Some Conspiracy Theories

ABSTRACT

A remarkable feature of the philosophical work on conspiracy theory theory has been that most philosophers agree there is nothing inherently problematic about conspiracy theories (AKA the thesis of particularism). Recent work, however, has challenged this consensus view, arguing that there really is something epistemically wrong with conspiracy theorising (AKA generalism). Are particularism and generalism incompatible? By looking at just how much particularists and generalists might have to give away to make their theoretical viewpoints compatible, I will argue that particularists can accept many of the concerns that motivate generalism because generalism can never be about ‘all’ conspiracy theories without being either ahistorical or apolitical. In the end generalist critiques are best seen as useful guidelines or considerations for the appraising of particular conspiracy theories.

KEYWORDS:

• Conspiracy theory
• consensus
• generalism
• particularism

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Niki Pfeifer, Brian L. Keeley and Julia Duetz for feedback on an earlier draft of this article; special thanks to the attendees and presenters of the 1^st International Conference on the Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories; especial thanks to the contributors to this volume, whose work has been inspirational.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See the introduction of this special issue for coverage of this (Dentith forthcoming).

2. Stokes clarifies his sense of ‘astonishing’ in the critical discussion included in this issue (forthcoming).

3. An earlier version of Cassam’s argument appeared online in the pages of Aeon in March 2015; I have elected to focus on the peer reviewed piece; I have discussed some of the differences between Cassam’s argument in 2015 vs. his more refined version in 2016 in my 2018b.

4. Cassam introduces Oliver as a ‘concrete example’ (2016, 161) yet Oliver is not a real person, and the example is clearly designed to be illustrative of someone who suffers from intellectual vices. After all, later on in the article Cassam asks us to imagine that Oliver (a fictional character to begin with) also believes the Moon landings were faked, and that the AIDS epidemic was a conspiracy orchestrated by some government (2016, 162). He also claims: ‘[H]e is only cynical about legitimate sources of information; he gives epistemic credit where it isn’t due and fails to give it where it is due’ (2016, 163). Whatever Oliver believes, it is – by stipulation of his creator – irrational.

5. One reason as to why Cassam might not have engaged with the existing literature in his 2016 is his interest in inquiry epistemology over that of analytic epistemology. Inquiry epistemology, according to Cassam (citing Hookway 2003), is ‘[T]he attempt “to find things out, to extend our knowledge by carrying out investigations directed at answering questions, and to refine our knowledge by considering questions about things we currently hold true’ (2016, 161). Cassam later claims that: ‘If it turns out that conceptual analysis doesn’t cast much light on the nature of inquiry that would not be a reason for concluding that analytic epistemology is asking the wrong questions. It would be a reason for concluding that analytic epistemology doesn’t have the right tools for answering the questions it asks’ (2016, 176). As most of the work of the first generation is in the tradition of analytic epistemology, Cassam might well have chosen not to engage with it because he felt it was inadequate for the kind of analysis he was pursuing.

6. There are two curious features to this move by Cassam: for one thing, he notes he received criticism for his earlier work, but he does not specify who his critics were, or why those criticisms made him realise the intellectual character approach is, at best, a side issue. The other thing is that Cassam refers to the non-peer reviewed Aeon piece rather than his more refined argument in the peer-reviewed article in The Monist.

7. Cassam claims conspiracy apologists like Coady and Pigden should look at ‘long and hard before leaping to their defence’ (2019, 84). But, given that he characterises Pigden’s view correctly on page 83, Cassam should recognise that Pigden (and Coady) are interested in conspiracy theories, not Cassam’s problematic capital C, capital T ‘Conspiracy Theories’, and thus they are not engaging in conspiracy apologetics in the sense Cassam thinks they are.

8. If we remove the assumption about the veristic nature of official theorising from Harris’ argument there is a genuinely interesting thesis there: people who hold certain theories (conspiracy or otherwise) as being warranted sometimes overstate the evidence for their theory such that it prevents them from properly analyzing whether a rival explanation might be the better explanation.

