Conceptual Engineering, Conceptual Domination, and the Case of Conspiracy Theories

ABSTRACT

Using the example of recent attempts to engineer the concept of conspiracy theory, I argue that philosophers should be far more circumspect in their approach to conceptual engineering than we have been – in particular, that we should pay much closer attention to the history behind and context that surrounds our target concept in order to determine whether it is a site of what I have elsewhere called ‘conceptual domination’. If it is, we may well have good reason to avoid engineering. In their recent ‘What is a Conspiracy Theory?’, M. Giulia Napolitano and Kevin Reuter argue that the disagreement between generalists and particularists in the literature on conspiracy theories is best characterized as a set of dueling conceptual engineering projects. While I agree with their turn to this metaphilosophical literature, I give a very different account of its applicability. Particularists, on my account, are better read as aiming to diagnose the ways in which many discussions of the concept of conspiracy theories are a form of conceptual domination, where this broader context should then prompt us to abandon or block any concept of conspiracy theory that treats its referents as inherently defective. Broader metaphilosophical lessons are drawn.

KEYWORDS:

• Conceptual engineering
• conceptual abandonment conspiracy theories
• inquiry
• conceptual domination

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to audiences at the 2022 International Conference on the Philosophy of Conspiracy Theory at Pitzer College and at the University of Pittsburgh Words Workshop for discussion of this paper and related ideas. For comments on drafts of the paper, I am grateful to M Dentith, as well as Julia Duetz and Rico Hauswald, who served as reviewers. Their feedback was invaluable and improved the paper greatly. A special thanks to Hailey Huget for insightful comments on multiple drafts and for extremely helpful discussion.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Though I do not always play this role! I also think elements of this enthusiasm are warranted and have contributed in this vein to the literature (e.g. Shields 2021b). Moreover, increased vigilance regarding whether our target concepts are sites of conceptual domination can, in my view, help contribute to better conceptual engineering projects, as I explain in the final section.

2. For kindred work, see Marques (2020), Queloz and Bieber (2021), and Podosky (2022).

3. In separate pieces, both Julia Duetz (forthcoming) and Melina Tsapos (forthcoming) look at similar issues around the conceptual engineering of conspiracy theory (Duetz) and conspiracy theorist (Tsapos).

4. I use italics for referring to concepts or meanings. I use single quotes for mentioning terms and for excerpts from texts and double quotes for scare quoting.

5. In this paper, I take for granted the results of Napolitano and Reuter’s own studies regarding ordinary usage surrounding ‘conspiracy theory’. My concern here is with their methodological approach and construal of alternative views.

6. The language of ‘correct or best view of the concept’ is drawn from the literature itself: most philosophers in the area, including, for example, Sally Haslanger and Herman Cappelen, opt for ‘best’ or ‘better’-style formulations of conceptual engineering (e.g. Haslanger’s ‘What concept (if any) would do that work best?’), whereas others, including, for example, Sarah Sawyer, use the language of correctness (Haslanger 2012, 223; Cappelen 2018;Sawyer 2018).

7. In a passage similarly representative of the role of the Inquiry Assumption, Cappelen cites legal disputes over how we should think and talk about the terms ‘“murder”, “fetus”, “intention”, “person”, and “tax”’ as examples of conceptual engineering, where these cases involve ‘extensive, explicit debate and theorizing’ (2018, 27). The possibility that these conceptual disputes might involve speakers who do not have an overriding interest in ‘debate and theorizing’ is left unexplored.

8. Much more needs to be said here, and in my forthcoming, I defend this view of inquiry, truth, and normativity in-depth, drawing in particular on elements of the pragmatist tradition. Thank you to Nick Smyth, M Dentith, Julia Duetz, Rico Hauswald, and attendees at the University of Pittsburgh Words Workshop for helpful discussion of these points.

9. The account is therefore complementary with Haslanger’s and the conceptual engineering literature more broadly. It aims to broaden our understanding of what we are doing as speakers when we engage in conceptual articulation.

