistic than you about its responsible use. At any rate, I was speaking more to comments made in the now-epic thread from the weekend, and perhaps not even any of yours (I won't kill us all by going back for quotes right now, but I will upon request). I feel confident in stating that some of the criticism at Dr. Feser's post and some of his defenders was precisely that they were indulging in the darker side of casuistry while he claimed to be doing preparatory work (clearing the air) to defining the object at stake.

I see some of your point about internet discourse and its impact and significance in our present state. I don't think you are right, however, that arguing about what constitutes torture or why waterboarding does/does not constitute torture should be silenced. The argument, as long as it is conducted in sympathy and frightful logic, is necessary for people to come to the correct conclusion or understanding.

I don't think that the statement "waterboarding is torture" (which is the logical prerequisite to your "waterboarding KSM was unequivocally immoral torture") CAN be obvious without comparison to a principle of what constitutes torture. With such a principle in hand (and I reject the idea that we cannot articulate a rigorous, faithful, and useful definition), I think identifying things as torture or not becomes not only possible, but in most cases easy. Is it possible that this latter point is what concerns you--you suspect some people would compare waterboarding to a strong torture definition and still claim that it's not obvious? I might be with you in that case, or at least I'd have to stop and rethink.

It's entirely possible that my opinion is over-formed by teaching 16 year-olds, most of whom hold absurd positions on all manner of important matters. It's precisely by letting them give voice to their otherwise-execrable thoughts that I win them over to the truth. I would need to be persuaded to see that it should be otherwise in the "general population" (most of whom continue to think the silly and execrable thoughts of adolescence, seldom with any more sophistication).

Ugh. Is it ever possible to be brief? Teacheritis.

I don't think you are right, however, that arguing about what constitutes torture or why waterboarding does/does not constitute torture should be silenced.
I don't think it should be silenced.

I think it should only be conducted publicly by people capable of explicitly agreeing that the waterboarding of KSM was immoral torture. I view this requirement as similar to a requirement that (say) in conducting a public discussion of the morality of pornography, all participants should be able to agree, prior to further casuistry, that Deep Throat is an example of immoral pornography.

I guess the problem is that I think this is just flat wrong:

I don't think that the statement "waterboarding is torture" (which is the logical prerequisite to your "waterboarding KSM was unequivocally immoral torture") CAN be obvious without comparison to a principle of what constitutes torture.
In fact, as in the pornography case I think the capacity to recognize this - given history, the natural law, our own laws, statements of the Church, our moral intuitions, etc - is a necessary prerequisite to being capable of having a coherent discussion on the matter. If we can't agree that that specific act of water torture was immoral torture then our discussion isn't even going to be about torture. It is as if we proposed to discuss cats while half the participants refused to acknowledge that Tabby is a cat.

The general point of the post is not that casuistry is bad, but that public speech on the Internet is a moral act like any other act and is not always justified, depending on the context. The more specific point of the post is that, given that our country has deliberately turned its back on prohibition of torture [Has it really? This is a subject for discussion] and embarked on a regime of torturing prisoners for information [of course, the very point at issue is whether or not this is a given], and that the political Right, which is the home of any existing genuine pro-life movement at present, is infected with widespread support for this new torture regime ["new torture regime" begs the question, a question you say should not even be discussed; "infected" is quite a loaded term], there are certain conditions which govern prudent public speech in the Internet age on the subject of torture; one of which (that is, one specific condition of prudent public speech on the matter) I propose.

It seems to me, and really, I don't have a strong axe to grind one way or another, that your argument is essentially circular and self-serving. Again, I can't see how your position does not ultimately boil down to: "Shut up".

On a more humorous note, I ran across a satirical comment at Brutally Honest along the lines of "40% of those against waterboarding indicated in a recent AP poll that those in favor of waterboarding should be waterboarded."

Zippy:
I can't see it (yet, anyway--maybe I will). If I understand you correctly, you are saying that to discuss a moral principle you must first be able to classify some act as being an instance of that principle. That's backward.

If the question under discussion is "what is it that makes torture intrinsically evil?" and therefore "what is the definition of torture?" then I can't possibly agree or disagree that some action is or is not torture. The standard by which we judge the instance is exactly what is being established.

Until that is done I may feel very strongly that a given instance is torture in a general "you know what I mean" sense, but I can't state as a matter of -understanding- that the instance is torture. Are you looking for a visceral reaction of outrage over waterboarding? That is, once I know the details of what it is done, I recoil with horror?

