The Philosophy of Principles
Former CIA agent John Kiriakou demonstrates the difficulty of sifting through and applying conflicting principles. Kiriakou feels that waterboarding of suspected terrorists saved lives by eliciting information that wouldn’t have otherwise been forthcoming (and while his evidence for making this claim isn’t irrefutable, neither does it seem to be readily dismissed). And yet he finds himself repelled by the technique and feels that it’s no longer necessary. The Bush administration has found itself struggling to uphold severe interrogation techniques as useful and lawful, while wanting to claim that America does not torture.
Similarly, as the battle rages over male foreskins, one could say that parents face a similar dissonance when deciding whether to have a child circumcised. If one believes the claims for better adult health, but one feels that circumcision deprives the male child his natural dominion over his foreskin, how does one decide?
The philosophical problem at work in such matters seems to be the way that we separate out then synthesize the particular concepts and value hierarchies.
In the matter of torture, two fundamental concepts seem to be involved — The concept of eliciting information that may be critical to saving lives. And the concept of following a code of conduct that respects certain inviolable principles about human rights.
The difficulty arises because these concepts rest on very different frameworks. The first requires a straightforward cost benefit calculation. Is torture an effective way to get the information we want with acceptable practical consequences (such as retribution or backlash)? The second requires that we set aside practical implications, making them irrelevant, and commit to a course of humane conduct that would apply under any conditions.
Likewise a very similar dissonance exists for parents considering circumcision. Do they apply the abstract principle that the child has certain rights over his body, or do they make a decision based on the practical benefits or otherwise of circumcision?
Can we in fact synthesize the two sides of such dissonant questions? I believe we can.
First we need to raise the question up a level: In the case of torture, we would frame this higher question as follows: Do I believe that a set of principles grounded in human rights should supersede any practical implications of such principles? Or, in other words, do I consider human rights so important that I would uphold them even when other lives may be risked?
I realize that in one sense we’ve simply put the dissonance at arms length, but now we have a question that we can sink our teeth into. Principles reflect not the moment and circumstances at hand, but something perpetual and far reaching. If we choose to adhere to principles it is because we have concluded that these principles reflect something constant and worthy — such as human rights. It’s in the nature of a principle that it shouldn’t be deflected by the press of the current situation.
What this kind of analysis makes clear is that expedient or plastic principles are not principles at all but simply become part of the cost benefit calculation. When Bush redefines torture so that he can say he upholds the principles of human rights but supports severe interrogation, he is fooling himself. He has simply incorporated the cost benefit analysis of skirting the torture issue into his decision about whether to permit and condone torture. The matter becomes a sliding scale — what level of benefit justifies torture?
Saying that something is against one’s principles, but not in this case because the stakes are too high, is the same as having no principles on the matter whatsoever.
Tags: circumcision, dissonance, george-bush, human-rights, john-kiriakou, philosophy, torture