I do not believe...only...misses the point.
Am I reading that correctly?
I do not condone torture even in the "ticking time bomb" scenario: I cannot accept the culture/society that would permit such a torture to exist. To arbitrarily select out one individual for maximal suffering in order to spare others a negligible amount would require a legal or moral framework that accepted such choices
There are multiple questions here, and they don't necessarily have similar answers.
Some examples:
A person who campaigns to ban torture and make it illegal in all cases may be acting to shape the legal framework of the society while still endorsing the use of torture in some cases.
Society's banning of torture does not necessarily lower its incidence, so it is too convenient to say that "I still cannot agree with the conclusion of torture over the dust speck, [because] I cannot accept the culture/society that would permit such a torture to exist," as if there would never be a need to choose between torture's prevalence and endorsement by society. You have given no guidelines for choosing between a situation in which torture is illegal but common and a situation in which it is legal and less common. In truth, the original argument had nothing to do with legality.
A person might volunteer for the torture, making the dust speck option the only one that violates the principle of self determination.
The "conclusion by refusal to accept the alternative" is a weak principle because it implies lack of consideration for the consequences of the other choice. I cannot accept the world in which torture exists and cannot accept the world in which suffering is inflicted on so many people.
The focus on the arbitrariness of the choice doesn't get to the root of the issue, as some people seem to actually reject the torture vs. dust specks scenario for that reason. This is not a factor in many ticking time bomb scenarios.
In general there are so many unrelated things tied together here most simply cannot be true objections that always apply, other scenarios may pit these objections against each other.
the other I think of as the 'logarithmically additive' answer
As logarithmic functions don't have a finite limit, this seems like an odd way of labeling it.
I do not believe...only...misses the point.
Am I reading that correctly?
Edited. ( s/do not// )
Society's banning of torture does not necessarily lower its incidence, so it is too convenient to say that "I still cannot agree with the conclusion of torture over the dust speck, [because] I cannot accept the culture/society that would permit such a torture to exist,"
The mere fact that immoral things occur is not a criticism of the moral framework itself but rather of our inability to adhere to it. Noting this flaw in our behaviors, I believe...
For those not familiar with the topic, Torture vs. Dustspecks asks the question: "Would you prefer that one person be horribly tortured for fifty years without hope or rest, or that 3^^^3 people get dust specks in their eyes?"
Most of the discussion that I have noted on the topic takes one of two assumptions in deriving their answer to that question: I think of one as the 'linear additive' answer, which says that torture is the proper choice for the utilitarian consequentialist, because a single person can only suffer so much over a fifty year window, as compared to the incomprehensible number of individuals who suffer only minutely; the other I think of as the 'logarithmically additive' answer, which inverts the answer on the grounds that forms of suffering are not equal, and cannot be added as simple 'units'.
What I have never yet seen is something akin to the notion expressed in Ursula K LeGuin's The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.If you haven't read it, I won't spoil it for you.
I believe that any metric of consequence which takes into account only suffering when making the choice of "torture" vs. "dust specks" misses the point. There are consequences to such a choice that extend beyond the suffering inflicted; moral responsibility, standards of behavior that either choice makes acceptable, and so on. Any solution to the question which ignores these elements in making its decision might be useful in revealing one's views about the nature of cumulative suffering, but beyond that are of no value in making practical decisions -- they cannot be, as 'consequence' extends beyond the mere instantiation of a given choice -- the exact pain inflicted by either scenario -- into the kind of society that such a choice would result in.
While I myself tend towards the 'logarithmic' than the 'linear' additive view of suffering, even if I stipulate the linear additive view, I still cannot agree with the conclusion of torture over the dust speck, for the same reason why I do not condone torture even in the "ticking time bomb" scenario: I cannot accept the culture/society that would permit such a torture to exist. To arbitrarily select out one individual for maximal suffering in order to spare others a negligible amount would require a legal or moral framework that accepted such choices, and this violates the principle of individual self-determination -- a principle I have seen Less Wrong's community spend a great deal of time trying to consider how to incorporate into Friendliness solutions for AGI. We as a society already implement something similar to this, economically: we accept taxing everyone, even according to a graduated scheme. What we do not accept is enslaving 20% of the population to provide for the needs of the State.
If there is a flaw in my reasoning here, please enlighten me.