Monday, 07.14.08
The Ethics of a Psychologist
Photo by flickr user takomabibelot under Creative Commons license
The Dark Art of Interrogation
October 2003
Mark Bowden argues that the most effective way to thwart terrorism can also be morally repugnant.
Shock and Disbelief
February 2001
Daniel Smith describes the controversy over electroconvulsive therapy.
In 2002, Seligman spent three hours at Naval Base San Diego, lecturing on torture and interrogation. But his lectures, he protests, were flipped on their head: he told the group of military men and women how to resist torture and interrogation by an unscrupulous foe. According to Mayer, the military used his insights to learn to induce in victims a condition of "learned helplessness" -- a type of forlorn passivity that Seligman first observed in randomly electrocuted dogs 40 years ago. He hasn't collaborated with that group since the lecture, he says, and he strongly condemns torture. "My career has been devoted to finding out how to overcome learned helplessness, not how to produce it."
It may help hone our moral intuitions to recall the history behind the dog-zapping experiments that made Seligman famous. The setup involved restraining dogs and subjecting them to "50 seconds of severe, pulsating shock" -- trauma that lingered as fear, torpor, and depression after the experiments ended. Animal advocates questioned his ethics, rightly, and Seligman defended his work by pointing out, also rightly, that it had illuminated mental illnesses that afflict the lives of millions of humans, at a price of nonpermanent damage to a few dozen dogs. Seligman has since even written a self-help manual, surely one of the most interesting in the genre, that suggests ways readers can use his research to become happier.
The parallels between the logic of human and canine torture -- sacrificing the well-being of the few (terrorists and dogs) for the well-being of the many (innocents and depressives) -- are worrisomely obvious. What's less obvious is which way the argument cuts. Seligman, a morally thoughtful man and a self-professed dog lover, condemns torture, yet his experiments suggest a moral calculus that might allow it. If torturing a terrorist to save actual human lives isn't permissible, then by what logic could he torture dozens of dogs for a smaller -- and perhaps less certain -- payoff? Today, many universities would, I suspect, reject his experiments (and a lot of other fascinating research) on ethical grounds.
These comparisons are notoriously tricky to deploy in an ethically scrupulous way. In the novel Elizabeth Costello, a poet objects to a comparison between abattoirs and WWII death camps. "If Jews were treated like cattle, it does not follow that cattle are treated like Jews." Indeed: caution against glib moral comparison seems extremely wise right now, as do hasty condemnation or absolution of anyone involved in the torture controversy. Seligman has already caught undeserved blog-flak because of the reports about Mayer's book, even though he almost certainly never knowingly abetted torture. Our ethical approaches to each question -- whether to torture dogs, and whether to torture people -- do seem like they should be related, though. And whatever our conclusions, it seems worth noting, again with worry, that we appear to be doing to people what many have already decided it is wrong to do to dogs.
Outsourcing tortureJane Mayer reports on the CIA's "black site" program in which terror suspects are detained and tortured in foreign countries. |
Uneasy compromiseSalon evaluates the disputes arising from the American Psychological Association's resolutions on interrogation techniques at their annual convention. |
Psychologists for tortureArt Levine explains how the American Psychological Association pushed a pro-interrogation policy against the wishes of many of its members. |
Hypocritical oathAmy Goodman examines the contradictions inherent in psychologists' oaths and their abetting of torture. |
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Oh, really??? Then how about torturing a chimpanzee, who happens to share 99% of our DNA, but just cannot seem to muster up the English to scream "STOP!" Your well-worn, dismissive argument sickens me. Wake up...the question is NOT "can they reason?" It is, as the philosopher Jeremy Bentham so eloguently stated, "can they SUFFER?".
Regardless of the suffering, what is the POINT?!?!
I'll come over to your place and smack you around until you admit to having an affair with my wife. regardless of the TRUTH, if I knock you around enough you'll admit to it so that I will stop.
The Psychologist referenced in the article will shock dogs to garner data that leads to the truth (a scientific theory in his case).
Make no mistake, whether putting the cattle prod to a human or a dog, they will both suffer. So the question is not "can they SUFFER" the question is "why do we make them suffer." If torturing the bad man leads to truth, we torture. It would be for the greater good. But torture doesn't lead to truth, it leads to false confessions. Shocking the dog does lead to truth and is for the greater good.
By no means am I saying that I walk around kicking dogs because they're just dumb animals. To the contrary, I love animals. But I am saying that I can accept the argument that its acceptable to subject animals to cruel treatment if it will aid the human race. I can not accept that torturing humans is therefore the same as treating animals in such a way because it leads to the greater good. Torture does not lead to truth, and is therefore not in mankinds best interest to embark down that road.
Yes, we must assume animals do suffer. If they didn't experience psychological trauma, how then could we generalize the results of lab animal experiments to the human population? It would make no sense to use them as subjects of psychological research if they did not. Furthermore, any dog (or cat owner) would testify they can "read" their pet's emotions. Who hasn't recognized an animal's grief at the departure of a companion animal? And yes, from reading "Marty's" response it sounds as if he is deeply troubled to be implicated in torture. Apparently he has found a way to justify performing and replicating experiments as he did. I remember reading a critical account of his work back in graduate school. The paper basically argued that although he had proved his hypothesis, he needlessly carried out the same experiments (or close variations) over and over again. And he doesn't consider himself a person who would condone torture? Maybe now his hens have come home to roost.
JD writes, But I am saying that I can accept the argument that its acceptable to subject animals to cruel treatment if it will aid the human race.
I don't see how it aids the human race, unless further evidence is needed that humans are capable of cruelty in pursuit of their limited notions of truth. The ends justify the means, apparently, no matter how morally repugnant such means are? Moral idiocy reigns supreme in man's relationship to other species, while truth and kindness are reserved for members of the sick clan.
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"The parallels between the logic of human and canine torture -- sacrificing the well-being of the few (terrorists and dogs) for the well-being of the many (innocents and depressives) -- are worrisomely obvious."
The parallels aren't as obvious as you suggest. What you are missing is that the alleged terrorist is also a human. A dog is not an alleged dog. When one administers pain - we'll call it torture - to an individual, the administer is attempting to pull a specific piece of data from that individual. Under extreme duress, and seeing that the only way to make the pain stop is to reveal information, a person will say whatever they think the torturer wants to hear to make the pain stop. This yields corrupt data. The dog, when tortured, doesn't have the capacity to act in a particular way to make the pain stop. The dogs behavior, whatever it is, is honest behavior and is the information that the torturer records as a data point in the study.
Your suggestion that torturing a human parallels mistreatment of animals is incorrect.
Posted by JD | July 15, 2008 1:39 PM