Anscombe vs. National Review
The National Review’s Andrew McCarthy makes the following defense of torture:
“To state the matter plainly, the CIA interrogators did not inflict severe pain and had no intention of doing so. The law of the United States holds that, even where an actor does inflict severe pain, there is still no torture unless it was his objective to do so. It doesn’t matter what the average person might think the “logical” result of the action would be; it matters what specifically was in the mind of the alleged torturer — if his motive was not to torture, it is not torture. To state the matter plainly, the CIA interrogators did not inflict severe pain and had no intention of doing so. The law of the United States holds that, even where an actor does inflict severe pain, there is still no torture unless it was his objective to do so. It doesn’t matter what the average person might think the “logical” result of the action would be; it matters what specifically was in the mind of the alleged torturer — if his motive was not to torture, it is not torture.”
Elizabeth Anscombe tears this kind of reasoning to shreds:
“From the seventeenth century till now what may be called the Cartesian psychology has dominated the thought of philosophers and theologians. According to this psychology, an intention was an interior act of the mind which could be produced at will. Now if intention is all important – as it is – in determining the goodness or badness of an action, then, on this theory of what intention is, a marvellous way offered itself of making any action lawful. You only had to ‘direct your intention’ in a suitable way. In practice this means making a little speech to yourself: “What I mean to be doing is…
This perverse doctrine has occasioned repeated condemnations by the Holy See from the seventeenth century to the present day…This same doctrine is used to prevent any doubts about the obliteration bombing of a city. The devout Catholic bomber secures by ‘a direction of intention’ that any shedding of innocent blood that occurs is ‘accidental’. I know a Catholic boy who was puzzled at being told by his schoolmaster that it was an accident that the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were there to be killed; in fact, however absurd it seems, such thoughts are common among priests who know that they are forbidden by the divine law to justify the direct killing of the innocent.”
In know there are many Catholics who hang around National Review. Some of them even believe it is favorable to Catholicism. Shouldn’t these people be correcting the defenders of this “perverse” consequentialist doctrine? Where’s George Weigel?
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“It doesn’t matter what the average person might think the “logical” result of the action would be; it matters what specifically was in the mind of the alleged torturer — if his motive was not to torture, it is not torture.”
I’m not sure this is consequentialism. The claim is that if. . . deep in your heart, where only Descartes can see. . . you intend something good, it doesn’t matter what the actual consequences are, or what ‘the average person’ thinks the result might be.
Give me an honest consequentialism that has an eye towards reducing harm, rather than a “principled” deontologism, where the principles lurk deep in the actors soul.
Fair point.
In the passage you quote, is McCarthy not describing what the U.S. law on torture is and what it isn’t? Meaning, he’s not giving a defense of torture per se, as you say?
I believe in rare torture in line with passages in the Scriptures (which way supercede section 80 of “Splendor of the Truth”) and I believe that Andrew
MacCarthy’s reasoning is wrong and consequentialist.
Elizabeth Anscombe though… needs to research the consequentialism behind 29 Popes (more than 10% of the total Popes) being in moral cooperation with the system of castrati (from 1589 to 1904) in which nine and ten year old boys were castrated for life by impoverished fathers with the hope that the Sistine would accept them per a bull of Sixtus V accepting them for the papal church choirs because “women are to be silent in church”. Opera rejected the castrati system 100 years prior to the Vatican rejecting it in 1904… just in time to late denounce (1930) the new sterilization surgery for couples for an entirely different consequence.
that should read at the very ending: “just in time to LATER denounce (1930) the new sterilization surgery…”
Bill Bannon,
Is your claim that Anscombe’s rejection of consequentialism is no good because the church has traditionally been consequentialist?
Phosphorious
No. It is my claim that Catholic writers are forever flattering the Vatican with being above consequentialism as she writes: “…This perverse doctrine has occasioned repeated condemnations by the Holy See from the seventeenth century to the present day.” What she leaves out is that the Holy See during that same time frame used consequentialism in the castrati case and used it by being silent as France and England forced both missinary access and opium on the Chinese in the treaty of 1862 after the second opim war. And the Holy See was silent because France was helping it militarily to preserve the papal states which the Holy See ultimately lost anyway. Catholicism will never grow up until it is capable of actually writing a real history of itself instead of a litany of flatteries.
