The novel coronavirus pandemic has spawned numerous conspiracy theories, sometimes replicating faster than the virus itself. Some people have rumored that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a Chinese lab as an act of biological warfare, others insist that the vaccine against COVID-19 already exists, but is being withheld from the public by a powerful elite. Some even claim that COVID-19 doesn’t exist and was invented to cover up the symptoms caused by novel 5G networks. The favorite culprit of corona-conspiracies is probably Bill Gates, who somehow knew about this virus in 2015 already, and who is now bankrolling efforts to develop a vaccine.
Despite worries to the contrary, we are not living in an age of conspiracy. People have always discerned secret plots involving powerful people. In the Middle Ages, for instance, many devout Christians believed that the Black Death was spread by the Jews deliberately poisoning wells.
Why are conspiracy theories so timeless and pervasive? And how come virtually every historical event can be spun into a conspiracy theory, and will often be so spun? Why are some people more susceptible to conspiracy beliefs than others, and what sort of factors trigger conspiratorial thinking? In the past decade, psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, and philosophers have carried out sustained research into conspiracy theories.
One major finding of this research is that people are more likely to resort to conspiracies under conditions of uncertainty and when they experience low feelings of control. Belief in conspiracies is also associated with lower levels of analytical thinking, with socio-economic disadvantage, and with a tendency to detect patterns in an environment. But research also shows that these correlations are far from perfect. A high level of education does not inoculate someone against belief in conspiracies, and there are plenty of people with extremely high status and levels of control (a certain President comes to mind) who peddle all sorts of conspiracy theories. Indeed, there are so many different conspiracy theories on the marketplace that, as political scientist Joe Uscinski wrote in his recent book on the topic, “Everyone believes in at least one or a few conspiracy theories.”
So why do we believe in conspiracies in the first place? The most straightforward answer is of course the one that conspiracy buffs will be quick to point out: Conspiracies are a real phenomenon. No sensible person would deny that people occasionally form secret coalitions to achieve some nefarious goal. The pages of history are replete with examples of such plots: The murder of Julius Caesar was a conspiracy, as was the October Revolution in Russia and the Watergate break-in and cover-up, to list a few notable examples. Indeed, almost all government putsches, assassinations, and political revolutions fall under the rubric of “conspiracies.” People have been conspiring against other people for as long as people have been around. A species that has the cognitive abilities to engage in strategic planning, to form coalitions with others, and to strategically conceal information will almost certainly engage in conspiracies.
From an evolutionary point of view, it therefore makes sense that we have also evolved defenses against conspiracies. As Julius Caesar found out, being on the receiving end of a conspiracy can be highly detrimental to your biological fitness. And in order to foil a conspiracy, you first need to be believe it’s real. Those among our ancestors who were alert to clues suggesting that people were conspiring against them, and who managed to expose the plot before it was executed, were more likely to survive long enough to procreate. As with many other recurrent dangers, the problem of identifying conspiracies is solved by “error management theory,” which describes how to deal with errors carrying asymmetric costs. Inferring a conspiracy when there isn’t one (false positive) is less dangerous than failing to spot one when there is (false negative). Evolutionary psychologist Randolph Nesse compared this rule to the design of a smoke detector: We want the device to sound the alarm when there is an actual fire, even if that means having to put up with the occasional false alarm. We do try to strike a balance: Just as we don’t want our smoke detector to wake us up every night, we don’t want to turn into full-blown paranoiacs. But it pays to err on the side of caution, and error management theory determines exactly how far one should err, depending on the respective costs.
In that respect, conspiracy beliefs have similar roots to belief in magic and superstition, which also result from the logic of error management. Because ferreting out cause-and-effect was so important for our ancestors, we evolved brains that are susceptible to spurious causal correlations (“Better safe than sorry!”). But there is something special about conspiracy theories beyond these psychological roots: their warped epistemology. For an epistemologist, conspiracy theories are weird beasts. In effect, they are the only theories which predict an absence of evidence in their favor, and even the presence of evidence against them. If you conspire against someone, usually you don’t want your plans to be known to that person, since that would rather defeat the purpose of your plot. Even after your nefarious plans have been brought to fruition, you may still wish to keep the lid on the secret, for fear of reputational costs or social punishment. If you suspect that some people are conspiring against you, you will therefore not be deterred if the alleged conspirators deny everything, or if you don’t readily find evidence of some sinister goings-on. If your enemies are really smart, they might even fabricate evidence against your conspiracy hypothesis, to throw you off the scent.
