Category: Reviews

Issues to do with Testimony

In the first half of the book, Butler argues that we should accept that the Boeing seaplanes, Mallard and Bluebill, made it to Devonport because George Bolt and Leonard Isitt said they did. Both Bolt and Isitt, if we take them at their word, though, were indirect witnesses, rather than eye witnesses to the moving of the seaplanes from Mission Bay to Devonport. Their testimony is that they were told by others that the planes were moved rather than claiming to see the move itself. Isitt’s testimony in particular–as Butler reports it–vacillates with respect to what he thought happened, and so he comes across as an increasingly unreliable witness as time passes. Bolt is much more forthright about the claim the planes were shipped to Devonport, but, once again, he was not an eye witness to the alleged move.

Butler defends the testimony of both Isitt and Bolt by saying “Look, these are respectable figures, honest and sincere” but, in the end, that is only part of the story we need to tell with respect to how we evaluate testimony: given they are not eye-witnesses we have to ask “How well were they able to appraise the quality of their sources?” Even people with impeccable personal honesty or integrity can make lousy judges of character.

This issue is compounded in the second half of the book, when Butler analyses the testimony of those who claim to know about the existence of a hidden tunnel complex deep within North Head. For example, he makes a lot out of a claim by former Minister of Defence, Bob Tizard, who said “There is ammunition in those them missing tunnels” ((I’ll come back to the ammunition thing in the next section.)) (not a direct quote, I’m afraid) which Butler takes to be proof positive Tizard knew about the tunnels and the ammunition inside of them. Now, maybe he did, but it’s also possible it was something he was told by someone under him, which leads to the question just how well informed everyone in that particular Ministry is, or was.

Some of Butler’s assumptions about how government works, particularly the relationship between Ministers and Ministries is startling and naive. ((Has he not seen “Yes, Minister”? It might be a comedy but political scientists agree it’s also pretty accurate as a description of how things work.)) He seems to think that Ministers are particularly well-informed about their portfolios, as if they have direct oversight into the workings of their particular ministries, as opposed to people who take advice.

An apt analogy for this was the respective American and British governments’ claims about those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the ones which justified the invason. Now, it turns out that no CIA or MI5 field operatives in Iraq actually believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but some of the managers/directors of those agencies, back home in Washington and London did. So when Bush and Blair said “We have received advice that…” they were acting on the advice of the executive members of the CIA and MI5, members who had failed to actually report accurately what the field operatives said, rather than reporting something they directly knew. ((Well, the story is a little more complex: Blair, it’s plausible to claim, actually lied. Bush… Bush might well have thought he was acting on good advice.)).

Testimony is only as good as the chain of testifiers, so if we can’t identify who said what to who, then it’s hard to know whether the Minister, in this case, Bob Tizard, was well or ill-informed on the matter of tunnels and discarded ammunition.

Butler uses Tizard’s testimony and the fact that subsequent Ministers of Defense have said otherwise to both claim “Conspiracy!” and to suggest there has been some loss of institutional memory about what is, or is not, inside of North Head. Of course, there is another possibility, which is that Tizard took or received advice from one person and other Ministers took it from another; the different sets of advisors might well have known or believed different things, given the evidence, or lack thereof, they had at the time.

Still, the evidence Butler finds to be the most persuasive, and is the basis for his claim that something very fishy is going on, is the collection of eye-witness accounts John Earnshaw collected in his search for the two Boeing Seaplanes. Butler presents a small selection of Earnshaw’s collection, which is certainly very interesting, but this testimony has been subject to a lot of analysis by the Courts. The judgement, of Justice Sian Elias, was that the testimony was suspect; not because it was false but because the testimony was the result of both unwitting coercion by Earnshaw and contaminated. Butler’s only response to Justice Elias’s claim he doesn’t believe it. ((He suggests that Justice Elias might well be a dupe of the conspiracy but, by-and-large, he’s just incredulous that the Justice did not take the witnesses at their word.)) Well, he goes one further and tries to make out that Justice Elias suggested that the witnesses were either lying or Earnshaw deliberately set out to train them. However, charitably, what Justice Elias was concerned about was that:

a) Some of the eye-witness testimony lacks what we call “independence”, in that many of the witnesses knew one another and had corresponded with one another well before the trial. As such, you would expect there to be a certain amount of corroboration in their stories. Sometimes this is good but if most or all of the testimony lacks indepedence, then it’s not as good as a selection of evidence where the witnesses had little to no contact with one another.

b) We can’t get around the fact that Earnshaw, when interviewing witnesses, in many cases coaxed the kind of answers he was looking for out of his subjects (this is not particularly contentious: the recordings the court had access to show this behaviour). Whilst, I don’t think Earnshaw deliberately engaged in this behaviour, I do think his drive to find both the planes and the tunnels meant that he pushed interview subjects for answers. If the answers they gave weren’t the ones he was looking for, he would push them again and again, until such time the testimony matched the kind of answers he was looking for. ((There is quite a lot of psychological literature on this subject which shows that witnesses like to give the kinds of answers their interlocuters are looking for (which is why modern interview practice is quite a studied affair, mostly to control for this particular effect).))

These are all issues that Justice Elias was aware of when she decided that the expert testimony should be taken to be more reliable than the collection of eye-witness testimony; Butler doesn’t don’t grapple with these issues other than be incredulous that someone wouldn’t take witnesses at their word.

In the next part, the rationale for the conspiracy is revealed.

