Sins and Salvations in Clandestine Scientific Research: A Social Psychological and Epistemological Inquiry

Dissertation, The Claremont Graduate University (1999)
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Abstract

This treatise aims to alleviate human afflictions in clandestine scientific research conducted for national security goals. ;Part I explores the liberty-security dilemma through analysis of one of my ten oral histories---an intelligence officer disabled in radiation experiments. Historical analogues of clandestine research, such as Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, contribute longitudinal, social psychological data about the moral schemas of participants in idealistic institutions. ;Part II formulates an epistemology of political and military intelligence, which drives my central theses: The epistemologies of intelligence and science coordinate to produce clandestine research. Intractable moral problems derive from the widely shared premises, the legitimate tasks, and the reasonable epistemic principles of intelligence. Therefore, the mechanisms that produced abuses in the past produce abuses in the present. Because intelligence, science, and philosophy all value free inquiry, they share a ground for moral discourse. But secrecy requires that, ultimately, only intelligence professionals can monitor moral practices in clandestine research. Therefore, stable new moral practices must foster, not thwart, their epistemic practices. ;Part III elaborates, through oral histories, three alternatives to the Epistemological Explanation for abuses in clandestine research: Cynicism, Regressive Science, and Intelligence as a Protection Industry. Using formal criteria of theory evaluation, these explanations are compared for insight into an alleged fatal radiation experiment on orphans. ;Part IV engages intelligence and philosophy with the question: What moral standards should intelligence uphold in clandestine research at the risk of losing the nation? Three military and intelligence interviewees comment on philosopher Michael Levin's proposal for torture interrogation of terrorists. ;Part V employs Kurt Lewin's "method of construction" to model a moral ecology for individual participation in idealistic programs. Barker's "behavior setting" and Harre' and Secord's "human agency as action-plan" supply component concepts. As clandestine projects evolve across settings, they induce regular patterns of moral problems. A proposed solution is to generate "moral impact reports" for proposals like Levin's. Immediate gains to national security can then be weighed against cumulative damages from loss of moral legitimacy. Thus epistemic and moral practices can be coordinated in clandestine research

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