One could, for example, also argue that the ban on ordaining men with “deeply seated homosexual tendencies” regardless of their demonstrated capacity for continence is also a recent example of consequentialism masquerading as prudence by the Church.
Liam
Consequentialism is to do the intrinsically evil because it has a good consequence. But one must first agree as to what is intrinsically evil.
Section 80 of “Splendor of the Truth” by John Paul II said that torture was intrinsically evil as was slavery. But “Splendor of the Truth” was a non infallible encyclical..by a long shot…since Leviticus 25:46 has God explicitly giving the Jews the right to chattel slavery within a survivalist economy. Slavery then is a moral evil but contextually so not intrinsically so…. and within economies that are not survivalist it is sinful. Over drinking e.g. is normally a mortal sin but is commanded in cases of extreme sadness by the book of Proverbs 31:6-7:
“Give strong drink to one who is perishing, and wine to the sorely depressed; 7 When they drink, they will forget their misery, and think no more of their burdens.” Ergo overdrinking is contextually evil but not intrinsically evil.
Morning’s Minion is correct to rebut Andy McCarthy’s argument if Andy McCarthy were speaking as to the morality of torture. McCarthy is not, however. McCarthy is speaking as to the legality of torture under U.S. law. When President Bush asks his lawyers for a legal opinion, it is not their job to consult Catholic morality to determine the legality of an action. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the President should ignore the morality of the action, but that is a separate question from the legality of the action. I should add that many of the Americans that are criticizing the President on the use of torture are also the same Americans that do not think it is right for statesmen to impose their own religious and moral views on the rest of society. If one is of this view (and I am not), all that should matter is the legality of the action.
The quotation from Miss Anscombe must be read in the context of a very important distinction she draws between intnetional acts and intentions.
For example, she says
They don’t notice the difference between “intention” when it means the intentionalness of the thing you’re doing – that you’re doing this on purpose – and when it means a further or accompanying intention with which you do the thing. For example, I make a table: that’s an intentional action because I am doing just that on purpose. I have the further intention of, say, earning my living, doing my job by making the table.”
That is why she can say “if intention is all important – as it is – in determining the goodness or badness of an action…” whilst rejecting “Consequentialism” – a term she coined.
You’re all a little confused about what consequentialism is. It’s mistaken to say that consequentialism is doing intrinsically evil acts for the sake of their consequences. Consequentialism holds that there *are* no intrinsically evil acts; if there are acts that are always evil, it’s only because they can never have sufficiently good consequences. So yes, from a non-consequentialist perspective, the consequentialist maintains that people should do acts that we non-consequentialists say are intrinsically evil. But it’s important not to misrepresent the people we disagree with.
As for Popes being ‘consequentialist’ because they cooperated with nasty things like the system of castrati (and really, why not bring up the inquisition, the crusades, slavery, anti-semitism, and all the rest?), you’re pretty far from the mark. It isn’t enough to show that the Popes cooperated with, formally agreed with, or even publicly promoted immoral acts. Of course they have; if you still think papal infallibility means that popes never make mistakes or that the institutional church is impeccable, you’ve got a lot of reading to do. What you would need to show in order to make a convincing case that popes have accepted consequentialist reasoning is that they have argued in the following way: act X is intrinsically directed at a bad end; but act X would also have tremendously good consequences that would outweigh the negative effects of that bad end; therefore act X is right and should be done. Note that it doesn’t make you a consequentialist just because you think that the consequences of an action are important — what makes you a consequentialist is the view that the value of the consequences *and nothing else* determine the value of the action.
So, yes, plenty of popes have made serious mistakes and every one of them has been a human being. But I’ve never seen a pope defend consequentialism in an authoritative document. If you’ve got an example, I’ll be happy to see it. Otherwise, you should argue a bit more carefully.