On the epistemology of conspiracy

One way of looking at conspiracy is to consider it a deliberately enhanced political weapon cultivated by those who push ‘fake news’ in a post-truth media environment. Thus, the story that Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery was just not a viral set of beliefs fuelled by erroneous alleged connections and causal links that seem to amount to more than sheer coincidence. It was deliberately promulgated and crafted as misinformation by political interests to cast doubt on a person and institution. The fake news, post-truth environment that thrives on deliberate misinformation and its fabrication for political purposes is a major characteristic of our times (Peters et al, 2018). Arguably, we seem to have left the civic safety of a relative value consensus of the period of Liberal Internationalism to embrace a regime change that actively disputes commonly accepted beliefs. There are different kinds of conspiracy and conspiracy theory – political, scientific and religious. The epistemic status of conspiracy theories is fraught with difficulties of fact-tracking plots and testing evidential claims that often seem improbable.

It is clear that conspiracies exist. It is true they exist and also sometimes (even often) conspiracy theories might actually be true, for instance, in the Watergate case. The conspiracy involved a June 1972 break-in to the Democratic National Committee headquarters. It was famously detected by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein who led an investigation revealing the abuse of power by the Nixon administration that also revealed Nixon’s role in the conspiracy, forcing him to resign. In this useful example, both the conspiracy and the conspiracy theory were true, that is, the break-in actually took place by members of the Nixon administration. It was planned and carried out with the intention of discrediting the Democratic Party. Woodward and Bernstein once becoming aware of the conspiracy used conventional fact-checking and normal methods of investigative journalism to expose the conspiracy for what it was. In this sense, the conspiracy theory, against received mainstream and common-sense accounts, turned out to be true. The method of verification was an evidence-based investigation that established incriminating links between events, actions, agents and intentions. Here the exposure of political conspiracy is a combination of detective work and investigative journalism that conforms to standard scientific means for verifying a theory (but it is not a fail-safe method and takes time). Sometimes, while the conspiracy is true – it is true that there is a conspiracy, however unlikely it may seem – a theory about the conspiracy may also be true. This represents a certain congruency between fact and event.

It is the case that often conspiracy theories are false and that they do not fairly or objectively represent events in the world. In many cases they may be scientifically or factually untested. Indeed, among the believers it may well be impossible to rigorously test claims against reality. So, for instance, in the case of flat-earthers or those that believe the first man walking on the Moon was a NASA hoax, or those who think that vaccinations are bad and ineffective. The source of the conspiracy might be hard to detect. If discoverable it may be fabricated deliberately on the basis of false information. The difficulty comes with sincerity of belief by both propagators and believers. Often the more improbable the claim and the less it is open to any form of testing, the more it incites false belief. The structure of belief by believers is also an interesting issue as quite often the believers become cult-inspired and act as viral carriers of beliefs that get accepted by others without much by way of evidence. What counts as evidence also is another epistemic feature - sometimes these conspiratorial beliefs cannot be easily dismissed without elaborate argument and testing. In the case of flat-earthers, and Moon walk deniers, the evidential chain might be relatively easy to achieve. In other cases, like climate change/warming denial the evidential chain requires a scientific understanding of complex physical events beyond the normal understanding of most non-scientists.

The issue of believing on the basis of authority is also a relevant concern that takes place, for example, on the basis of religious, political or scientific authority. This is then part of the evidential chain in term of authority, witness, hearsay, opinion and both ‘argument’ (where the case seems to follow standard argument form but misses a step or draws a wrong conclusion) and narrative. The fervour and passion with which some conspiratorial beliefs are held commonly reflect an underlying belief structure that works as an ideological superstructure and predisposes believers toward the acceptance of an improbably story. The fact that many anti-science stories coalesce with fundamentalist worldviews tend to endorse this view. Quite often also political pundits actively know that various groups are open to persuasion through the manipulation of prejudices.