Even though this train of thought makes sense, you can see how it might lead you astray. By their own logic, conspiracy theories allow you to explain away any apparent refutation or lack of evidence. Your theory can always be rescued from refutations and contrary arguments by simply widening the circle of conspirators, or by making them smarter and more powerful. If some piece of material evidence seems to refute your theory, you can say that it has been planted there. If an eyewitness contradicts your story, perhaps he was bribed. If an investigation by some reputable newspaper or government agency fails to unearth any signs of conspiracy, this just proves that they too must have been complicit in the plot. Indeed, academics who research conspiracy communities are regularly accused of sinister malfeasance by their own subjects.
These tacks are not just lame excuses for clinging to one’s pet theory. Pseudoscientists of every stripe resort to so-called immunizing strategies and ad hoc maneuvers when reality offers resistance. But this sort of reasoning follows from the very logic of conspiracy theories. If you are still in an early stage of investigating a possible conspiracy, you should not be deterred by your failure to unearth evidence of wrongdoing. Any detective knows that material evidence (fingerprints, DNA, a smoking gun) could conceivably have been planted by the real culprit to frame a perfectly innocent person (although such things happen less often in real life than in crime dramas with far-fetched plot twists). But at exactly what point should you abandon your conspiratorial hypothesis? Unfortunately, there’s no bright line separating reasonable theorizing from full-blown paranoia. Here’s what I find the most useful rule-of-thumb: if your conspiracy can only be rescued from refutation at the cost of making the alleged conspirators extraordinarily clever and incredibly powerful, then it’s probably time to give up your theory.
Take the claim that the World Trade Center towers were brought down by controlled demolition on September 11, 2001. Nobody has ever found any evidence of such an operation, but that’s exactly what we would expect if it had been carefully arranged in secret by powerful people, isn’t it? The trouble is that, as demolition experts will tell you, preparing a large building for controlled demolition is a complicated and laborious procedure, which may take weeks or even months. The notion that these huge buildings had been prepared for demolition in the weeks leading up to 9/11, without a single employee or visitor noticing anything suspicious (and without a single person spilling the beans afterwards), strains credulity to the point of free-fall collapse. As Benjamin Franklin once said: “Three people can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”
But with their warped epistemology, conspiracy theories can easily account for this sort of objection. After all, the 9/11 Truthers will tell you, how exactly are you so certain that it’s impossible to pull off such a complicated conspiracy? From your past experience with real conspiracies? But we only hear about those cases in which the facts were indeed revealed. If there ever have been conspiracies on the scale necessitated by the controlled demolition hypothesis of 9/11, they will never have made it into history books. Even the apparent evidence for Benjamin Franklin’s thesis (namely, the numerous failed attempts to keep a secret) can be explained away with a conspiratorial twist. Perhaps the conspirators sometimes deliberately allow for some small and unimportant truths to be spilled, in order to lull us into a false sense of security. By spoon-feeding us evidence that suggests that every conspiracy is exposed sooner or later and that it is impossible to keep a secret, our attention is diverted away from what is truly happening behind stage.
The philosopher Stephen Law compared irrational belief systems to “intellectual black holes,” in which people are drawn in and held captive. That metaphor is especially apposite for conspiracism. As you get sucked deeper and deeper into a conspiracy theory, it becomes more difficult to escape its gravitational pull. Moreover, one conspiracy theory often feeds into others. Researchers have found that one of the strongest predictors for belief in any particular conspiracy theory is belief in other conspiracy theories. This, too, is perfectly reasonable. Once you have accepted the notion that we have been massively deceived about one historical event (say, the moon landing), and that the conspirators have never been held accountable, you will become more suspicious about other official accounts of history. Indeed, why would you believe anything you read in the newspaper? One conspiracy leads to the next one, and both are reinforced by each other. Before you know it, you have crossed the event horizon of the black hole, the point beyond which return is impossible.
Now we can see why no historical event is immune to conspiracy theories, and why they will always sprout around major news stories like mushrooms after a hard rain. If you want to create your own conspiracy theory next time around, here’s a simple recipe to follow:
The official story. Whatever the official version of events accepted by mainstream media, governments, or scientists might be, say that it’s a cover-up fabricated and disseminated by a secret group of powerful people, to disguise something far more sinister. By definition, the efforts of the conspirators will appear successful, since the view they want to impose on the rest of society is exactly the official, mainstream one.