Max Hill’s “To the Ends of the Earth” is a book that, if its central thesis were true, would require a complete rewrite of human history. It is a big book (literally) in which the author makes bold claims, none of which stand up to scrutiny. Martin Butler’s “Tunnel Vision” is also a largish tome but it is not a bold one: if Butler’s thesis were true, then a small part of New Zealand’s aviation history would need to be revised-and we would have to question the conduct of the New Zealand Government, the Navy and Air Force and the Department of Conservation-but it wouldn’t be world shattering in its scope.

I’m talking around the subject, I realise, but the point I want to start out by making is this: Hill’s book is bold and, because the evidence does not support it’s central wacky caper, it is all the poorer for it (especially given just how badly written it is). Butler’s book in no way rewrites the entirety of human history and thus the evidence he amasses for his claim of conspiracy seems, on the face of it, much more plausible. Whilst I think Butler fails to make his case, it’s a much better book than “To the Ends of the Earth” and it does contain some new evidence worth following up.

Long time readers of this blog will be well aware of my interest in the conspiracy theories about North Head, a military installation in my home town of Devonport. Since the early Eighties, stories about a hidden complex of tunnels deep within North Head have been reported both in the local and national press. The story became so big towards the end of the Eighties that the government launched a series of enquiries which came to the conclusion that there was no hard evidence of additional tunnels deep within the Head. This didn’t stop the stories and it certainly didn’t stop the conspiracy theories about why said tunnels were being hidden from us. If anything, the denial of the tunnel hypothesis by the various investigative bodies (the New Zealand Defence Force, the Department of Conservation and a judicial review by Judge Sian Elias) just amplified the size of the conspiracy. The entire government seemed to be in on it.

Over the years people have talked about writing the definitive book on the subject (even I’ve thought about it). Butler’s book, charmingly titled “Tunnel Vision” has managed to be published first and it’s… Well, “interesting” is one way to put it. “Conspiratorial” is another.

Butler’s interest is in what happened to the two Boeing and Westervald Corporation seaplanes, Mallard and Bluebill, which, legend goes, were placed into storage in a tunnel in North Head.

Mallard and Bluebill were purchased by the Walsh Brothers Flying School in the early 20th Century before disappearing after the flying school was closed and its assets shipped off to Torpedo Yard in Devonport. The first half of “Tunnel Vision” is an attempt to work out whether there is sufficient to evidence to counter the official theory that the two Boeings were deliberately disposed of over in Mission Bay. Butler amasses some circumstantial evidence which he says makes it plausible to claim that the planes made it to Devonport after all, and with that in hand, claims of conspiracy come into play. ((I’m not sold on the notion that the two Boeings ever left Mission Bay in part because what I’ve read of the archival evidence seems to indicate that the Boeings were likely destroyed. There’s no one piece of documentary evidence that states this either way, so we have to rely upon inferring to the best explanation, given the available evidence.))

One of Butler’s rationales for thinking that the planes were surely saved is that they are not just valuable artefacts now but they were highly valued and famous back then. However, whilst there are a whole host of meanings for “valuable” which span from “are famous (valuable in a social sense)” to “valuable (worth something to the current owners)” and really the only sense of valuable which the military are likely to have been interested in was “Have these any value to us now.” It seems the answer in the archival material is a simple “No.” Indeed, on page 40 Butler even describes them as being obsolete by 1921, well prior to the move. ((I also find it interesting that Butler doesn’t talk about what happened to the engines of Mallard and Bluebill, since the fact that we know the engines were sold (and where they ended up) seems to strongly suggest the planes were deemed surplus to requirements and thus disposed of. This seems like important, but inconvenient evidence and it just gets glossed over.))

Still, Butler’s account of what might have happened to the planes is nicely written and features a lot of interesting details about the life of the Walsh Brother’s Flying School. As such, “Tunnel Vision” ends up being two books. One is an historical narrative about the fate of two planes. The other is a lengthy diatribe against the holders of the official theory, that the planes were destroyed and that North Head is not riddled with hidden tunnels. Whilst elements of the author of the second half of the book appear in the first few chapters of “Tunnel Vision,” the first half is (relatively) measured and historically focused in tone. It is in the second half, where Butler moves away from the investigation of the archival record to eye-witness testimony and speculation, that the book becomes didactic. Butler admonishes those who hold to or promote the official theory that the planes were destroyed and slams those who claim there is insufficient evidence to support the notion of a hidden tunnel complex deep within North Head. As such, in the next part I want to focus on the second half of the book, because it’s there that I think most of the troubles arise.

Susan Feldman’s paper, “Counterfact Conspiracy Theories,” (International Journal of Applied Philosophy 25:1, 2011) is an examination of a particular kind of conspiracy theory, the “counterfact theory.” As she writes in the introduction to the paper:

In this paper, I highlight and explore a subgroup of conspiracy theories, which I call “Counterfact Conspiracy Theories” (CFCTs). Like all conspiracy theories, counterfact theories assert the existence of a conspiracy. Unlike most conspiracy theories examined by philosophers and social scientists, the assertion of a conspiracy is not provided as an explanation of historical events. The distinctive feature of counterfact theories is their assertion of counterfacts, claims of fact which run contrary to accepted factual claims and their evidence. (p. 15)

Feldman is focussing her discussion on a subset of conspiracy theories in general (which she describes as a kind of explanation about historical events; I don’t think it’s unfair to say that she thinks conspiracy theories are a kind of historical explanation). However, there are some odd points to her discussion of the more general definition of “conspiracy theory.” She states that we should not add to such a definition that the conspirators have malign motives (p. 15), which I agree with, but as she then goes on to state that conspiracy theories can never be examples of official theories because conspiracy theories are counter-narratives (under her definition) (p. 15).