Conspiracy theories that are false can be damaging and can affect the moral and ethical climate in a society. For some this is a practical problem that crops up from time to time. For others, it is part of a shift in political regime that trades on ambiguity and deliberate lies based on a constant and immediate set of Tweets that are seemingly made up on the spot. The difficulty is tracking all of the lies as they create an atmosphere of conspiracy. Indeed, the regime trades on conspiracy where the leader is the ‘fountain of truth’, of telling the population the plain unvarnished truth, which often endorses existing prejudices. This kind of analysis might suggest that the problem of conspiracy and conspiracy theorising is that is has been harnessed as a political weapon in an age of social media that can by-pass traditional fact-checking journalism.

Juha Räikkä (2018: fn 1) has pointed out that the philosophical literature has tended to follow Karl Popper’s famous criticism and pointed out that conspiracy theories tend to be unwarranted. He writes:

Modern debate on conspiracy theories started when Karl Popper (1902-1994) criticized what he called the conspiracy theory of society, namely the claim that “all results, even those which at first sight do not seem to be intended by anybody, are the intended results of the actions of people who are interested in these results” (Popper 2013: 307). In 1999 Brian L. Keeley published a paper titled “Of Conspiracy Theories” in The Journal of Philosophy and, after that, the philosophical debate on conspiracy theories has largely centered upon the question of whether the acceptance of particular conspiracy theories commits conspiracy theorists to a view that public institutions, companies and media are untrustworthy in general, and whether it is problematic if it does. Keeley (1999: 116-118) argued that it is usually irrational to believe in conspiracy theories, as they entail “an almost nihilistic degree of skepticism about the behavior and motivations of other people and the social institutions they constitute”. Critics have opposed the argument by denying that belief in a conspiracy theory entails “skepticism”, and by claiming that skepticism of “people and institutions” is actually unproblematic, as we have excellent historical reasons not to trust in public institutions and authorities.

Yet, against Popper’s analysis and in the light of Foucault’s historical ‘truth-regimes’ I would argue that the societal truth-regimes are characterised in a social media age of interconnectivity with conspiracy thinking; that as a result of mass participation conspiracies and conspiracy theories are more common and that such scepticism can be healthy especially in relation to corrupt political institutions and authoritarian governments; that neither conspiracies nor conspiracy theories are necessarily unwarranted nor irrational (although they may be false); and that one of the aims of education ought to be teaching our students how to recognise both conspiracies and conspiracy theories and how to test and check them out.

These propositions together tend to suggest a historical epistemological thesis that might also be seen to highlight the contemporary distrust in authority, authoritarian and, even, authoritative sources, reflecting a shift from top-down hierarchies of news and information distribution to flatter horizontal and more democratic structures sometimes privileging highly stylised peer, interest and religious groups. There is always a kind of deep attraction to some mistrustful souls that operates when conspiracy theories purport to explain something different to mainstream accounts by reference to a secret group of actors who are operating unlawfully in their own interests at the expense of the public.

What really is important here is the concept of ‘openness’ especially as it operates in open science, education, publishing activities that attempt to test and rigorously analyse conspiracies and theories to fathom the facts and to provide the best interpretation in the light of the available evidence. It also most certainly involved the attempts to quell nasty toxic stories and viral narratives that are AI generated in order to manipulate the population and discredit and demonise honest individuals. Räikkä (2018) seems to think that openness as in democratic discussion is the best way to respond to conspiracy theories. In this respect the epistemic basis of democracy and democratic approaches based on openness shares some epistemic characteristic of open science, yet in politics, religion and culture it is also necessary to evaluate motive and the possibility that the narrative is being generated, not in the name of truth but in the name of private interest that mitigate against the public sphere.

The situation is more complex in practice when it is considered that official narratives and officially endorsed accounts often transparently serve sectional interests. In this case, the encourage of scepticism against official narratives is fully justified, thus overcoming the view that all conspiracies should be rejected and treated as irrational. In some cases of ‘true conspiracies’ and theories it is clear that the pejorative view of conspiracy must be abandoned. In such cases scepticism is eminently justified and represents a healthy epistemological attitude.

