Wooderboarding and Defining Torture
Nov 6th, 2007 by Micah Tillman | 4 Comments |
I was just listening to Ben Cardin — one of my Senators — insisting that “wooderboarding” was clearly torture, given the definition of torture.
I have no idea whether it is (I know neither what waterboarding is nor how a Marylander comes to pronounce “water” like he’s from Philly), but I think Cardin’s exasperation with Mukasey’s (the AG nominee) unclarity on the issue ultimately stems from the nature of definitions.
Definitions don’t do what people want them to. They always employ other words and labels that you’ll have to define for anybody who claims that what they mean is unclear to him. Humans rule language, not the other way around.
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The Philosopher Wittgenstien said that some words don’t have strict definitions… they have family resemblances. He pointed out that if you look at portaits fro family reunions, you notice that there might be several traits typical of members, but no singular defining feature.
His example was the word game. The term “game” can mean anything from the world series, to a chess match, to kids engaged in make believe. (This is to not even began on wider versions, such as manipulations e.g. “Stop playing games with me”) There seem to common themes running amongst most members of the list, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a single, defining trait that runs through all of them.
His implication was that the varying uses of many words share family resemblances, not strict connotations.
By the way, I think waterboarding involves some form of using glass and water to psyche the victim into believing their drowning when they are not. I don’t quite get the details of how it works… I’m personally sickened by our use of it, partially because it seems like claiming it’s not torture is predicated on the claim that to qualify as torture an act must cause actual physical harm.
If we accept this suggestion about torture, then it seems like the following doesn’t qualify as torture either:
gathering my children in front of me and pointing a gun at them filled with blanks. If I don’t tell whatever I’m supposed to tell, they claim they’ll shoot my kids. The fact that the hypothetical gun is filled with blanks would disqualify this as an act of torture, if we accept the claim that actual phyiscal harm has to be possible for an act to count as torture.
Interesting topic.
Jeff
Thanks Jeff! Your example of what wouldn’t count as torture seems like a telling one. I’ve been wondering about how “actual bodily harm” works into the definition of torture.
Wittgenstein’s family resemblance thing is very helpful. I’ve never liked the book from which it comes, but there are some really good ideas in the book. That being one of them.
You said “our use” of waterboarding. You’ve been waterboarding people have you?
[This was another episode of Micah Tillman, Bane of the First-Person Plural]
[...] 7th, 2007 by Micah Tillman Talking about definitions, I have one of which I’m particularly fond: Government is the group with the biggest [...]
Well, if I told you about my experiences water boarding people I’d have to trump up charges against you and then hand you over to some other country that openly practices things against prisoners that we deny doing… so it’s probably safest for both of us if I keep that all under my hat.
(This has been another episode of “Is it really wise to blog that even if I’m not serious?”)