However, what I find contentious about Feldman’s paper is that she borrows some terminology from Michael Barkun to distinguish three kinds of conspiracy theory. “Event theories,” which explain a well known event through the actions of a hidden conspiracy; “Systemic theories,” which assert the existence and activities of hidden, powerful, long-term and often large groups of conspirators, whose activities might well be responsible for large chunks of world history and “Superconspiracies,” which are a mix of systemic and event theories. Event theories are explanatory but systemic theories need not be, apparently, as they should be seen as being an attempt to establish a set of what she calls “hidden facts” about the existence of a set of conspirators. Systemic theories can be explanatory but it is not their primary goal.

I’m not all that familiar with with Barkun’s taxonomy, so my comments on this will be brief ((Barkun’s book “A Culture of Conspiracy Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America” is on the reading list; I had it once before but it got recalled before I was able to read it)). As I’ve stated several times before though, I’m just not convinced that we need to use a size criterion to distinguish between types of conspiracy and whilst Barkun’s distinction is not entirely size-based, I still think it’s problematic to assert that the kinds of conspiracy theories which assert large groups of conspirators/large conspiracies are somehow automatically less credible than small ones; I’m perplexed by the claim such a difference means that the bigger ones are somehow epistemically suspicious or inadequate as explanations.

Notably, Feldman doesn’t defend Barkun’s taxonomy but, rather, uses it to advance her own argument. I would have liked to see some defence of it, because I’m not convinced by the taxonomy and thus I’m suspicous of its use in Feldman’s argument. I’m especially suspicious because Feldman then goes on to add a fourth type of conspiracy theory, the “counterfact theory:”

However, there are some non-explanatory conspiracy theories which do not fit the systemic pattern. These non-explanatory theories assert counter- facts—they claim facts which run contrary to accepted and authorized beliefs and maintain that knowledge of these counterfacts is suppressed by conspiracy. By ‘counterfacts’ I mean claims of fact contrary to what is accepted or assumed. To call a claim of fact a “counterfact” carries with it no implication as to its truth value.

Let us call these theories counterfact conspiracy theories. The aim of CFCTs is to establish counterfacts and uncover the conspiracy hiding them from general view. As previously noted CFCTs, like systemic theories, assert hidden facts rather than explain already accepted events. However, the hidden facts that systemic theories assert involve the existence of conspiracies, while counterfact theories invoke conspiracies as the means of hiding counterfacts. (p. 16)

Feldman claims there is a:

rough two-step schema typical of any counterfact conspiracy theory:

(i) assertion of counterfacts, and (ii) invocation of a cover-up conspiracy. (p. 17)

and, like systemic theories, such counterfact theories can be explanatory but “the primary purpose of the counterfact theory is not to explain but to put forward the counterfacts.” (p. 17)

I’m not entirely sure what the point of this addition to Barkun’s taxonomy is; Barkun’s systemic theories assert the existence of a hidden facts whilst Feldman’s counterfact theories assert the existence of what she calls a “counter-history” but surely the one dovetails into the other?

Feldman’s examples of such counterfact theories, the Birther conspiracy theory (about President Obama’s supposed illegitimacy to be president of the USA) and claims about the covering up of evidence which suggests that UFOs are alien spacecraft, are, I think, problematic for her account precisely because these theories seek to explain both some contested phenomena (Obama’s reluctance to release the long-form copy of his birth certificate; various unexplained sightings in the skies) and the conspiracy which exists to suppress such information.

A lot, I think, rests upon the notion of contested evidence. Feldman, on page 18, talks about how event theories work with uncontested facts whilst systemic and counterfact theories challenged the uncontested facts and argue for different facts to be accepted within the scope of the argument. Feldman seems to think this is a problem for such theories, but surely this is a problem for theories (especially explanations) of all stripes because sometimes the evidence really is interpretated differently and thus what is considered factual to one theorist is controversial to another.

In the end, though, Feldman’s more sophisitcated definition of a counterfact theory, which she puts forward in the last half of her paper, seems close to her description of a systemic theory:

A CFCT is a counter-narrative account about a significant portion of reality, asserting counterfacts, knowledge of which has been suppressed by a conspiracy of powerful actors usually for their own sinister purposes. (p. 19)

In this definition such counterfact theorists are asserting the existence and activities of hidden, powerful, long-term and often large groups of conspirators, whose activities might well be responsible for large chunks of world history, in this case a set of counterfacts. Thus, it looks to me that Feldman has simply elaborated on Barkun’s thesis, rather than added a new category of conspiracy theory to it.

I’m also not convinced, even if we grant that systemic theories and counterfact theories are different, that such theories are not primarily explanatory. Surely, if Feldman and Barkun are correct, they explain both the existence of a set of conspirators and the reason why such conspirators and their aims remain (largely) unacknowledged by the general populace? Yes, they do this by asserting reasons as to why the conspiracy is not well known, but the assertion of the hidden facts or counterfacts is part of the explanation. Most conspiracy theories are of the type “You don’t know this, but…” where the explanation of the clause after the “but” also explains why you do not know it.