That, I might go for.

Zippy says:

as in the pornography case I think the capacity to recognize this [i.e. "waterboarding is torture"] - given history, the natural law, our own laws, statements of the Church, our moral intuitions, etc - is a necessary prerequisite to being capable of having a coherent discussion on the matter

But as I and others (Akin, Harrison, et al.) have argued, "history, the natural law, our own laws, and statements of the Church" do not make it clear that waterboarding is torture, in the relevant (i.e. normative) sense of "torture." It may in fact be torture in that sense, but if so a case has to be made for that claim. At any rate, after all that has been said you have yet to show otherwise.

Among the things on your list, then, what is really doing ALL the work in your argument is "our moral intuitions." By which you mean, of course, "The intuitions that I, Zippy, along with Mark Shea, William Luse, adn some others, happen to have."

So, as I have argued before, your entire case ultimately boils down to this one subjective datum. A rather thin reed on which to base the rather bold claim that no one who disagrees with you on this particular subject even has a moral right to express his disagreement.

We're cross-posting right now, so I missed your last (maybe last two by now).

I am pretty sure we are talking past each other a little at this point (oh well...it happens). I don't mean to weary you with clarification after clarification.

Let me attempt to give what I think is a reasonable "monologue" based on your 1:19pm.

"Waterboarding--yeesh. That conflicts with everything I've learned about how to treat others. Not just how my parents raised me and the vague niceties of society, but also what I've learned through experience, and especially those illuminating teachings of the Church. You can't do that to people...that's just wrong."

Moreover, you think that if one lacks this reaction, they are insufficienty formed to discuss the matter. (I think this might be where I have the biggest issue--not even to discuss it? Ask questions? Propose alternatives which may well be refuted?)

Aside from my little parenthetical at the end, is this what you are driving at?

I realize that you disagree with me about the moral theology of intrinsically immoral acts generally. But that is a quite different matter from whether there is, specifically, any doubt whatsoever whether using water torture to extract information from captives is immoral torture.

Apart from the question-begging tautology that Dr. Feser pointed out (isn't the debate whether waterboarding in this case is or isn't torture?), the disagreement is one of principle, and that is precisely where the moral theological of intrinsically immoral acts is most pertinent.

The analogous case to Deep Throat is the Roman practice of inquisitorial torture. We know, absolutely and with no doubt, that the Church has never endorsed infliction of pain in order to obtain information to determine guilt or innocence. Indeed, CCC 2298 states that the early Church, while never performing or endorsing it, could have been more vocal in opposing it, and the medieval guidelines on torture specifically prohibit the use of torture in order to gain confessions. So that principle is clear: The infliction of pain to obtain confessions is always immoral. Circumstances don't matter, and ulterior motives don't matter, for this is a species of act that is immoral in its kind.

But if I argue (and I do) that there is a difference in principle between inflicting pain in order to produce information that will be used to determine guilt or innocence and inflicting pain in order to produce information that will be used to save lives, then my principled distinction will be rejected out of hand IF the view prevails that there is no morally relevant difference between the cases based on the purpose for which the information is sought. In other words, if the moral species of the act must be specified irrespective of the aim in obtaining the information, then there can be no such difference. If some physical behavior is torture for the purpose of extracting information for one purpose, then the same physical behavior must be torture when done to extract information for another purpose, since the chosen behavior (i.e., the moral object) must be definable without regard to the aim in seeking the information.

In this case, the reason that I think one case (waterboarding to obtain confessions) is certain and the other (waterboarding to obtain information) is slightly doubtful is that there is a difference in principle that I outlined above. To dismiss that principled difference is to beg the question for your own view of VS.

In fact, as in the pornography case I think the capacity to recognize this - given history, the natural law, our own laws, statements of the Church, our moral intuitions, etc - is a necessary prerequisite to being capable of having a coherent discussion on the matter. If we can't agree that that specific act of water torture was immoral torture then our discussion isn't even going to be about torture [then just what will it be about? If everyone agreed that the specific action of waterboarding were immoral torture, what would there be to discuss?]. It is as if we proposed to discuss cats while half the participants refused to acknowledge that Tabby is a cat [no, it would be as if we heard a noise in a pitch-black alley in a totally unfamiliar neighborhood, and you kept demanding that we all acknowledge that that the noise was most certainly caused by Tabby the cat. Well maybe it was, and maybe it wasn't, but let's talk about it].
Morally, speech is a privilege. That is, speech is not morally neutral, and since there is no moral right to commit evil there is no moral right to free speech.