One complication arises if the received view of events already involves a conspiracy, as with the official 9/11 story (which, after all, involves a criminal plot by Al Qaeda against the United States). But such cases are easily dealt with: Just posit a higher-order conspiracy, in which the conspiracy of the official version is just a false-flag operation. Whoever is blamed in the official version is, in fact, innocent.
Refuting the official version. Scour the official version for any unresolved questions, gaps, uncertainties, puzzling details, or minor contradictions. Find as many of these as you can. These “errant data,” as philosopher Brian Keeley calls them, are your chief resource when setting the stage for your conspiracy theory. Now start by asking questions about the official story. If not all of them can be readily answered, then you have proof that the official version cannot possibly be true, that something far more sinister is going on. Since no historical account of any event, no matter how well-documented, is ever fully complete, this step will not be too difficult.
Exasperate your critics. People will try to explain your errant data within the framework of the official story. Don’t give up. Keep asking more questions and throw up more errant data. (You can even make stuff up; if your opponent can’t find the source, it must have been deleted from the Internet by the conspirators.) Eventually your critics will lose patience and start ignoring you, since it always takes far more time to answer a question than to pose one. Once they throw up their hands, ask them why they refuse to address all these unresolved questions? Tell them they must be hiding something.
Cui bono? Find anyone who has benefited in some way from the event in question, or could conceivably have benefited. That’s your culprit. As major historical events will always happen to benefit someone or another, this step also won’t be too difficult. (If Trump’s mishandling of this pandemic costs him his re-election, conspiracy theorists won’t have to look far for an answer to the cui bono question). If you can’t identify a good culprit, you can just skip this step. You always have the convenient excuse that the perpetrators were so adept in covering their tracks that they’re impossible to identify.
Lack of evidence for your conspiracy theory. As pointed out already, absence of evidence need never discourage you. If there really is a conspiracy going on, absence of evidence is precisely what you would expect. Didn’t I tell you the conspirators are very devious?
Evidence against your conspiracy theory. Whatever the nature of this evidence might be, you can always turn it on its head and present it as supporting your theory. It is reasonable, after all, to assume that the perpetrators have fabricated evidence to throw courageous truth-seekers such as yourself off the scent.
How to deal with critics. If you are attacked, accuse your critics of being complicit themselves, of being stooges paid to discredit honest investigators who risk exposing the plot. Or, of course, just gullible dupes who have been fooled by official propaganda.
I don’t mean to just disparage conspiracy theories as child’s play. Some of these steps may require considerable ingenuity and creativity. At some level, I even admire certain conspiracy theorists, with their self-sealing logic and marvelous agility at fending off counterattacks. Indeed, once in a while I can even feel their gravitational pull myself. Even though I firmly believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, that Neil Armstrong really walked on the moon, and that 19 hijackers with box cutters really brought down the Twin Towers, on some days I can feel the black hole of conspiracism exerting its epistemological pull on me, despite all rational objections. The theories may be crackpot, but their appeal endures.
Photo: Talkshow host Alex Jones has popularized numerous conspiracy theories. (Photo by Sean P. Anderson via Wikimedia Commons)
Maarten Boudry
Maarten Boudry is a philosopher of science and current holder of the Etienne Vermeersch Chair of Critical Thinking at Ghent University. His most recent book is Science Unlimited? On the Challenges of Scientism, co-edited with Massimo Pigliucci. He published more than 40 papers in academic journals, and several popular books in Dutch on critical thinking, illusions, and moral progress.
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The later Wittgenstein once defined philosophy as a “battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” His earlier philosophical incarnation once observed that “in philosophy the question, ‘What do we actually use this word or this proposition for?’ repeatedly leads to valuable insights.” He may have had the language of philosophical problems in mind, but clearly, razor-sharp questions about the meaning and use of terms have a role to play if philosophers choose to examine the language of other endeavors — like political-economic discourse. It’s a shame analytic philosophers never pursued how words and phrases can be weaponized: used as the verbal equivalent of clubs to keep us unwashed peons in line. Hence one will still learn more about weaponized language from Orwell than any professional philosopher.
In this light: is “conspiracy theory” a weaponized phrase? One sees it so commonly, applied to so many claims large and small where there is suspicion of wrongdoing or ulterior motives, that one has to wonder: is it possible to get past the rhetoric and unveil the truth? (Even in the “post-truth world” we are now said to inhabit?.)