Indeed, Feldman, I think, acknowledges this when she writes:

In practice it may be hard to draw clear lines between ECTs and CFCTs, since the latter do provide some explanation and the former do put forward some counterfacts. (p. 20)

Feldman admits to this but goes on to talk about “idealized” forms of these explanations (p. 19), which suggests to me that she is working with a spectrum here rather than hard-and-fast types of conspiracy theories. Indeed, I think it turns out that what she is talking about is not types of conspiracy theories at all, but rather the kind of strategies conspiracy theorists might use to try and persuade non-conspiracy theorists:

It is useful to pay attention to distinctive strategies that proponents of conspiracy theories deploy. ECT proponents turn their guns on the explanatory adequacy of the official account. In contrast, proponents of CFCTs attack accepted facts in order to clear the field for their counterfacts. To do so, they target the evidence supporting accepted facts by disputing its legitimacy and then doing the same with any additional evidence provided in response to the earlier challenges. Few if any of the accepted facts in the relevant range are left unchallenged on the grounds that proffered proofs or evidence for these facts are defective. (p. 19-20)

I think her argument just shows that the dialect of conspiracy theorising is multifaceted. I don’t think it shows that some conspiracy theories are not primarily explanatory and I don’t think it shows that there is a difference between so-called “systemic theories” and “counterfact theories.” Rather, it shows that some conspiracy theorists want to assert claims of conspiracy that link multiple events, cite the existence of disinformation and are (often?) inferences which are not warranted by the actual evidence.

The last third of her paper supports my contention, I think. Feldman describes how counterfact theorists put forward and argue for their views and what she describes is the strategy of particular conspiracy theorists rather than something which is unique to their particular conspiracy theories. I don’t even think the process she describes is one that is unique to conspiracy theorists (let alone her counterfact theorists).

Maybe the problem (at least to my mind) is not recognising that the process of coming up with a conspiracy theory (conspiracy theorising) is not the same thing as analysing the merit of a given conspiracy theory? There are lots of ways to generate a conspiracy theory (and to defend it) but that doesn’t necessarily tell us that process by which the theory was generated makes the theory itself good or bad (yes, there is going to be some connection between vapid conspiracy theorising and the merit of the expressed conspiracy theory, but it isn’t so tight a connection that we use it to dismiss particular conspiracy theories, let alone conspiracy theories in general). Lots of good scientists come up with inadequate scientific hypotheses; some conspiracy theorists generate warranted conspiracy theories (and might, in some cases, stumble quite accidentally, upon the truth).

Feldman ends with this:

Diagnosing a theory as a counterfact theory goes a significant distance in suggesting the futility in engaging the theory as evidence based, and indeed presumptively supports assessing it and its proponents epistemically defective. Epistemic evaluation might be beside the point, however, when dealing with CFCT proponents. Epistemic considerations relate to the way beliefs connect to evidence and at least indirectly, truth or likelihood of truth. While counterfact theorists purport truth, perhaps the kind of truth we should take them to mean is not factual but expressive—the theory is “true” because it expresses a deeply held world view, a subjective set of connected associations, values and meanings. It is possible to take notice of the expressive truth of the theory without engaging in futile exchanges about facts and counterfacts. The point of engaging such theorists is therapeutic rather than epistemic. By engaging sincere counterfact theorists on their underlying expressive truth, perhaps the roots of their views can be exposed, allowing them to the opportunity to understand what they are expressing through their views, and allowing outsiders to understand the meanings and values roiling the body politic. (p. 22)

Once again, I think this points towards Feldman’s analysis really being on the strategies certain kinds of conspiracy theorists use to argue their views, which does not, I would argue, necessarily tell us anything about the merit/warrant of such views. Yes, the way that we come up with and support our theories has some bearing on the merits of our theories, but I think we should be cautious and not dismiss particular conspiracy theories (or conspiracy theories in general) because of the way in which the conspiracy theorist theorises.

Tony Sobrado’s article “Unbelievable” in the June 2012 issue of “The Skeptic” treats conspiracy theories as a species of what Sobrado calls “pseudo-theories.” Sobrado runs an analogy between the demarcation of the (natural) and pseudo-sciences and the demarcation between theory (proper) and pseudo-theories. His analogy is then used to argue for the claim that conspiracy theories fail the test of being anything other than pseudo-theories, which in turn justifies our suspicion of such theories.

Obviously, given that my thesis is called “In defence of conspiracy theories,” Sobrado and I do not see eye-to-eye in this matter. Indeed, I find his argument perplexing, in part because I think he applies the wrong tool to the analysis of conspiracy theories (falsificationism) and he buys into a pejorative definition of conspiracy theory (by talking almost solely about what he calls “meta-conspiracy theories:” the ones which cite the existence of the New World Order, et cetera) ((I also think he buys into Popper’s notion of the conspiracy theory of society when he writes:

This then leads to the paradox in conspiracy theory with regards to observed social phenomena and epistemology. This is that the observed phenomenon is allocated to the realm of conspiratorial explanation. The explanation encapsulates the activity of cabalist agents operating illustrious tricks of misdirection yet simultaneously these grand tricks are not only detected by conspiracy theorists but also are fully deciphered. We are thus left with a logical dissonance because the conspirators are both fully competent and almost omnipotent like in that they can control all facets of social activity but are completely inept in the maintenance of secrecy as they leave an amassed trail of clues behind for conspirators to find. (p. 24)

Sobrado, like Popper before him, seems to think there is some kind of weird paradox between the claims of seemingly all-powerful conspirators and their plots being known about, but as Charles Pigden wrote in “Popper Revisited, or What is wrong with conspiracy theories anyway?” this thesis appears to be a bit of a strawman argument against belief in conspiracy theories.)) one that makes his argument trivially valid but skirts around the interesting epistemic issues.

Sobrado’s article is, ostenisbly, an argument about how we can apply some theories from the Philosophy of Science to the analysis of conspiracy theories. His argument is based upon an understanding of how philosophers of the Natural Sciences talk about theory and the various desiderata that are currently in vogue when we talk about such theories being adequate. However, I think Sobrado is mistaken to talk about theory sui generis in this way, because he is talking about theories in the Natural Sciences and then importing that discussion to theories in the Social Sciences.