9. See Hagen (2020) for another critical analysis of Harris’ (2018).

10. Harris confuses things even further when he writes: ‘No definition, including this one, can be expected to conform perfectly to ordinary usage of the term – terms can be misused, after all – and some degree of arbitrary stipulation is necessary to arrive at a definition that is suitably simple and general’ (2022, 4). By that proviso it is not clear why, for example, people might just be said to be wrong about not thinking the official theory of 9/11 is a conspiracy theory, or why it is not simpler to stipulate that the official theories can also be conspiracy theories.

11. Harris also argues that: ‘I take it to be a plausible empirical assumption that epistemic authorities recognized in modern societies are generally reliable and thus that conspiracy theorizing in such societies tends to be at odds with the acquisition of knowledge’ (2022, 13). This empirical assumption is not backed up with any data, and ignores Basham’s earlier arguments about information hierarchies (2018).

12. See Duetz for further analysis of Napolitano’s 2021 (2022).

13. See also a recent article by Matthew Shields (2022) for more on this, as well as Duetz in this issue (forthcoming).

14. See also the article in this issue by Shields (forthcoming).

15. One worry about the study which produces this curious result is that whilst there is no explicit conspiracy being appeal to in the examples that generate this result, it is plausible to imagine someone adding in a suppressed premise which implicitly reinstates the conspiracy condition.

16. Keeley (forthcoming), Pigden (forthcoming), and Mittendorf (forthcoming) have all responded in some sense to Napolitano and Reuter in this issue. See also Shields (2022) for another examination of the limits of not just Napolitano and Napolitano and Reuter’s work, but also for criticism of Cassam’s 2019.

17. As I have argued elsewhere, this rather ignores the context of a debate between some particularists and some French social psychologists, notably how particularist work was falsely represented by said social psychologists (Dentith 2022).

18. See also Nera, Leveaux, and Klein (2020), and Ahadzadeh, Ong, and Wu (2021) for further examples of particularists being cited approvingly in the contemporary social psychological literature.

19. Indeed, I am currently an advisor on a European Research Council-funded project, Consequences of conspiracy theories (CONSPIRACY_FX), led by Karen Douglas.

20. See, for example, Husting and Orr (2007) and Harambam and Aupers (2014).

21. See, for example, Mathijs and Machold (2001).

22. See, for example, Uscinski (2018) and Cíbik and Hardoš (2020).

23. See, for example, Robertson (2017).

24. See, for example, Goodnight and Poulakos (1981) and Spence (2021).

25. A curious feature of the first generation of work on conspiracy theory theory both inside and outside of philosophy is that it emerged at a time when conspiracy theories were considered fringe beliefs of interest only to obsessively online weirdos. Much of the second generation of work has come out in an era where conspiracy theories appear to have become part-and-parcel of mainstream political rhetoric.

26. Indeed, given the functionalist nature of Cassam’s argument about the role of ‘Conspiracy Theories’ and the problem of functionalist critiques in general, particularists might want to be cautious of functionalist accounts, and continue to work on a case-by-case evaluative basis. However, for a more robust functionalist analysis that evades the kind of worries we see in Cassam’s (2019), see Hauswald (forthcoming).

27. Indeed, Cassam is happy to introduce conditional claims such as ‘many’ to his talk of Conspiracy Theories (such as, “The politics of many Conspiracy Theories is right-wing (2019, 13)).

28. Indeed, given Harris admits that ‘[I]f one prefers an alternative definition of conspiracy theory, one can nonetheless acknowledge that an important subclass of conspiracy theories have the nature of those captured by the present definition. One may in this case think of the arguments to follow as concerning only that subclass of conspiracy theories’ (2022, 4) then he should be happy to accept that his analysis of conspiracy theories being counter to epistemic authority only applies to some conspiracy theories.

29. See my 2019 for a discussion of the few conspiracy theory theorists who do; Napolitano’s solo piece might also be an instance of this kind of view, given that evidential insulation is built into her account; at best the conspiracy theorist could only ever be epistemically lucky in belief in the existence of a conspiracy in her view.

30. See Niki Pfeifer’s article in this special issue for more on this (forthcoming).

31. Apologies to Brian L. Keeley for this appropriation of his terminology!

Additional information

Notes on contributors

M R. X. Dentith

M R. X. Dentith is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the The International Center for Philosophy at Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai. Their chief research interests surround the epistemic analysis of conspiracy theory, as well as rumours, fake news, and the epistemology of secrets.