Category: Reviews

Shit Happens – Peter Mandik

Abstract:

In this paper I embrace what Brian Keeley calls in “Of Conspiracy Theories” the absurdist horn of the dilemma for philosophers who criticize such theories. I thus defend the view that there is indeed something deeply epistemically wrong with conspiracy theorizing. My complaint is that conspiracy theories apply intentional explanations to situations that give rise to special problems concerning the elimination of competing intentional explanations.

Review:

I’m not really sure, some days, where I fall in the schema of answers to ‘Is belief in Conspiracy Theories rational?’ I’m obviously on the side of ‘No,’ but I think it’s a little more like ‘Not really, no, but…’ Mandik’s paper is one of those pieces that makes me think my sympathy is really with the ‘Yes, but…’ crowd (of which Coady and Pigden are the best examples). Mandik is arguing for what Coady calls the Coincidence Thesis; it is more rational to assume that things just happen than to posit intentional agency. Mandik’s greater thesis is really an argument against the traditional account of Historical Explanations. Because we cannot know what an agent (or set of agents) intended to do we should prefer non-intentional explanations of the variety of ‘shit happens’ (this is a little misleading; Mandik isn’t saying that events happen randomly but rather that we cannot adequately describe them as happening intentionally). It’s an interesting argument (and one that has been hashed out agian and again since the 1960s, most famously and influentially by Donald Davidson in ‘Actions, Reasons and Causes’) but no matter what you think about about the status of Historical Explanations (I think that they a) obviously exist and b) have a different epistemic status to that of explanations in the Natural Sciences) I think Mandik gets entirely the wrong end of the stick by arguing that Conspiracy Theories look like classical examples of Historical Explanations where the explanada is somehow ‘witnessed’ by the person providing the reasons for the explanadum. This seems wrong; Conspiracy Theorists, I think, infer the existence of Conspiracy Theories rather than witness them. Thus a lot of what Mandik says in this paper misses the point (I think), although he does argue fairly well for a set of individually necessary, jointly sufficient set of conditions for what counts as a Conspiracy Theory (with the exception of his claim of secrecy, which just doesn’t work at all).

Are Conspiracy Theorists Irrational? – David Coady

Abstract:

It is widely believed that to be a conspiracy theorist is to suffer from a form of irrationality. After considering the merits and defects of a variety of accounts of what it is to be a conspiracy theorist, I draw three conclusions. One, on the best definitions of what it is to be a conspiracy theorist, conspiracy theorists do not deserve their reputation for irrationality. Two, there may be occasions on which we should settle for an inferior definition which entails that conspiracy theorists are after all irrational. Three, if and when we do this, we should recognise that conspiracy theorists so understood are at one end of a spectrum, and the really worrying form of irrationality is at the other end.

Review:

I heard this paper weeks before I read it and only when carefully working through it did I realise that it is a paper not on Conspiracy Theories but rather on Conspiracy Theorists. Seems obvious from the abstract but when I heard the paper it was a mere two hours before my own paper on a related topic and I simply heard what I was expecting to hear. The paper is a reply to Levy’s paper where David (I think regretfully) critiques Levy’s use of a term David introduced to the debate, ‘Official Stories.’ David’s thesis is simple; there are two senses of Conspiracy Theorist; those who are interested in Conspiracy Theories and those who excessively believe in them. The pejorative sense of Conspiracy Theorist belongs to the latter but once we recognise that fact it becomes clear that we need to introduce labels for other parts of the associated spectrum, such as Coincidence Theorists, who are people who are inclined to excessively not believe in Conspiracy Theories. Part of his thesis is a direct rebuttal of Levy; Levy’s thesis has it that trusting epistemic authorities is a truth-conducive activity. David points out that this is all well and good but it is just an ideal and possibly even a dangerous one as it could (as he critiques Chomsky and Co. for as well) allow some malign behaviours to go unnoticed. Under Levy’s ‘deeply social’ epistemology the externality of knowledge (well, the way it is arbitrated by reality) should lead to socially-networked claims being truth-conducive but David’s point is that they don’t and Levy’s claim that truth is rewarded seems patently untrue (witness the success of the politicians who backed the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that the Hussein-led regime was developing WMDs. His other example is Lysenko-ism in Communist Russia). David then runs a line that goes something like this: Conspiracy Theorists (of either ilk) have a role in the transmission of propositions in a community of speakers and hearers because even if we consider them to be irrational (because they do make the most of our shared epistemic resources) the fact that they question sources can be a) rational or b) can lead to greater rationality because if they are wrong we can gain further trust in these shared epistemic resources. The so-called intellectual vice of Conspiracy Theorists, excessive belief in a given theory, is shared by many others, of which Levy, Chomsky and Co. are examples thereof, and it is unfair to single out Conspiracy Theorists (especially as it tars two different groups, those who are interested and those who believe in with the same brush).