Firstly, take one of the Holy Grails of the scientific method: prediction. These abound in the natural sciences, ranging from how, when, and why your PC will turn on to planes flying and equations of time and space. The social sciences tread a more precarious and unreliable ground. However, through the collection of data based on conceptualised variables along with statistical models of causation, predictions can be levied. Anyone who has an investment portfolio can see the benefits of employing time series and regression analysis in economics although the latest financial crises illustrates that these predictions are far from completely accurate. (p. 23)

Herein lies the first problem: what is he defining as the “Social Sciences” here? Is Anthropology, under his understanding, a social science? Is History? Because it seems he has chosen an example here (Economics) which looks, at first glance, to be a good fit/analogous with the theories of the Natural Sciences but may not be representative of the Social Sciences as a whole.

For example, if History is a Social Science, then prediction is questionable as a shared feature between the Natural and Social Sciences, given that historical explanations are often contextualised to one time and place and if you force them into a form where they can be made to appear predicative, such predictions are either hopelessly vague (“Monarchies get overthrown when the middle-classes become powerful”) or false (“Monarchies get overthrown when the middle-classes become powerful”). The same kind of question can be raised about Sociology (in which many adequate sociological theories explain the phenomenology of a social group at some particular time), Anthropology, Geography and the like. Do we expect all the adequate theories in these Social Sciences to be predicative? Some very well might be, but many aren’t, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for many of those theories, given that they still adequately explain phenomena in the domain of that particular social science.

I think, then, that Sobrado has, presumably inadvertantly, chosen an example (Economics) which closely adheres to the standards of the Natural Sciences (although my suspicion is that most Economics is more like Sociology and the like, so the fit is partial at best). He has then inferred if Economics can be predicative, then not only should the other Social Sciences should be as well, but as conspiracy theories fail to be predicative, they are pseudo-theoretic.

I am not at all convinced. As I argue in my thesis, conspiracy theories are a kind of explanation (specifically, historical explanations) and whilst scientific explanations typically act as both predictions and retrodictions, social scientific ones (especially historical theories) are not necessarily predicative (although it’s nice when they can be). Prediction might well be a “holy grail” for theories in the Natural Sciences, but it’s not clear it is a disiderata for theories in the Social Sciences.

Sobrado also brings in talk of falsificationism, stating that as conspiracy theories cannot be falisified, they are, consequently, pseudo-theories (p. 23). For one thing, the process of falsificiationism differentiates between the theories which are scientific and non-scientific theories. If a purported “scientific theory” cannot be falsified, then it can rightly be considered “pseudo-scientific.” That being said, falsificationism isn’t necessarily a useful demarcation between adequate theories in the Social Sciences. Certainly, according to some philosophers of Science, the theories of the Social Sciences are not examples of kinds of theories we find in the Natural Sciences. Thus, while under Popper’s view such non-science theories might well be unfalsifiable, that doesn’t mean they are pseudo-scientific (say, in the way that Homeopathy is). If a theory is unfalsifiable it is, according to Popper, not a scientific theory (and thus we should not accept it in the packet of scientific theories) but just because a theory is unfalsifiable, that doesn’t make it a pseudo-theory because whilst being falisifiable is important to theories in the Natural Sciences, it isn’t clear that it’s a desiderata of theories in the Social Sciences. Lots of theories in the social sciences are unfalsifiable but still adequate ((I’m leaving to one side all the attendant criticisms of the thesis of Falsificationism which indicates that it might not be a good demarcating criterion between the Natural Sciences and the pseudosciences and that it might not even be a feature of theories in the Natural Sciences anyway.)).

Also, I have to ask, has Sobrado not read Brian L. Keeley’s seminal (at least with respect to the philosophy of conspiracy theories) “Of Conspiracy Theories?” Keeley argues that falsification is a fine thesis but just not applicable to things like conspiracy theories. To quote:

By hypothesis, the conspiracy theorist is struggling to explain phenomena that other, presumably powerful, agents are actively seeking to keep secret. Unlike the case of science, where nature is construed as a passive and uninterested party with respect to human-knowledge gathering activities, the conspiracy theorist is working in a domain where the investigated actively seeks to hamper the investigation. Imagine if neutrinos were not simply hard to detect, but actively sought to avoid detection! This is exactly the case with which conspiracy theorists contend we are confronted in the cases they seek to explain. This is why countervailing evidence and lack of evidence can and ought to be construed as supporting their theories. (p. 120)

and:

It is not ad hoc to suppose that false and misleading data will be thrown your way when one supposes that there is somebody out there actively throwing that data at you. (p. 121)

and:

Falsifiability is a perfectly fine criterion in the case of natural science when the target of investigation is neutral with respect to our queries, but it seems much less appropriate in the case of the phenomena covered by conspiracy theories. (p. 121)

If there are conspiracies in existence, we should expect evidence for them to be hard to come by and the very evidence which might falsify such a conspiracy theory might well be disinformation that has been put out there by the conspirators in order to hide or obfuscate evidence for the existence of said conspiracy.

In short, if it turns out that the kind of things which make theories in the Social Sciences adequate are different from those of the Natural Sciences, then Sobrado’s analogy between the pseudo-sciences and what Sobrado calls “pseudo-theories” might very well fall down. I think this is yet another article (common to the field) where the author assumes conspiracy theories must be, sui generis, unwarranted and thus constructs a case for said lack of warrant. In this instance, Sobrado applies an understanding of the Philosophy of the (Natural) Sciences to conspiracy theories without, it seems, realising that the criteria by which we analyse the Natural Sciences is not necessarily the same as the way we appraise theories in the Social Sciences (of which conspiracy theories are a subset).