10. Napolitano and Reuter consistently use this formulation – that particularists take the function of conspiracy theory_e to be discouraging the investigation of conspiracies. For example: the particularists claim that ‘the evaluative conspiracy theory serves the function of silencing warranted accusations of conspiring’ (2021, 2); against the particularists, ‘the function that this concept serves in academic practices and discourses cannot be silencing warranted conspiracy accusations’ (2021, 22).

11. The language of ‘function’ is Napolitano and Reuter’s. They do not, however, tell us what their view of functions is. I follow their usage here to avoid further complicating the discussion. It is worth noting, however, that any claims regarding ‘the’ function of a concept, particularly when attempting to track ordinary usage, are likely to be misguided. There will be a plurality of functions at play in ordinary contexts, as there are for any natural language expression, and the salience of these different functions will depend on the relevant context and our interpretive interests (Jaszczolt 2016; Cappelen 2018). Particularists do not themselves often use this function-based language; Husting and Orr, for example, refer to the ‘pejorative’ nature of conspiracy theory_e (2007; Orr and Husting 2019). To signal this difference in particularist views, I typically use ‘a key function’ (rather than Napolitano and Reuter’s ‘the’ function) to refer to the particularist view that conspiracy theory_e serves to stigmatize and marginalize the views of those outside of the relevant dominant institutions. Thank you to M Dentith and Rico Hauswald for discussion here.

12. A closer reading of particularist formulations reveals that those who worry that conspiracy theory_e will discourage investigations of conspiracies take this to be a possible effect of the use of conspiracy theory_e, not the function of the concept. Here, for example, is Basham and Dentith on this point: ‘After all, in an environment in which people take a dim view of conspiracy theories, conspiracies may multiply and prosper’ (2016, 13). But effects of the use of the term and its function (or functions) are distinct. When the bailiff says that court is in session, this may generally have the effect of generating a heightened sense of anticipation in the courtroom, but that is not the function of the utterance (i.e. to formally announce the beginning of court proceedings). Independent of the effect of conspiracy theory_e on potentially discouraging investigations of conspiracies, particularists take the pejorative function of this concept to be broader – a stigmatizing and dismissal of views that challenge dominant institutions, figures, and beliefs, as the passages (1)–(3) cited in this section show.

13. One finds an example of this move regarding Chomsky specifically in Goertzel (2019) that describes Chomsky and his frequent co-author Edward Herman as conspiracy theorists in the same category as archetypal frauds like Andrew Wakefield. Goertzel does not engage with the many thousands of pages of Chomsky and Herman’s empirically and historically-informed research, nor any of the subsequent scholarship evaluating their work (Herman and Chomsky 1979a,1979b,1988; see Mullen and Klaehn 2010 for an overview). Instead, Goertzel refers to quotes posted to random websites, falsely claims that Chomsky ‘does not submit his work on foreign policy to judgment by his professional peers’, floats the accusation that Chomsky is a ‘self-hating Jew’, and cites a paper by Jeffery Klaehn to try and support his claim that media scholars do not take the Herman-Chomsky propaganda model seriously (2019, 233 and 237). However, the cited Klaehn paper not only argues that the failure to engage with the Herman-Chomsky model is a grave scholarly error (given that the model is ‘forceful and convincing’), but also that attempts to dismiss their model by categorizing it as ‘conspiracy theory’ amounts to ‘precisely that, a label, one that has been used as a means of dismissing PM [the Herman-Chomsky propaganda model] without granting a minimal presentation of the model or a consideration of evidence’ (Klaehn 2002, 173 and 148–9). Goertzel’s piece, then, is an attempt to impose a concept (conspiracy theorist_e) via markedly deficient practices of inquiry in the service of certain political views that are not themselves critically reflected on or defended – i.e. a case of conceptual domination.

