There are quite a lot of people who will torture horrible mockeries of humanity / the Enemy, and an awful lot of people who will torture people because someone in authority told them to, but very few people who feel comfortable with torturing things they consider people.
Quite a few adults in the West still advocate corporal punishment to educate their own children.
Quite a few adults in the West still advocate corporal punishment to educate their own children.
If we define all deliberate infliction of pain as torture then we lose the use of a useful concept. You are not cutting reality at the joint.
I’m not. I’m defining using physical pain as a means of punishment as torture.
That’s even fairly conservative. Plenty of people also consider activities such as female circumcision for religious purposes torture.
That’s at the very least non-central fallacy.
Ok, that’s just expanding the definition of torture to “anything I disapprove of”.
What’s your preferred definition of torture?