Juha Räikkä, “The Ethics of Conspiracy Theorizing” in The Journal of Value Inquiry (2009) 43:457–468

Juha Räikkä’s paper “The Ethics of Conspiracy Theorizing” worried me, because I currently have in preparation a project on the ethics of investigation into conspiracy theories (i.e. when is it going to be appropriate to not just believe conspiracy theories but also when is it going to be rational to investigate them, especially in case were they seem unwarranted but, if true, would be the kind of thing we should know about). Having covered Räikkä’s 2009 paper “On Political Conspiracy Theories” (in the Journal of Political Philosophy) in my thesis I was both curious to see what new material Räikkä would bring to the debate but also concerned that maybe the ethics of conspiracy theorising might well say some of the things I was planning on saying.

Luckily for me, Räikkä’s paper does not presage my new research project. Unluckily (for someone at least) I am not convinced by Räikkä’s argument about the ethics of conspiracy theorising.

Let me start with a minor but still irkingly particular problem I have with Räikkä’s analysis: his distinction between “global” and “local” conspiracy theories.

A conspiracy theory is global rather than local when the person who advances it aims to explain global or international events or when the explanation the person provides refers to international affairs. (p. 459)

I don’t run such a distinction in the thesis because I don’t need to; my argument that conspiracy theories can be warranted (and the attendant analysis of how we infer to the existence of a conspiracy) isn’t in anyway predicated on the size of the conspiracy. As such, I do not distinguish between local conspiracies (say, the organisation of a surprise party) with global conspiracies (the destruction of the Twin Towers) because I don’t think size really has much to do with the warrant/rationality (or lack thereof) of such beliefs. I think it is a distinction which seems all very nice but doesn’t actually do anything to advance our understanding of whether belief in conspiracy theories (or how they are generated) is warranted. That being said, Räikkä uses his notion of global conspiracies to admit to yet another class of conspiracy theory, the “total conspiracy theory:”

Total theories are advanced to explain the course of world history or the whole of global politics by referring to a conspiracy or a series of conspiracies. (p. 459)

Now, I can kind of see why you might want to define a set of total conspiracy theories: these are the kinds of conspiracy theories which most people (perhaps rightfully) find epistemically suspicious, given that whilst we can easily point towards, in Räikkä’s terms, warranted local and global conspiracy theories, the evidence seems to be against total conspiracy theories. However, I worry that running such a set of distinctions is just another way of defining away problem cases as ipso facto unwarranted (and thus ignoring the possibility that maybe there is an argument for there being a total conspiracy in effect). Indeed, on page 460, Räikkä basically defines away total conspiracy theories as being unwarranted because if they were true, then the entire history of the world, apparently, would be the result of a conspiracy and Räikkä thinks this is obviously false. He ends up throwing away a class of conspiracy theory because he thinks such claims are ridiculous, but that seems like a weird move to make if we aren’t going to inspect the arguments for such total conspiracy theories.

I also was perplexed by this:

Although total theories can be and have been used for political purposes, they do not cause political quarrels as systematically as political conspiracy theories. Hence, total theories are not, strictly speaking, political theories, although total theories may naturally have political relevance. (p. 459-60)

That’s also weird. Why would you consider, because total theories explain all politics (and everything else) with reference to some controlling group, that such theories are non-political? Surely, indeed as Räikkä goes on to argue, these total conspiracy theories end up being very much structured on Left/Right lines, being that the groups which are considered to be “the menace” are the enemies of the theorist, politically-speaking.

It also doesn’t help that his set of distinctions between the sizes of conspiracy theories doesn’t really play much of a role in his argument about the value/consequences of conspiracy theorising.

Räikkä’s purpose, in “The Ethics of Conspiracy Theorizing” is to analyse whether it is ethical to theorise about conspiracies. He summarises some of the views various theorists have had about the virtue (or lack thereof) of political conspiracy theorising but then goes on to say something I think is both odd and skews the rest of the paper.

For our purposes, it is more important to pay attention to the fact that every now and then people have negative attitudes toward single conspiracy theories. If we assume that they are justified in having their negative attitudes, we can ask what justifies them. (p. 462)

Räikkä’s argument seems to be based upon adopting the common usage form of “conspiracy theory” as being an example of a suspicious belief to hold. Surely, I would argue, that just makes the rest of his argument trivially true, given that Räikkä then goes on to argue that conspiracy theorising is unethical. Because, whilst Räikkä started the paper with the claim:

The ethical evaluation of conspiracy theorizing as a cultural phenomenon should be distinguished from the ethical evaluation of particular conspiracy theories. Political conspiracy theorizing may be a valuable cultural phenomenon, even if most or all political conspiracy theories have moral costs. (p. 458)

his focus is really on the unethical consequences of conspiracy theorising. I think he ends up labelling conspiracy theorising in the pejorative sense rather than asking when it might not be an irrational thing to engage in. As I said, I think his argument is skewed here because he assumes that we have grounds to be suspicious of conspiracy theorising and thus seeks to justify them. This, I would argue, is the wrong way to deal with these suspicions. We need to know if the suspicions are justified, not assume they are justified and then work out the how and why. Assuming conspiracy theorising to be suspicious, without looking at the argument for that suspicion, means you are going to end up playing down the virtues and overplaying the negative consequences of such theorising. He writes:

Too often the conspiracy theorist gets her motivation for conspiracy theorizing from her prejudices about religions, mass media, professional elites, public health authorities, academia, intelligence agencies, the police and the military. (p. 463)

To which I say “So do non-conspiracy theorists.” Räikkä charges conspiracy theorists with, it seems, being more involved, and prejudicial than non-conspiracy theorists but it isn’t clear that this is really the case. Were Woodward and Bernstein particularly prejudiced journalists? Was John Dewey (and the rest of the Dewey Commission) particularly prejudiced when they investigated the Moscow Trials? This seems like the kind of bold assertion (about the psychology of conspiracy theorists) that needs to be based upon evidence rather than anecdote (Räikkä’s evidence for this claim is to cite the Conspiracy Encyclopedia; hardly the best source for the psychological attitudes of conspiracy theorists and there is still the lingering question of “Isn’t this true of non-conspiracy theorists as well?).