Radically Socialized Knowledge and Conspiracy Theories – Neil Levy

Abstract:

The typical explanation of an event or process which attracts the label ‘conspiracy theory’ is an explanation that conflicts with the account advanced by the relevant epistemic authorities. I argue that both for the layperson and for the intellectual, it is almost never rational to accept such a conspiracy theory. Knowledge is not merely shallowly social, in the manner recognized by social epistemology, it is also constitutively social: many kinds of knowledge only become accessible thanks to the agent’s embedding in an environment that includes other epistemic agents. Moreover, advances in knowledge typically require ongoing immersion in this social environment. But the intellectual who embraces a conspiracy theory risks cutting herself off from this environment, and therefore epistemically disabling herself. Embracing a conspiracy theory therefore places at risk the ability to engage in genuine enquiry, including the enquiry needed properly to evaluate the conspiracy theory.

Levy’s paper turns on two notions; epistemic authorities and a deeply social epistemology. The former, epistemic authorities, are a development of David Coady’s ‘Official Stories’ from his 2006 paper ‘Rumour Has It,’ a piece I am very familiar with, having written my most recent paper as a form of reply to it. Levy argues that appropriately formed epistemic authorities are a) figures that provide us warranted knowledge and b) tend to be ignored by people who subscribe to Conspiracy Theories. I shan’t say much about this because the next paper in the issue is a reply to Levy and my thoughts on the matter are in accord with it. His second point, the development of a deeply social epistemology, is really the crux of the article. Levy accuses the recent developers of Social Epistemology (Alvin Goldman and Frederick Schmitt, chiefly) of being too individualistic and not focussing enough on the social fabric of knowledge. Levy’s point is that it is external factors, to whit the external world, that really arbitrates knowledge claims. He runs a few examples from psychology to illustrate his point and then argues that most Social Epistemologists overly subscribe to an individualistic picture of the Mind and don’t appreciate just how we distribute our knowledge across individuals. Levy’s thesis is that any theory (conspiratorial) that conflicts with an official story (told by an appropriate epistemic authority) is prima facie unwarranted because a) the mechanisms of social knowledge (the transmission of propositions from speakers to hearers in a community are truth-conducive (I’d change this to talk about propositional plausibility myself) and b) we should prefer official stories (formed properly) over alternative explanations (especially since official stories often explain (the data of?) alternative explanations). I don’t think his move to a deeply social epistemology helps, however. Yes, we rely on (mind) external ‘devices’ but this isn’t so much an indication of a shared external world (that arbitrates the truth of knowledge claims) but rather just that we offload some processes that are too costly to perform ourselves (because we could do (most of) them if we had to). We rely on epistemic authorities because not relying on them means we have to do more work (work we could do if we needed to; Levy uses a rather strange example of calculators saying that we need them to do complex multiplication but that doesn’t seem to be the case. We rely on calculators because the time it would take to do complex multiplication mentally is time we could profitably use elsewhere). Levy is right to argue that externalities matter but I think he is wrong to argue that these external factors have not been taken into account by recent work in Social Epistemology, something that becomes clear in the next paper in the volume, by David Coady.

Abstract:

Following Clarke (2002), a Lakatosian approach is used to account for the epistemic development of conspiracy theories. It is then argued that the hyper-critical atmosphere of the internet has slowed down the development of conspiracy theories, discouraging conspiracy theorists from articulating explicit versions of their favoured theories, which could form the hard core of Lakatosian research programmes. The argument is illustrated with a study of the “controlled demolition” theory of the collapse of three towers at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Review:

