The idea of an ethical discontinuity between something that can destroy a life (50 years of torture, or 1 year) and something that can’t (1 minute of torture, a dust speck) has some intuitive plausibility, but ultimately I don’t buy it. It very much seems like death must be in the same ‘regime’ as torture, but also that death is in the same regime as trivial harms, because people risk death for trivial benefit all the time—I imagine anyone here would drive across town for $100 or $500 or $1000, even though it’s slightly more dangerous than staying at home. The life-destroying aspect means that the physical pain is only part (probably the smaller part) of the harm of prolonged torture, and that the badness of torture rises greater than linearly with duration, but doesn’t necessarily make it incommensurable.
Roland, I’ll take that bet.
The idea of an ethical discontinuity between something that can destroy a life (50 years of torture, or 1 year) and something that can’t (1 minute of torture, a dust speck) has some intuitive plausibility, but ultimately I don’t buy it. It very much seems like death must be in the same ‘regime’ as torture, but also that death is in the same regime as trivial harms, because people risk death for trivial benefit all the time—I imagine anyone here would drive across town for $100 or $500 or $1000, even though it’s slightly more dangerous than staying at home. The life-destroying aspect means that the physical pain is only part (probably the smaller part) of the harm of prolonged torture, and that the badness of torture rises greater than linearly with duration, but doesn’t necessarily make it incommensurable.