There is also no basis for an established authority to be morally justified in restricting the communication of non-evil ideas or information whose release has no causal relationship with harm befalling a third party. Authority that is used for that end is itself a form of evil. Someone who loves their neighbor does not oppress them.

That said, I think you are absolutely correct that there is no natural right in the eyes of God to advocate or even defend evil (however, I suspect most of your motive for this post was to say "shut up and get off my law, sinners.")

Well, again, it is expressly not a political claim: there is a non-trivial difference (to say the least) between "one ought not say X" and "saying X should be legally proscribed". To have a moral right to say X it must be the case that it is not morally wrong to say X. (To have a political right to say X is for it to be the case that legal proscription of saying X is itself illegal).

Censorship also tends to undermine virtue by giving a mystique to bad ideas. I don't think there's any debate that the main reason why Holocaust denial still has followers outside of insane assylums is the fact that so many countries treat Holocaust deniers in a manner similar to blasphemers in countries like Pakistan.

The moral of the story is that Samizdat has an inherent sexiness to it.

Jonathan:

This post's thesis doesn't even require that torture be intrinsically immoral. We prosecuted Japanese waterboarders for war crimes before Veritatis Splendour was published. That whole line of discussion is simply irrelevant here. Indeed, one need not even believe that there is such a thing as intrinsically immoral acts in order to meet the criteria of the post: even an overt proportionalist or consequentialist can pass the test.

We also didn't prosecute them because of my imperial question-begging subjective intuitions; because I wasn't even born yet. The notion that it is merely my subjective imperial assertion, that water torture of prisoners for information is immoral torture, really doesn't pass the laugh test.

The Nyssan:

As I mentioned to Jonathan, the thesis of this post doesn't require that torture be intrinsically evil. I deliberately worded it so that it did not have that requirement, because of the dispute over what "intrinsically evil" means, and because I do not think that people who disagree with me about what intrinsically evil means should, simply because of that disagreement, refrain from public casuistry on torture.

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that to discuss a moral principle you must first be able to classify some act as being an instance of that principle.
Nope. I'm not wedded to one and only one methodology, actually. If we are going to talk about cats, we can start from first principles, look at examples -- there are all manner of starting places for talking coherently about cats. But if a theory of cat nature concludes that Tabby isn't a cat, that falsifies the theory.

Censorship also tends to undermine virtue by giving a mystique to bad ideas.
I don't necessarily disagree. But as I have tried to make clear, this isn't about what speech should or should not be legally suppressed. It is about what things people should or should not freely choose to say in public.

In an email exchange I mentioned that this may be easier for me to grokk than some others because of my business background and experience. In business, an incapacity to keep one's mouth shut often has immediate, dire, Darwinian consequences for the speaker. The principle at work is obvious in that context. But it is generally true that speech occurs in a context and has consequences; so whether or not one ought to say something in public falls under (at least -- in some cases speech is formal cooperation with evil) a prudential moral evaluation, and sometimes the answer is "no, he shouldn't say that".

We prosecuted Japanese waterboarders for war crimes before Veritatis Splendour was published.

If that action was evil by disproportion, then it is conceivable (however unlikely) that this instance is not evil because the circumstances have changed. If you are arguing that the Japanese waterboarding was immoral as a species of chosen behavior, then we're back to square one.

I don't necessarily disagree. But as I have tried to make clear, this isn't about what speech should or should not be legally suppressed. It is about what things people should or should not freely choose to say in public.

I was adding that in addition to your point about separating what should be said from what can be said, to point out that all acts of censorship must be weighed against the very real possibility that they will legitimate the censored speech. As we see with Holocaust denial, censorship almost always throws bad ideas a lifeline.

If that action was evil by disproportion, then it is conceivable (however unlikely) that this instance is not evil because the circumstances have changed.

Well, let's use John Yoo's infamous torture argument. Do you think it's right to take KSM's male sons and crush their testicles one-by-one until KSM starts talking? I would say that proportionality can never justify that sort of act. At some point, it would become proportionately "justified" to do just about anything because the price is so much "smaller" than the outcome.

Well, let's use John Yoo's infamous torture argument. Do you think it's right to take KSM's male sons and crush their testicles one-by-one until KSM starts talking?