Prooijen and Douglas (2018) suggest that their review of the literature on conspiracy theories demonstrate they are a social phenomenon that are noted for four basic principles:

conspiracy theories are consequential as they have a real impact on people’s health, relationships, and safety; they are universal in that belief in them is widespread across times, cultures, and social settings; they are emotional given that negative emotions and not rational deliberations cause conspiracy beliefs; and they are social as conspiracy beliefs are closely associated with psychological motivations underlying intergroup conflict.

Here the notion of healthy skepticism and ‘true conspiracies’ are not recognized. ‘A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Psychological Research on Conspiracy Beliefs’ by Andreas Goreis and Voracek (2019) comment on personality factors ‘such as low agreeableness (as disagreeableness is associated with suspicion and antagonism) and high openness to experience (due to its positive association to seek out unusual and novel ideas)’ even though the association remains unclear. They comment:

The psychological literature on predictors of conspiracy beliefs can be divided in approaches either with a pathological (e.g., paranoia) or socio-political focus (e.g., perceived powerlessness). Generally, there is a lack of theoretical frameworks in this young area of research.

Joseph E. Uscinski (2018) draws our attention to the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories and the fact that ‘When people believe conspiracy theories they may act on them’ which may encourage bad decisions when the theories drive stereotypical thinking and policies about minorities or when conspiracy theories encourage people to believe the political system is rigged decreasing political participation. He asks: ‘Are we currently living through the conspiracy theory renaissance?’ Kathryn S. Olmstead (2017) also noted that Americans believe that conspiratorial thinking is reaching new heights and ‘many Americans began to suspect the U.S. government itself of plotting against them’, a state of scepticism that becomes more credible ‘after the revelation of real government conspiracies, notably CIA assassination plots, the Watergate scandal, and the Iran–-Contra affair.’ As Räikkä (2014) points out

It is often claimed that political conspiracy theories are of limited falsifiability … Government officials’ public statements that contradict a conspiracy theory can be interpreted as signs that support the theory. Almost all potentially falsifying evidence can be construed to be actually supporting evidence. Because conspiracy theories seem to be irrefutable, many people reject them from the outset.

Yet Harris (2018) now follows a growing consensus that ‘standard criticisms of conspiracy theorising fail to demonstrate that the practice is invariably irrational.’ At the same time, he adds ‘it would be a mistake to conclude from the defence of conspiracy theorising offered here that belief in conspiracy theories is on an epistemic par with belief in other theories.’ His analysis of epistemic errors committed by conspiracy theorists is enlightening:

First, the refusal of conspiracy theorists to accept the official account of some target event often seems to be due to the exercise of a probabilistic, and fallacious, extension of modus tollens. Additionally, conspiracy theorists tend to be inconsistent in their intellectual attention insofar as the effort they expend on uncovering the truth excludes attention to their own capacities for biased or otherwise erroneous reasoning.

Yet it is clearly the case that conspiracy theorists who are sceptical of government or official narratives or policies and actions, also sometimes follow epistemic practices correctly and reveal the true substance of conspiracies to demonstrate the shabby actions of individual and groups bent upon public mischief.

In the age of Trump it may be permissible to talk of ‘government by conspiracy’. Certainly Trump’s conspiracy against Hilary Clinton and her emails was very destabilising, and the right wing media repeated unproven allegations and directed them through algorithms to targeted populations through Facebook. The conspiracy campaign was highly effective. Yet the Russian conspiracy that had some basis in fact against Trump has been less damaging. Either way these cases demonstrate how ‘government by conspiracy’, an effective method of control, depends upon control of social media and the manipulation of millions of Facebook followers through algorithmic ‘management of truth’, active disinformation, and the promotion of viral narratives.

Michael A. Peters
Beijing Normal University, China
[email protected]