I do not think torture is ever beneficial for the victim. There autonomy is removed for the purposes of breaking there will. Athletes might refer to their work as torture when it is physically straining and particularly stressful, but they do not mean torture because that would involve them not consenting to the activity. Anyone working willingly has the option to quit and gain other employment and they have a right to certain health standards in the workplace. I suppose the closest situation to torture being beneficial to the person would be if the information obtained during torture saved the person’s life, but this assumes that murder is worse than torture and more importantly that there was no other way to receive the information. If a situation arose where someone was tortured for information that was beneficial to them, it seems likely that they could have been convinced to provide the information without torture. If they could not be convinced, then they do not have sufficient reason to consider the torture beneficial. I suppose parents forcing their children to get medical treatment might be a case where the person could not be convinced an action was in their best interest when it was, but children have not reached a mature enough level to make these decisions on their own. Adults have and should be able to decide what is or is not beneficial to them. Torture certainly would not help if they were not in a position to do so, say if they had a mental health issue. Many cases can be found where torture can benefit somebody, but I do not think it is ever the tortured.
Are there any realistic situations where no other method than torture is available or are the situations discussed so far too academic and theoretical to occur in actuality?
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