Conspiracy Theory and (or as) Folk Psychology

ABSTRACT

One issue within conspiracy theory theory is whether, or to what extent, our central concept – <conspiracy theory> – should map on to the common, lay sense of the term. Some conspiracy theory theorists insist that we use the term as everyday people use it. So, for example, if the term has a pejorative connotation in everyday parlance, then academic work on the concept should reflect that. Other conspiracy theory theorists take a more revisionist approach, arguing instead that while their use of the theoretical concept should bear some relation to its use in natural language, it need not follow it subserviently. I argue that elements of this debate mirror related debates that were prominent in the philosophy of mind in the 1980s over folk psychology and eliminative materialism (debates that continue today, such as within the philosophy of perception and theories over how to individuate the senses). Then, there was a debate over whether the concepts of commonsense psychology, such as <belief> or <desire>, should be treated as theoretical posits, and hence open to significant revision or elimination, or whether they were instead the targets of explanation. I will argue that an eliminativist approach to <conspiracy theory> has significant merit.

KEYWORDS:

• Eliminative materialism
• folk psychology
• folk science
• Wilfrid Sellars

Acknowledgments

Thanks to M Dentith and Matthew Shields for useful feedback on the written version of this paper. Thanks also to the audience and fellow participants at the 1st International Conference on the Philosophy of Conspiracy Theory and Philosophy of Neuroscience at the Gulf V workshop where this paper was presented.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. For those who don’t know (or are too young to remember), Sahl was one of the central figures in the development of modern standup comedy, whose style of satirical political comedy in the 1950s – often performed sitting on the stage reading from a newspaper and commenting on the issues of the day – was an inspiration to many comedians who followed, including Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Gilda Radner, and Richard Pryor (who, in turn, went on to inspire such living stand-ups as Trevor Noah, Chris Rock, Bill Maher, Samantha Bee, and Maya Rudolph). In other words, much of contemporary, political comedy can trace its roots back to Sahl.

2. For more on the life and career of Mort Sahl, see Nachman (2009), Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s, especially the opening chapter, ‘A Voice in the Wilderness: Mort Sahl’.

3. For a journalistic example of this point, the online version of Wired magazine once ran a piece entitled ‘The Most Logical (And Craziest) MH370 Conspiracy Theories’ (Golson 2015). ‘MH370’ refers to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a Boeing 777 carrying 239 individuals that disappeared with little explanation on route from Kuala Lumpur International Airport to its planned destination, Beijing Capital International Airport, on 8 March 2014. Given the lack of evidence surrounding what happened to this flight and inconclusive official explanations, a variety of theories have developed around it, several of the more colorful of which are described in the Wired.com piece. Although the title of the piece refers to ‘conspiracy theories’, many of the described theories lack any conspiratorial content, such as that an accidental fire broke out in the cockpit (quickly incapacitating the pilots as they struggled to respond) to the possibility that the plane was struck by a black hole or meteor. Most of the explanations described in the piece seem to share the feature of being outlandish or ‘wacky’ (to use a descriptor in the piece), rather than involving a conspiracy, per se.

4. For a longer version of this piece, see Walker (2018).

5. Dentith coins the term in chapter 2 of their 2014 monograph, The Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories (2014). A good collection of a variety of disciplines looking at CTs can be found in Uscinski (2019). For specifically philosophical reflections on CTs, see Coady (2006); Dentith (2018); Dentith and Keeley (2019).

6. The perniciousness of the pejorative definition is one of the key points of his contribution to this volume (Pigden forthcoming).

7. This is how I define the concept in (Keeley 1999, 116ff) and subsequent work. See that original paper for discussion of this definition and other considerations related to it.

8. An evocative turn of phrase introduced into conspiracy theory theory by Sunstein and Vermeule (2009), but originally coined (to my knowledge) in Hardin (2002).

9. Although illustrative of the distinction I am making here, this example has the complication of dealing with a (then) immature CT. My own view is that the evaluation of CTs depends significantly on how much effort has been put into investigating its claims. See Keeley (2023) for more on evaluating mature vs. immature CTs.

10. See also David Coady’s discussion of witch hunting and its relationship to conspiracy theories in his (2012, 111).

11. Although, the comparison is not perfect since snipes do exist. They are wading birds represented by several genera of the family Scolopacidae. So, it is in principle possible to hunt successfully for snipes, despite the old, practical joke.

12. For a more detailed discussion of the history and importance of eliminative materialism in the philosophy of mind, as well as Paul Churchland’s influences and role in that development, see Keeley (2005, 2016).

13. Of course, the issue of concept change is complicated and depends a great deal on one’s theory of semantics; more so than I have space here to get into. It can involve both Fregean sense and reference. Indeed, even to make sense of a claim of concept ‘change’, some element of the concept needs to remain fixed and something else about it must change. To say that our folk concepts <earth> or <mental illness> have changed radically – so radically that it seems more accurate to say we have eliminated our prior concepts and replaced them with new ones – implies that there’s at least something that remains constant across that process. That ‘something’ might be little more than some referent indicated by pointing down at the ground or gesturing at some unusual, ongoing behavior in a compatriot. It is my manifest image of what I am gesturing at that is undergoing change. (Thanks to Matthew Shields for pushing me to say more about this issue.)

14. Recognizing this lacuna, the neologism ‘pronoia’ has been suggested to be the antonym of paranoia. However, the very need for a neologism makes the point I am proposing here.

15. In his 1777 Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul, David Hume spoke of a ‘conspiracy of public interest’, but this is another neologism that never really caught on.

16. Have a look at the wide variety of disciplines represented in Uscinski (2019).

17. Two other papers in this volume – Tsapos (2023) and Duetz (2023) – also argue in support of this claim.

18. To be clear, though, I am not saying that any of the scholars I am discussing in this essay are this facile in their approach. Instead, I suggest that there’s not an easy way out of this discussion. Hence, the need for the debate I am here engaging in.

19. This might represent a point of agreement between what I argue here and that of Napolitano and Reuter (2021). They write that the approach they advocate, ‘ … would enable those approaches that look at the non-epistemic reasons for believing conspiracy theories – such as psychological or sociological reasons. … If conspiracy theory was employed to refer to a certain type of irrational theory, this would justify explaining beliefs in these theories by appeal to non-epistemic factors, and trying to minimize such beliefs’ (emphasis in original). However, we are left with the problem of distinguishing between CTs-as-explanatory-assertions and CT-as-non-epistemic-assertions. Further, how shall we handle those assertions, such as those Mort Sahl appeared to be trafficking in, that do appear to be offered as explanations? (Thanks again to Matthew Shields for reminding me of the passage in Napolitano & Reuter and the issue it raises for my discussion.)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Pitzer College Faculty Research & Awards grant.

Notes on contributors

Brian L. Keeley

Brian L. Keeley is Professor of Philosophy at Pitzer College. He also has affiliations with Claremont College programs in Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, and Science, Technology and Society. His chief research interests surround the epistemic analysis of conspiracy theory, as well as the philosophy of neuroscience, especially as it relates to understanding sensation and perception.