But the real problem I have with this paper is the analogy Räikkä runs between apologists for the War on Terror and those who argue that there are benefits to conspiracy theorising:

For a comparison, let us consider the following argument in defense of what is often called the war against terrorism, where the conclusion is that the war against terrorism is morally justified, as it serves extremely important goals such as democracy, justice, and freedom. It is true that the individual actions in the war violate systematically human rights and narrow basic rights of people all over the world. In target countries human sacrifices are common. The war harms especially women and children in many areas. No doubt, these are moral costs of the war, but, the argument continues, they are small price to pay. Although some individual actions may be unnecessary and could be replaced by more humane actions, an effective warfare requires actions that are not morally acceptable if evaluated one by one. Intentional killing of non-combatants is generally morally impermissible, but in the context of terrorism it may be morally permissible and even required in order to remove the terrorist threat.

Whatever the initial plausibility of the argument may be thought to be, it will not convince the opponents of the war against terrorism. It is unclear whether the alleged goals of the war are consistent with the means used in it. It is also unclear whether the means are necessary or even effective. People who defend conspiracy theorizing by referring to its desirable social consequences should be ready to face similar suspicions. (p. 464)

I think this is both a terrible analogy (because theorising that a conspiracy might be in existence is not the same thing as making a moral claim for a war) and it somewhat shows that, despite the neutral language Räikkä uses at the beginning of the paper, his view on conspiracy theorising is obviously one of moral condemnation.

When it comes to political conspiracy theorizing, publishing suspicions can be morally problematic, because harsh claims are made in too early a stage of the investigations. (p. 466)

This seems to be his main worry but if this is the cost of conspiracy theorising he is worried about, then the war analogy really is very, very terrible indeed. This is the ethics argument the author is running. It’s about the cost of accusing someone of conspiracy rather than looking at whether such a claim is worthy of investigation. The former issue, however, bears on the latter because if we think we should not conspiracy theorise because such claims are “harsh,” then that rules out some investigation into claims of conspiracy which might turn out to be warranted.

Whilst I agree that we should look at more prosaic alternative explanations whenever possible, we should not reject conspiracy theorising merely because it might present some people or organisations in a bad light. For one, that may very well allow conspiracies to flourish and, for another, given the way we treat conspiracy theorising in our culture, such claims are not likely to be taken all that seriously anyway.

Joseph E. Uscinski, Joseph M. Parent and Bethany Torres, “Conspiracy Theories are for Losers,” Presented at the 2011 American Political Science Association annual conference, Seattle, Washington, the University of Miami.

Read it here

“Conspiracy Theories are for Losers” is a political science paper which makes a very bold claim: the primary factor in conspiracy theorising is political (rather than sociological or psychological), a claim that, unfortunately, I do not think is supported by the evidence the authors present.

The causes of conspiracy theories are not primarily philosophical, psychological, or sociological—they are political. Conspiracy theories tend to resonate when they help vulnerable groups manage threats. They do this because successful conspiracy theories have a strategic logic that sharpens internal cohesion and focuses attention on dangers. During times of low external threat, we find regular alternation between left-wing groups out of power blaming right-wing groups in power for conspiring against them followed by the reverse. During times of high external threat, we find infighting receding and foreigner-fearing conspiracy theories coming to the fore. Because defeat is their biggest inducement, conspiracy theories are for losers (speaking descriptively, not pejoratively.) (p. 5)

The main problem with this paper is the strong conclusion the authors draw. They claim that conspiracy theorising is foremost a political activity when, really, they should be saying something like political factors have significant influence on conspiracy theorising. This is a weaker claim but it follows from their argument. The stronger claim, about the primacy of political factors in conspiracy theorising, can only be made with several caveats, caveats which end up undermining the novelty of their argument.

I can understand why the authors push for a bold conclusion: the claim that political factors have significant influence on conspiracy theorising is not particularly novel and therefore it is not very interesting. For example, Mark Fenster, in his book “Conspiracy Theories – Secrecy and Power in American Culture” (a book the authors cite) argues that conspiracy theorising on the part of groups of conspiracy theorists is significantly affected by political allegiance. Indeed, almost everyone in the field agrees that political views influence the types and kinds of conspiracies people are prone to, and conspiracy theory historians (like Victoria Emma Pagán in her book “Conspiracy Narratives in Roman History” and Thomas E. Kaiser, Marisa Linton and Peter R. Campbell’s book “Conspiracy in the French Revolution”) have all expressed theories about how conspiracy theories reflect the political power disbalances of their days.

The problem for the argument (towards the strong conclusion) in “Conspiracy Theories are for Losers” is, I think, that it relies both upon ignoring sociological contributions to the debate about conspiracy theories and making a claim about political identity which ignores how such identity is basically social in character. ((The authors are somewhat dismissive of the existing literature on conspiracy theorising in Psychology, Sociology and Philosophy. I think the authors miss the point of the philosophical literature. Whilst we talk a little about the conditions of conspiracy theorising, most of the philosophical interest in conspiracy theories has been epistemic. We (philosophers) are interested in when it is rational to believe given conspiracy theories and the kind of conditions under which it is reasonable to be a conspiracy theorist. When it comes to questions about the resonance of conspiracy theories in a given context… That kind of issue is best answered by experts in fields which study that kind of thing (Sociology, History, Psychology and Political Studies) and the fact that philosophers might not have much to say on it doesn’t mean our contributions elsewhere aren’t important. Still, I’m not concerned here with perceived slights against Philosophy but, rather, the (slight) slight against Sociology the authors seem committed to.))