14. Rico Hauswald asks whether I would categorize Sunstein & Vermeule specifically as engaging in conceptual domination. Again, judgments about individual cases can be difficult, but Sunstein & Vermeule have failed to engage with critiques of their piece and engaged in ‘repeating the same claim as if the refutation had never happened’ (Anderson 2011, 148). See, for example, Sunstein (2016; 2020). Elizabeth Anderson calls this a form of ‘dialogic irrationality’ (2011, 148), and it gives us reason to think they might be best viewed as engaging in a form of conceptual domination here, especially given Sunstein’s positions of formal authority, as discussed in Coady (2018b). Nothing in my argument, however, hangs on how we judge this particular case. With respect to Napolitano & Reuter, especially given the early stages of their project and as I emphasize throughout, my point is that they are indeed engaged in conceptual engineering (and not conceptual domination) but that they are ignoring the broader context of conceptual domination that surrounds their target concept. My more general claim in this paper is that such projects (where philosophers engage in engineering while ignoring a broader context of conceptual domination) can be a toxic brew, one that philosophers should be scrupulous to guard against. In my 2021a (15051–2), I briefly consider a simplified version of a Napolitano & Reuter-esque view in the context of Marques’ 2020. What I would add to that toy example is just that ‘meaning perversions’ in Marques’s sense can contribute to broader contexts of conceptual domination. It is the latter type of case – conceptual engineering projects that fail to reckon with a larger context of conceptual domination – that the current paper is concerned with.

15. Quassim Cassam, for example, cites the Bush administration’s Iraq-Al Qaeda fabricated connection in the first chapter of his book but never substantively returns to it. He then argues at length that one of the defining features of conspiracy theorists_e is that they have ‘the qualifications of the amateur sleuths’ and are best thought of as ‘Internet detectives’ (2019, 23–4). But this claim is directly contradicted by Cassam’s opening example: the members of the Bush administration were credentialed by and continue to participate in our most prestigious educational institutions, and they work as prominent members of our class of foreign policy experts. But this case does not factor into his subsequent analysis. I discuss these aspects of Cassam’s account in more detail in my 2022.

16. Keeley, in this issue, looks at a related issue concerning the how the lay concept of the term ‘conspiracy theory’ should map onto the academic work (forthcoming).

17. Such tactics, however, can be the product of conscious strategy on the part of speakers in many cases. My point, however, is that they need not be and often are not when picked up and then used by wider audiences. Thanks to Rico Hauswald for discussion of this point.

18. Pigden, in this issue, also compares the way in which the common usage of ‘conspiracy theory’ resembles a slur (forthcoming).

19. Napolitano and Reuter’s Study 2b suggests that the ‘officialness’ of a story may not prevent it from counting as a conspiracy theory (in the negatively evaluative sense) for ordinary speakers (2021, 16). But by ‘officialness’ here, they mean ‘whether or not the wide majority of’ the relevant community ‘believed the claim to be true’ (23). But this does not tell us how speakers evaluate such stories when specifically fabricated by those within dominant institutional contexts. More generally, future helpful empirical work in this area could explore what examples of conspiracy theories (in the negatively evaluative sense) first and primarily come to mind for ordinary speakers and who they first and primarily take to be examples of conspiracy theorists in this sense. Our own usage (e.g. the less natural categorization of the Bush administration’s fabricated Al Qaeda-Iraq link as a conspiracy theory) and the consistent marginalization of conspiracy theories with the same epistemic flaws fabricated by dominant institutions by speakers with forms of institutional authority already give us good evidence that those outside the relevant dominant institutional contexts are disproportionately targeted by this concept. See my 2022 for further discussion.

20. For more discussion of the relationship between conceptual engineering and conceptual abandonment, see Cappelen (forthcoming).

21. Dentith, in this issue, questions why Napolitano and Reuter think the philosophical work should be subservient to the work in the social sciences (forthcoming).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 870883.

Notes on contributors

Matthew Shields

Matthew Shields is assistant professor of philosophy at Wake Forest University. He specializes in epistemology, philosophy of language, and metaphilosophy. His recent publications include “Truth from the Agent Point of View” (The Philosophical Quarterly) and “Rethinking Conspiracy Theories” (Synthese).