I don’t believe killing npcs or perhaps even more messily I could see circumstances where even /torturing npcs/ in a game is not actual torturing. I think it centers on the intent of the action, and if that intent is to cause actual realized suffering. It is very difficult to define and will be heavily subjective to the person, but I also think most people get a “sense” of where that line is naturally in person-to-person interactions.
If you define it by intent, then the same action performed by different people may be and not be torture. This makes it pretty hard to define, and it becomes completely subjective after that.
For instance, I don’t think it is possible to torture an inanimate object, thus I never have an intent of causing suffer to one. Sometimes I want to break an object, and by your definition it will not be torture however I do that
I don’t believe killing npcs or perhaps even more messily I could see circumstances where even /torturing npcs/ in a game is not actual torturing. I think it centers on the intent of the action, and if that intent is to cause actual realized suffering. It is very difficult to define and will be heavily subjective to the person, but I also think most people get a “sense” of where that line is naturally in person-to-person interactions.
If you define it by intent, then the same action performed by different people may be and not be torture. This makes it pretty hard to define, and it becomes completely subjective after that.
For instance, I don’t think it is possible to torture an inanimate object, thus I never have an intent of causing suffer to one. Sometimes I want to break an object, and by your definition it will not be torture however I do that