The authors characterise the sociological contribution to the debate on conspiracy theorising in the following passage:

Others have examined conspiracy theories from sociological and ethno-sociological viewpoints, arguing that culture is key in contextualizing conspiracy theorizing. How groups view themselves in relation to others helps determine how likely they are to view events as conspiracy related (Goldberg 2001; Locke 2009; Simmons and Parsons 2005; Waters 1997; Fenster 1999; Hellinger 2003; Melley 2000). By this logic, culture is a filter that screens out unflattering information and favors complimentary narratives. Inferior status is explained away by immoral machinations or illegal maneuvers, which grants the implied honor of being a worthy opponent or necessitating cheating to win.

Sociological approaches are adept at describing the worldview of conspiracy theorists, and internal group dynamics. But lush detail is the main strength and weakness of these approaches. By focusing on individual groups and individual conspiracies, sociological work sacrifices the systematic comparisons necessary to make conclusions with broader validity. These scholars accept conspiracy theories as an abstract concept, but have poured their energies into understanding the subject at a more granular level. (p. 12)

Meanwhile, the authors characterise their contribution to the debate on conspiracy theorising as follows:

In a nutshell, our main claim is that perceived power asymmetries drive conspiracy talk. (p. 13)

and:

By our logic, all groups are likely to engage in conspiracy theorizing when they suffer defeats (or toil at the bottom of a perceived asymmetry), and the more defeats they suffer (or the more toiling they do) the more popular and stubborn conspiracy beliefs are. (p. 16)

They base their analysis upon, what I take is, this crucial definition:

Fundamentally, our explanation is about groups competing for power. Groups perform at least two functions: coordination and distribution. To compete against others, groups coordinate individuals to create or capture resources, broadly interpreted, and then distribute those spoils authoritatively. These two tasks are in tension; there are always incentives to cooperate to expand the size of the pie, and compete for a greater slice of the pie. The ratio between the two is primarily a product of external threat (Simmel 1964; Coser 1956; Stein 1976). So the larger outside dangers loom, the more in-group cooperation and less distributional strife there is likely to be. (p. 14)

If their analysis is really one about group dynamics, how is this different from the sociological approach which they claim is lush but “sacrifices the systematic comparisons necessary to make conclusions with broader validity”? ((I don’t actually accept that the sociological views of Fenster and company lack the ability to make such systemic comparisons, but that is neither here nor there for my argument.)) If conspiracy theorising is both political and group-based, do these groups exist as explicit political entities made up of definite members (say, Republican party-members and Democrats) or are they implicit (say, the Left vs. the Right)? i.e. Having said “It’s political!” doesn’t it turn out that the authors’ argument ends up being social (i.e. rooted in sociology) after all?

I think this is an important question, and it is not one the authors’ come up with nor given any approximate answer to. They want their analysis to be purely political but what they take to be a purely political analysis seems heavily indebted to sociology.

Indeed, this seems to come out clearly in their actual data set. The claim to fame of this paper is that they have gathered quite the longitudinal dataset, having canvassed over a hundred years of published letters to the editor at the New York Times. The authors say an awful lot about how they picked out letters which are examples of conspiracy theorising, how they differentiated between elite vs. non-elite writers and the like, but I think they over looked one crucial factor. Because it is reasonable to say that over time political groups change in constitution, the analysis the authors engage in when identifying the political factors at work when conspiracy theories are mused about in these letters really must be based, at least in part, in Sociology (and thus not primarily politically after all), unless they want to make some kind of claim that the Republicans of the early Twentieth Century are the same kind of people as the Republicans who back the Romney-Ryan ticket. Now, maybe they do, but it would be both a weird and implausible claim. The New Zealand Labour Party of today is quite different from the New Zealand Labour Party of the late Eighties and the kind of support that party had in the early part of the 20th Century is not necessarily where it draws its support today.

My point is this: what counts as a political factor, it seems, in the authors’ analysis, comes from some notion of an individual identifying with a political view/affiliation/identity which ends up being social (or cultural) in nature. If all the argument is ends up being “People of political stripe X, when not the dominant group in government, theorise about conspiracies by people of political strip Y, who are in government,” then it seems we’re talking about a thesis in sociology with a special emphasis on political groups.

It doesn’t seem like they are suggesting that it is political factors which are especially responsible for conspiracy theorising but, rather, that political factors are important when considering the type and kind of conspiracy theorising that goes on with respect to certain (politically interested/involved) groups of people.

Still, there is a lot to like about this paper (sans the overstated conclusion). It presents some interesting data (I’m not convinced that it’s a sufficiently large sample to infer much from, but that’s a matter for another time) covering quite a long period of time that shows that a particular correlation we’ve always suspected of being true (the people who don’t hold power tend to theorise the existence of conspiracies amongst those who do) and I particularly like this comment about transparency:

More positively, our policy recommendations are modest but seek to amplify the virtues of liberal democratic governance. Greater governmental transparency will not quell the power asymmetries that feed conspiracy theories. Some people will always be unreachable. But if knowledge is power, increased transparency blunts some of the advantages of power asymmetries and takes some of the wind out of conspiracy theorists’ sails. Of course, there are countervailing dangers to more transparency, but a marginal decrease in conspiracy theorizing is at least worth weighing against those risks. (p. 33)