What philosophy can do for intelligence

Abstract

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.