Consider another example. Suppose that Sally's father has planted a nuclear a half hour. Sally is the only person who knows bomb that will detonate in where he hid it, and she has promised him that she will not reveal the location to anyone. Although she regrets his act, as a devoted daughter she refuses to break her promise and give away the secret. However, if we do not discover where the bomb is and dismantle it within the next half hour, it will blow up a city and kill a million people. Suppose we can torture Sally to get this information from her.
According to the DDE, is this permissible?
No, for the end does not justify the means. Con- dition 2 is violated. We are using a bad act to bring about a good effect.

Bonus:

On the other hand, suppose someone has tampered with the wires of my television set in such a way that turning it on will send an electrical signal to the next town where it will detonate a bomb. Suppose I know that this will happen. Is it morally wrong, according to the DDE, to turn on my television to watch an edifying program? Yes it is because condition 4 is violated. The unintended evil outweighs the good.

[–] thesporkeffect@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You know that meme about how any metric used as a target, ceases to be a good metric? That applies to torture: the torturee's main goal is to end the torture and it's fairly likely they will provide bad information

[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 months ago

I should’ve added - we know torture doesn’t work, but that should be mentioned in the hypothetical. As it stands, I’m tempted to believe torturing the daughter is guaranteed to result in her revealing the information which will save a million lives.