Clarke’s hypothesis is that rather than engendering the growth of Conspiracy Theories the Internet has actually hindered them; theories that are subject to instant peer-review will fall apart unless they are rigourous, well-specified and, importantly, plausible. Clarke’s point seems to be that Conspiracy Theories on the net are neither rigourous nor well-specified. They tend to be negative accounts; the rival, ‘official’ explanation is shown to have errant data associated with it and so is ‘debunked’ leaving room for an alternative, Conspiracy Theory which is suggested rather than proved. Clarke further suggests that as Conspiracy Theorists know that their explanations will be subject to intense scrutiny by believers and skeptics alike that they are deliberately formed in a vague way, thus making them untestable (because no specific cabal is mooted, nor a specific motive given) and largely unassailable. They fail to be good theories and thus are representative of a degenerate research programme (to use Lakatos). He does give internet Conspiracy Theorists credit for advancing a hypothesis; an explanation sketch, if you will, but this isn’t sufficient for a progressive Research Programme (and likely indicates, if Clarke is correct about his developmental view (and I think he is), that this is because such theories can never become progressive because of the criticism they are subject to (I wonder if this has an analogue in the Natural Sciences (such as theories about Cold Fusion (indeed, that example of the scientists who went public a few years back before they submitted a peer-reviewed article is probably an example of what I am thinking)))).

Rational Fundamentalism? An Explanatory Model of Fundamentalist Beliefs – Michael Baurmann

Review:

The abstract worried me; it seemed uncomfortably close to the thesis I was advancing in my recent paper, what with all this talk of particularist trust and a focus on the plausibility of a proposition to a hearer being based upon its coherence with the hearer’s other beliefs. I needn’t have been concerned; the paper hardly touches on Conspiracy Theories at all and focuses mostly on religious fundamentalism. Whilst I think there are some similarities (mostly to do with the development of theories when they are isolated from ‘mainstream’ ‘consensus’ (I’m unsure of the correct terminology to use here, you see)) I think that Baurmann’s examples have too many disimilarities. I think that most of what he writes is true of cults, but its a mistake to think that cults are exemplars of other groups that hold strange beliefs, like Conspiracy Theorists. I think Baurmann’s focus on religious fundamentalism is a big mistake and it derails his project in regard to the epistemological concerns of Conspiracy Theorists. Still, he has introduced me to the notion of ‘particularist trust,’ a term I shall be introducing to my thesis and then modifying quite substantially (with argument as to why) in future work

So, a new issue of Episteme and with it comes new Conspiracy Theory content galore. I’m going to do a little bit of a review; give you the publicly available abstracts and then my brief comment-cum-review on the actual paper one by one. I’m halfway through the issue and so far I like the fact that I’m a) not wildly divergent in my thinking on the issue and b) I can see lots of little things I can improve upon or modify to show that my thesis is new and novel.(I’m also seeing a project in the transmission of propositions, of which my (current) thesis is just a small part of, a project that could lead to a more mainstream critique of Social Epistemology…)

God as the Ultimate Conspiracy Theory – Brian L. Keeley

Abstract:

Traditional secular conspiracy theories and explanations of worldly events in terms of supernatural agency share interesting epistemic features. This paper explores what can be called “supernatural conspiracy theories,” by considering such supernatural explanations through the lens of recent work on the epistemology of secular conspiracy theories. After considering the similarities and the differences between the two types of theories, the prospects for agnosticism both with respect to secular conspiracy theories and the existence of God are then considered. Arguments regarding secular conspiracy theories suggest ways to defend agnosticism with respect to God from arguments that agnosticism is not a logically stable position and that it ultimately collapses into atheism, as has been argued by N. Russell Hanson and others. I conclude that such attacks on religious agnosticism fail to appreciate the conspiratorial features of God’s alleged role in the universe.

Review:

Keeley’s paper is his second on Conspiracy Theories. He started the mainstream debate surrounding Conspiracy Theories in Epistemology with his article ‘Of Conspiracy Theories’ in the prestigious Journal of Philosophy (which basically has allowed this issue to even exist and also was the justification for the 2006 collection ‘Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate’). Keeley’s first paper developed a critique of Conspiracy Theories that argued that our prima facie case against such beliefs is warranted because they engender too much scepticism of social data. This time around he argues that we need to appreciate that in some debates an absence of evidence is evidence of absence and in other debates this is simply not true. He compares belief in Conspiracy Theories with belief in a God Who Works in Mysterious Ways, claiming that in some domains of inquiry we should expect the subjects we are investigating to be hidden or hiding. It’s an interesting thesis; in some fields of investigation we can generate positive epistemic grounds for a given claim, but in regards to the investigation of inscrutable or secretive ‘agents’ (such as we find in Conspiracy Theories and Theology) we need to determine this a priori and not by investigation (whichis a posteriori). In some fields absence of evidence is evidence of abscene (an inductive claim, methinks, appropriate to the Natural Sciences). In other fields absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and Keeley thinks that is true of the domain that contains beliefs such as Conspiracy Theories and claims about the existence of god(s).