First, his argument was that the emergency powers of the executive could extend that far in principle, not that it was moral to do. Given the blatant immorality of the act, I consider it immoral even to present an argument that the positive law doesn't prohibit it, since the positive law is subject to the basic moral standards of the natural law. But clarity on the argument is worthwhile.

Second, as I just stated, that act is blatantly immoral and even intrinsically so. Unless I'm missing something, inflicting serious bodily harm or pain on someone for purposes outside of self-defense, moral correction, or medical therapy is an intrinsically evil species of act.

Third, on the charitable assumption that this was not sheer trolling, I would recommend to refrain from using that particular example absent some sort of objective evidence that the person is advocating something like it. It is highly unlikely to be helpful on account of the difference in kind between an innocent child and a terrorist in grave need of moral correction, and it is inflammatory to even suggest that someone who advocates a course of action in the latter situation would advocate the same course of action in the former without any reason for thinking so.

Referring way back to Zippy's post at 11:09 p.m. yesterday:

I gather that, on Zippy's account, X has a "moral right" to say Y iff it is not morally wrong for X to say Y - and that the rightness/wrongness of X's saying Y depends on its consequences (i.e., its "effects in the world.")

I hope I'm reading him right.

NOTE: "Self-defense" in my last post refers to "defense of self or others from an immediate risk of harm posed by an aggressor, including prosecution of a just war."

Jonathan:

Someone could agree - for all manner of different reasons - that among many other things, since what the Japanese did was immoral torture, waterboarding KSM was also. One could agree without even having any idea what you mean by 'proportionate' or 'intrinsically evil'. So you are simply wrong to bring in the putative dependencies you are trying to bring in.

Third, on the charitable assumption that this was not sheer trolling, I would recommend to refrain from using that particular example absent some sort of objective evidence that the person is advocating something like it. It is highly unlikely to be helpful on account of the difference in kind between an innocent child and a terrorist in grave need of moral correction, and it is inflammatory to even suggest that someone who advocates a course of action in the latter situation would advocate the same course of action in the former without any reason for thinking so.

1) In practice, torture will probably be used on people who are not actually terrorists. You have to face the fact that it will be used very often against innocent or nominally guilty parties if it is allowed to be used.

2) The value of a more extreme example is that it forces a clear line in the sand and makes it harder to quibble about whether or not torture is justified since real (unequivocal) torture, where we will end up shortly if allowed to go down this path, is always morally depraved.

3) I never said that you advocate doing what John Yoo defended. I suggested that you substitute it for waterboarding and see if that does not change things.

There is also a practical side to this whole issue that covers even waterboarding. Pay attention to how law enforcement often behaves, especially when given expanded new powers.

Someone could agree - for all manner of different reasons - that among many other things, since what the Japanese did was immoral torture, waterboarding KSM was also.

Someone could agree for different reasons, and I would presumably have different reasons for agreeing or disagreeing with that person based on what his reasons are. I am not dealing with a hypothetical someone's reasons; rather, I am dealing with yours.

Then you are missing the point. People might give all sorts of reasons why Tabby is a cat. Someone who will not concede that Tabby is a cat though has a problem with his concept of cats.

In practice, torture will probably be used on people who are not actually terrorists. You have to face the fact that it will be used very often against innocent or nominally guilty parties if it is allowed to be used.

Do you think that it will be used "very often" against nine-year-old children of terrorists who are known to be innocent? If not, then what is the point of the example? I disagree even that it will be used "very often" against innocents or nominally guilty parties, but if it were, that would certainly be a consideration militating against its use. That also has nothing to do with its immorality in principle.

The value of a more extreme example is that it forces a clear line in the sand and makes it harder to quibble about whether or not torture is justified since real (unequivocal) torture, where we will end up shortly if allowed to go down this path, is always morally depraved.

It only makes is harder to disagree (I object to the term "quibble," because it suggests that the distinctions are irrelevant) IF your assertion about "where we will end up shortly if allowed to go down this path" is has any merit. Empirically, it is obviously false. We apparently already went down that "path" almost a decade ago as a matter of fact, and I have not heard any evidence at all of anyone's nine-year-old boy being tortured.

I never said that you advocate doing what John Yoo defended. I suggested that you substitute it for waterboarding and see if that does not change things.

To give you an appreciation for exactly how I view this argument, let me present my own hypothetical with the identical logical structure.

