What philosophy can do for intelligence

ABSTRACT

Intelligence appears to be a pragmatic, or even cynical, profession. Any “practical” or “pragmatic” enterprise, however, contains implicit assumptions about purpose, priorities, ethics, and even moral constraints. At the highest theoretical level, intelligence involves unavoidable assumptions and presumptions about heuristics, the nature of truth, the definition of risk, and the possibility of a “scientific” approach to predictive analysis. This paper proposes that there is no single, “philosophy of intelligence,” but that the application of philosophy is critical for understanding what intelligence is, why we pursue intelligence, what limits expectations from intelligence, and what the normative constraints on intelligence should be.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Stephen Marrin for persisting in encouraging me to develop this paper for publication from its original form as a presentation to the Intelligence Studies Section of the 2014 Annual Convention of the International Studies Association. The author also expresses deep gratitude to Giangiuseppe Pili and Jules Gaspard for providing essential advice on critical developments in the field since 2014 and for shepherding the revised and updated article through the wickets of publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). The views presented are those of the author and do not represent the views of National Guard Bureau, the United States Army, or the Department of Defense.

Notes

1. YouTube, “Monty Python Philosophy Football.”

2. Pili, “Why Do We Really Need Philosophy in Intelligence Studies?” 11. See also the broader argument in Gaspard, “Intelligence without Essence.”

3. YouTube (Smith), “Why I am not a Philosopher.”

4. The concept that something has an inherent essence beneath its phenomenal presentation.

5. The Aristotelian distinction between the blind knocking of billiard balls and a conscious objective freely pursued.

6. This concept will recur in the paper, and it is important for intelligence analysis. We cannot know with certainty that another person is conscious, much less what the person might be thinking or feeling. We reason by analogy from our own experience. When a single person and his or her judgment and intent are consequential, it is difficult to impossible to develop a methodology that relies on the phenomena (observable facts) available to us to gain certainty or even confidence about intent. Think, for example, about how Sadat kept his own counsel in developing and executing the strategy for the 1973 war. This point speaks to the limits of knowledge in both intelligence and social science.

7. Reification makes an abstract concept into a concrete reality. Think of ‘society’ or ‘the economy.’

8. Plato, “The Republic, Book 7,” 193-220.

9. Pili, “Why Do We Really Need Philosophy in Intelligence Studies?,’ 5.

10. Ibid., 6.

11. See for example Warner, “Analysis as History, and History as Analysis,” 613–24; Clausewitz and Rappoport, On War. Gill and Phythian, Intelligence in an Insecure World; Horn, “Knowing the Enemy,” 58–85; Treverton and Gabbard, Assessing the Tradecraft of Intelligence Analysis; and Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire.

12. Davis confesses that it is misleading to say there was a ‘debate,’ since the two men did not face off in argument, and Kent did not condescend to reply to Kendall’s review. Nevertheless, the disagreements between the two respective approaches to intelligence analysis are stark and suggest a nominal ‘debate.’ Davis, ‘The Kent-Kendall Debate of 1949,’ 91-103. See also Kent, Strategic Intelligence, and Kendall, ‘The Function of Intelligence,’ which provide the text and context for Davis’ analysis of the ‘debate.’

13. Davis, “The Kent-Kendall Debate of 1949,” 97.

14. As Kent’s approach unfolds the reader may find foreshadowing of Barry Smith in the aspiration to make intelligence ‘scientific.’

15. Davis comments that Kent’s ‘guidance’ would be called ‘tasking’ and ‘feedback’ in current usage. Davis, ‘The Kent-Kendall Debate of 1949,’ 92-93.

16. Kendall quoted in Davis, ‘The Kent-Kendall Debate of 1949,” 95.

17. See note 17 above.

18. See note 14 above.

19. Mackinac Center, “A Brief Explanation of the Overton Window.”

20. Could we say the ‘Overton window’ was in a relatively narrow phase compared to world standards at this time – due to elite consensus and not overt repression? This also raises questions addressed by ‘social construction’ epistemology – see below.

21. In this aspiration even Kendall, the political philosopher, seems closer to Barry Smith than to the philosophy department. Kendall quoted in Davis, see note 17 above.

