[dvt]

Small correction: the Geneva Convention says nothing about the effectiveness of torture, although other sources may.

And the philosophical debate is far from over; it is ongoing: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/torture/ Reading some of the literature can be quite fascinating.

Ouch, the down-votes :(

[snowwrestler]

I'm not sure philosophers debating is a useful signal about whether an issue is settled. I'm having a hard time thinking of a topic on which philosophers would not debate.

[r00fus]

You're getting down voted because, knowingly or not, you're using conversational terrorism [1] techniques.

Wary minds see/hear these words and immediately ignore any of your content. Think of it as a debating equivalent of pulling a godwin.

[1] http://www.vandruff.com/art_converse.html

[dvt]

What conventional terrorism technique have I used? Here's an analogue of what happened.

Bob says: yeah it's pretty easy to see that every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes.[1]

I say: not so fast, you can't just claim things like that. I mean it might be intuitive or 'generally accepted' (and even stochastically probable!), but the truth-value of such a statement is difficult to prove.

[1] Goldbach's conjecture.