Suppose I am shooting my son with a water gun. Next, substitute my water gun for a real gun in the hypothetical, and see if that does not change your moral assessment. But clearly, if I am allowed to shoot my son with a water gun, it is inevitable that I will shortly end up shooting him with a real gun, and therefore, it is immoral to allow me to shoot my son with a water gun.

There is also a practical side to this whole issue that covers even waterboarding. Pay attention to how law enforcement often behaves, especially when given expanded new powers.

Again, that's a great argument for why it might be a disproportionate action, but it is irrelevant to whether it is immoral in principle.

Someone who will not concede that Tabby is a cat though has a problem with his concept of cats.

Tabby has a feline nature, which grounds all true statements about Tabby's felinity. Tabby has accidental characteristics (e.g., having a particular color of fur) and essential characteristics (e.g., being an animal). A person who says Tabby is not a cat does not merely have a defective concept of cats; rather, he believes something incompatible with Tabby's actual nature.

What is incompatible between the act of waterboarding and a universal moral principle that makes the act of waterboarding immoral?

"Someone who will not concede that Tabby is a cat though has a problem with his concept of cats."

Exactly the point of most of this discussion. It's pretty much what I was going to write when I got back from dinner. If I don't agree that Tabby is a cat I'm either lacking pertinent information about Tabby or I my concept of a cat does not match the nature of a cat.

"Someone could agree - for all manner of different reasons - that among many other things, since what the Japanese did was immoral torture, waterboarding KSM was also."

Oh. Well...yeah. If that's been your point all along--that waterboarding KSM fits within or seems entirely similar to, if not identical with, practices we have condemned as immoral torture in the past, then...yeah. That's such an incredibly low threshold that it never occurred to me it needed to be entered into evidence. But if the facts are in evidence that we called waterboarding immoral torture until we did it, then so be it. Waterboarding, by that definition, is obviously immoral torture. I guess you'd be going for some sort of historical or factual consistency.

But that's NOT the same thing as saying that waterboarding fits the proper definition of torture. It just claims that people have called waterboarding (or its relatives) torture in the past. If you're going to have a discussion about the nature or proper definition of torture, then you also have to at least CONSIDER the possibility that past claimed-instances are in fact not true instances of torture--that waterboarding was wrongly condemned as immoral torture in the past. Maybe we stopped calling waterboarding torture because we are hypocrites. Maybe we did it because we became morally stupid. Maybe we only called it torture back then because other people did it to us and we didn't like it. Maybe we did it because it's really not and we were holding ourselves back from using licit means to save lives.

That's two different positions being staked out. One is that we can fit waterboarding into previously-accepted-but-not-necessarily-true ideas about torture. The other is that waterboarding fits the proper definition of torture, an intrinsic evil that can be condoned under no circumstances.

(I think it's the latter, but that shouldn't matter for purposes of this argument)

If you're going to have a discussion about the nature or proper definition of torture, ...
Back to the "definition" thing again, are we?

A five year old knows what a cat is, and knows that Tabby is a cat. Tell him he doesn't know Tabby is a cat without a "proper definition" and you'll get a puzzled look or a giggle.

The idea that we need a proper definition of torture (or anything) or else we can't know that waterboarding KSM was torture (that x is an X) - if that is what you are saying, and you wouldn't be the first to say it by a long shot - is such a bizarre, obviously wrong way of thinking that it is difficult for me to even know how to respond to it. If when we look back at the last 24 hours of experience, I suppose we didn't know anything - other than at an incredibly low threshold, I suppose - for which we don't have a "proper definition".

A lot of people seem to believe that kind of thing; just like a lot of people seem to believe in materialism, for example. But they are both just so obviously wrong, so obviously self-refuting, that it is difficult to even know how to respond to them.

Regarding the Tabby the cat example. In one sense I understand what you are saying, but it seems to me that categorizing human actions is much more difficult than animals and so the comparison isn't apt. Besides even with regard to animals it's never the easy ones that create disputes, but cases at the margins.

With regard to torture, for instance, I found all of the stuff done at Abu Graib to be horrific and evil. I had the reaction to AG that Zippy has to the waterboarding of KSM (and I'll bet almost every other poster on here did too). Yet unlike Zippy I'm not so sure that the waterboarding of KSM is the same thing. So if you want a Tabby the cat that we can all agree upon as a basis for discussion, then perhaps comparing why some of us are bothered by Abu Graib but not KSM would reveal what is going on. You might just accuse those of us who are troubled by one and not the other of being badly morally formed or insufficiently consistent in our use of moral principles, but I think there is more going on here than that.