22. Pili refers in his unpublished paper to the ‘clear comparison’ that can be drawn between intelligence theory and international relations theory and references Phythian on the subject. Pili, “Why Do We Really Need Philosophy in Intelligence Studies?” 3. See also Phythian, “Intelligence Theory and Theories of International Relations.”

23. Marrin, “Improving Intelligence Studies as an Academic Discipline,” 270.

24. Armstrong, “Ways to Make Analysis Relevant,” 27.

25. Ibid., 30.

26. See note 25 above.

27. Armstrong, “Ways to Make Analysis Relevant,” 31.

28. Ibid., 32.

29. Pili, “Why Do We Really Need Philosophy in Intelligence Studies?,” 24. See also Dreisbach, “The Challenges Facing an IC Epistemologist-in-Residence,” 757–92.

30. Marrin, “Evaluating Intelligence Theories,” 481.

31. Nagel, Mind and Cosmos.

32. See note 6 above.

33. By ‘manifest image’ the paper means the choices presented to the consciousness of the decisionmaker whatever the material substratum of those choices might be. If consciousness is epiphenomenal, then we are witnesses to processes that have determined our choices for us. However that might be, what a decisionmaker ‘sees’ as his or her choice presents a more useful starting point for intelligence or social analysis than delving into the substratum.

34. Pili, “Why Do We Really Need Philosophy in Intelligence Studies?,” 14.

35. See note 30 above.

36. Pili, “Why Do We Really Need Philosophy in Intelligence Studies?,” 15.

37. The concept of ‘mirror imaging’ finds frequent use in critiques of failed intelligence analysis. ‘Mirror imaging’ is the fallacy by which we solve the problem of other minds by asking what we would do in similar circumstances and deducing our analysis of an adversary’s likely or predicted conduct on that basis.

38. Pili, “Why Do We Really Need Philosophy in Intelligence Studies?,” 16.

39. Bruce, “Making Analysis More Reliable,” 149.

40. See note 29 above.

41. Herbert, “The Intelligence Analyst as Epistemologist,” 679.

42. Ibid., 680.

43. Ibid., 666.

44. Herbert’s italics. Herbert, ‘The Intelligence Analyst as Epistemologist,’ 677.

45. Dreisbach, “The Challenges Facing an IC Epistemologist-in-Residence,” 757.

46. Dreisbach considers two other philosophical objections to justified true belief but dwells at much greater length on Gettier. Edmund Gettier, in short, showed that someone could hold a belief that was true and justified, but would still not ‘know’ the thing he believed because the truth was coincidental in this instance. In Pili’s unpublished paper, he gives in the context of the philosophy of language the classic Gettier case of an analyst who predicts that a general will go to war when he cuts his hair short because he always does that on the eve of battle. This prediction is ‘true,’ but is it meaningful? What if the correlation breaks down? See Dreisbach, ‘The Challenges Facing an IC Epistemologist-in-Residence,’ 761-3.

47. Dreisbach, “The Challenges Facing an IC Epistemologist-in-Residence,” 779.

48. See note 43 above.

49. Dreisbach, “The Challenges Facing an IC Epistemologist-in-Residence,” 786.

50. Ibid., 787-8.

51. Bruce, “Making Analysis More Reliable,” 135-56.

52. Ibid., 135.

53. Ibid., 148.

54. Ibid., 147.

55. Pili, “Why Do We Really Need Philosophy in Intelligence Studies?,” 21.

56. Miller, “Joint Epistemic Action and Collective Moral Responsibility,” 280–302; Miller, “Police Detectives, Criminal Investigations and Collective Moral Responsibility,” 21-39. Miller and Gordon, Investigative Ethics: Ethics for Police Detectives and Criminal Investigators.

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Terry C. Quist

Terry C. Quist is an Adjunct Lecturer in the Applied Intelligence Program at Georgetown University and Division Chief for Counterintelligence and Security in the Joint Intelligence Directorate of National Guard Bureau. He has presented papers before the Intelligence Studies Section of the International Studies Association from 2010 through the present.