First published in 1991, this book -- through the examination of ancient Greek literary, philosophical and legal texts -- analyses how the Athenian torture of slaves emerged from and reinforced the concept of truth as something hidden in the human body. It discusses the tradition of understanding truth as something that is generally concealed and the ideas of 'secret space' in both the female body and the Greek temple. This philosophy and practice is related to Greek views of the 'Other' (...) (women and outsiders) and considers the role of torture in distinguishing slave and free in ancient Athens. A wide range of perspectives -- from Plato to Sartre -- are employed to examine the subject. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Most discussions of causal explanations of behavior focus on the problem of whether it makes sense to regard reasons as causes of human behavior, whether there can be laws connecting reasons with behavior, and the like. This essay discusses explanations of human behavior that do not appeal to reasons. Such explanations can be found in several areas of the social sciences. Moreover, these explanations are both causal and non-reductionist. Historical linguists, for example, offer causal explanations of changes in how words (...) are pronouncedand linguistic change in generalwithout appealing to human intentions. I use examples from linguistics, anthropology, and evolutionary psychology to discuss the importance of this sort of explanation and to examine its compatibility with recent philosophical accounts of causation. (shrink)