The concept of 'cat' really only has meaning as a category if one has something to compare the object to or if there is an example case that we can all refer to and agree upon as a 'cat'. Since we can't all agree about the waterboarding of KSM, it seems to me that we need something to compare it to that we do agree upon.

I don't think the "back to the definition?" thing makes much sense here. If we are having a discussion about what torture is, that is precisely what is under discussion. Perhaps you are turned off by the artificial sound of the word? I am unclear. It would probably be easier to switch out of conversational mode into a more careful vocabulary, since clarity is obviously at a premium. At any rate, it is only offered by way of contrast to what I now tentatively think you are aiming for in your position...and understanding that is my only objective here.

I do not maintain, nor have I in this thread, that to know a thing is to have exhaustive knowledge of a thing's nature. Nor do I maintain that to know a thing is to have a systematized or formalized (gotta be careful with that word) definition in the sense of a proposition. What I do maintain is only tangentially relevant since I am simply trying to understand your point (although I can't resist sharing the humorous anecdote of my son roaring at large woman with an afro because she fit his emergent understanding of a lion).

I'm still trying to get some feedback from you on if I am reading you correctly (the "monologue" from a few hours ago and the recently above). I was hoping for a "yes that's what I'm driving at" or a "no it's not, here's another stab at it." In claiming that two different things appear to be going on here (last post) I in no way intend to condemn or invalidate the position you are taking. I am simply trying to clarify the different thrusts of the discussion so I understand it (and of course bring peace to the internet--teacheritis).

In other words, if the moral species of the act must be specified irrespective of the aim in obtaining the information, then there can be no such difference.

That's why I use a wider definition of torture. I have no problem acknowledging that torture has been commonly used for the reason of obtaining information, but that isn't the only reason it can be used. Webster's gives three: punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure. The common thread between those various reasons is the underlying physical act of torture.

Maybe we stopped calling waterboarding torture because we are hypocrites. Maybe we did it because we became morally stupid. Maybe we only called it torture back then because other people did it to us and we didn't like it.

Maybe all three.

I don't think the "back to the definition?" thing makes much sense here.
Well, there is a point of agreement! In six years of haggling over torture definitions I can assure you that a room with seventeen people will present seventeen different definitions, and get no closer to resolution. The discussion does have value - I don't deny that - I just think, again, that it is imprudent to have it in public on the Internet without a priori agreement on the central concrete particular of KSM, for reasons already stated.

I think there are lots of different ways a person can conclude that suffocating a person near to death repeatedly until he tells you what you want to hear is torture.

The little speech you gave is one, and not outrageously unreasonable. Argument that it isn't because of our special circumstances or needs is specious nonsense -- as if this is the first time ever that "extracting life saving information" has been a primary objective of many acts of torture. But whatever the path, everyone ought to conclude it, and it should be a priori to any further public discussion of the subject.

I'm not going to play let's-explore-the-nuances-of-Zippy-Catholic's-false-premise anymore. It's got nothing to do with opposing Jihad and Liberalism, which is what this site is supposed to be about. So Zip, I'm not reading your posts anymore. Hope you get some help, I'll say a prayer.

This seems to be a common thread with Zippy. When people disagreed with him about TARP he basically stated that anyone who opposed TARP was either evil or ignorant. At some point it becomes useless to debate people with this mindset.

The common thread between those various reasons is the underlying physical act of torture.

Surely you're not arguing for a physicalist definition of torture, in which case "physical act of torture" is a nonsensical phrase. The purpose of pain infliction must then matter, and your definition even says so.

My point is that there are four forbidden purposes given in the Catechism (there might be more, but those are certain): extracting confessions, punishing the guilty, satisfying hatred, and intimidating opponents. Also, coercing the spirit would appear to be a fifth. It's not clear to me that obtaining information necessarily falls into any of those buckets of forbidden purposes. It could, but there's nothing in the very definition suggesting it does.

Chris,

This seems to be a common thread with Zippy. When people disagreed with him about TARP he basically stated that anyone who opposed TARP was either evil or ignorant. At some point it becomes useless to debate people with this mindset.


To be fair, Zippy didn't quite say that about the TARP; however, as I tried to explain earlier, he did say something similar about [edited. link or quote in order to accurately characterize comments]