Session: Medicine and Intelligence Ethics

Intelligence Ethics and Biomedical Ethics
The Problem of Moral Conflict

John W. Lango

Intelligence ethics is, from the standpoint of philosophical ethics, a field of applied ethics, as is biomedical ethics. As the word "applied" suggests, the overall task of applied ethics is often construed as that of applying moral principles from some normative ethics (e.g., a utilitarian ethics) to concrete issues (e.g., warrantless surveillance). In so doing, a critical difficulty has to be faced -- namely, the problem of resolving moral conflicts. Intelligence ethics is a rather new field of applied ethics, whereas biomedical ethics is, with its extensive literature, its various journals, and its numerous conferences, the most developed field of applied ethics. Perhaps the most influential writing on biomedical ethics is Principles of Biomedical Ethics by Tom Beauchamp and James Childress (5th ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). In that book, Beauchamp and Childress presuppose a normative ethics involving four moral principles: respect for autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice. In applying those principles to concrete biomedical issues, they usually have to propose resolutions to problematic moral conflicts (e.g., between the autonomy of the patient and the beneficence of the doctor).

An illustration of a moral conflict in intelligence work may be summarized as follows. In a robust theory of human rights, there is a right to privacy, but there also is a right to life. In a particular case, suppose that warrantless surveillance is conducted in order to thwart a horrific terrorist attack. Such surveillance is (arguably) a violation of the right to privacy. However, if the surveillance is not conducted -- thereby allowing the terrorist attack to succeed -- the right to life of the victims would (arguably) be violated. (It is presumed that their right to life would be violated not only by the terrorists but also by those responsible persons who knowingly fail to conduct the surveillance.) In this particular case, there (arguably) is moral conflict between the right to privacy (for some persons) and the right to life (for other persons). How should such moral conflicts in intelligence work be resolved? By means of some comparisons with the views of Beauchamp and Childress in the cited book, the aim of this talk is to explore how that question might be answered.

John W. Lango is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College of the City University of New York. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University. He specializes in metaphysics and ethics. Concerning metaphysics, he has written articles on the philosophy of time, the theory of tropes, and the metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead. He is the author of Whitehead's Ontology. In addition to articles on other ethical subjects, he has written articles on just war principles and their applications. His article "Collective Security and the Goals of Intelligence" is forthcoming in the Defense Intelligence Journal.