The discussion between Mark Shea and Jimmy Akin on the subject of torture continues to go astray. I think Akin has not yet seen that his approach to intrinsic evils in fact ends up with them being subjective — in a way that does not line up with Catholic teaching.

Akin claims that there is an element of subjectivity in decisions about intrinsic evils, and gives the example of theft. He says:

The definition of theft includes the fact that it is the taking of property against the unreasonable will of the owner, and a thief wanting to justify his actions can easily seize on this subjective determination regarding whether the owner's will against it being taken is unreasonable.

But the portion of the Catholic Catechism that this definition of theft comes from does not have any appeal to the subjective (despite what one might think by a superficial reading of the paragraph). This is shown by the examples that the Catechism gives for what kind of unreasonableness is meant. The Catechism says:

This is the case in obvious and urgent necessity when the only way to provide for immediate, essential needs (food, shelter, clothing . . .) is to put at one's disposal and use the property of others.

And those are objective bases; the actual will of the owner is irrelevant in such cases. It is the reasonableness of the taking that is being measured, not the will of the owner.

Akin then maintains that his line of thinking also applies to torture, saying:

In the same way, if an infliction of pain is objectively disproportionate then the act is one of torture regardless of what the person inflicting it might subjectively think.

But in fact, he has provided no satisfying basis for deciding on what kind of proportionality could genuinely be objective.