Ethics in Practice

This article offers a new approach to intelligence ethics grounded in practice. Drawing on pragmatist ethics and a survey of intelligence professionals, we analyze how practitioners resolve moral dilemmas. Three findings stand out: legal deference often replaces ethical reasoning; analysts prioritize special obligations over general moral principles, especially familial ties; and, despite its prominence, the language of just intelligence is absent from practitioner responses. These results point to a gap between theoretical ethical frameworks and lived ethical reasoning in intelligence work. Rather than impose new rules, we highlight a form of ethical reasoning already in use—situated, context sensitive, and empirical. This pragmatist lens, we argue, better captures the complexities of ethical judgment in intelligence practice

Engineering ethics · Epistemology · Intelligence analysis · Political science · Pragmatism · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Educational and Psychological Assessments · Engineering · Law · Neuroscience, Education and Cognitive Function · Philosophy · Psychology