One of the issues is nailing down the phrase’s referent with at least minimal precision, so that we know where it applies and where it doesn’t. By using it as a blanket slur (accompanied by “crackpot”), one has to wonder if what the phrase is being used to do is push us peons away from ideas we’re not supposed to think about. Pushing us? Who is doing the pushing? Those in media, academia, and elsewhere who are simply regurgitating what they’ve been taught, which is that “conspiracy theories” are bad or irrational. But has Maartin Boudry (anyone else) shown this? I think not.
For obviously, as he acknowledges, there have been — gasp! — numerous real conspiracies. He mentions Watergate, the Russian Revolution, and others. There was Iran-Contra. And if you accept the official story of 9/11, you still have a conspiracy, one directed by Osama bin Laden and his minions. Whether the JFK and RFK assassinations were done by conspiracies instead of “lone gunmen,” whether there were unseen state actors involved in 9/11, whether there is now more to the 2020 pandemic than meets the eye…. Those are the lines of thought we peons are not supposed to pursue. But the idea that Trump’s campaign colluded (conspired) with the Russians and that Trump knew about it … well, that’s another of those conspiracy claims that’s okay, I presume.
Are we really supposed to discern epistemological principles out of this, “warped” or otherwise? Are some conspiracy claims acceptable because they are “supported by evidence,” while others are “crackpotty” because they are not? Russian collusion claims turned out not to be evidence-based. So is the matter decided ideologically: the “valid” conspiracies are those named as such by left-liberals, while conservatives and the rest of us peons are to sit down, shut up, and listen to our betters.
You tell me, Mr. Boudry.
What might be helpful is something I’ve never seen in one of these “debunking” pieces: an interviewer actually sitting across a table with someone visible who believes in one or more “conspiracy theories,” listening to what he/she has to say without interrupting, how he/she argues their case, what evidence they supply, and allow us, the audience, to decide who has the better grasp of reality. This might be more productive than trying to pscyhoanalyze the whole thing out of existence, e.g., saying those prone to “conspiracy theories” have “low levels of analytical thinking,” or “experience low levels of control,” etc., ad nauseam. This clearly won’t work because, as Boudry again notes himself, there are numerous counterexamples.
Since the rise of the Internet, we’ve seen two broad narratives.
One is that once anyone could read a couple of articles online or listen to a couple of YouTube videos, pick up a little vocabulary, one could create a blog and pose as an “expert” on any subject whatsoever. The stage was set for “alternative facts” and a level of epistemic anarchy that would have jolted Paul Feyerabend. Sure, that happens. No one I know of therefore thinks every conspiracy or other alternative claim merits our attention. Otherwise we’d have to listen to flat-earthers.
The other narrative, though, is that the Internet democratized information. One of the results was exposing the cracks in some of our official accounts of the way things are. Accordingly, these lost credibility. Finding suppressed (not “alternative”) facts has proven relatively easy. Hence “conspiracy theories” in a broad sense, and other “alternative” intellectual forms of life.
For example: doubts that globalization is a natural process that will eventually make us all better off, but one directed by moneyed elites that is manifestly making many of us poorer. (Sociologist C. Wright Mills may have coined the phrase the power elite in his book of that title back in the 1950s.) The reality is that there are dozens of articles and books now in print or available online in which the “conspirators” state clearly what they are doing themselves, making the word conspiracy a misnomer if it is supposed to refer to something hidden from us. It is no longer possible to dismiss accounts of sometimes lengthy statements as “quote-mining.” Please do not further bewitch our intelligence with phrases that mean nothing.
Because we have innumerable additional cases and states of affairs where corporate media clearly misled the public, even if by omission, and sometimes just plain lied. As when:
back in 2012 we were presented with photos of Trayvon Martin that were five years old, to make him look like a cherub-faced little boy who couldn’t be anything other than innocent; paired with depictions of George Zimmerman purposefully darkened to make him look as thuggish as possible. Not to mention ignoring Zimmerman’s Hispanic heritage, so that the white male bashing we’re now accustomed to could be employed.
Charlottesville 2017: one could watch CNN for hours afterwards (I did) without a single mention of the involvement of Antifa and Black Lives Matter in inciting the violence that Saturday, and how mass media continues to repeat the falsehood that Heather Heyer was killed protesting at a white nationalist rally. There was no rally that day, as it has been called off by authorities. Heyer was killed hours later, part of a crowd that had not dispersed when authorities had told them to do so. How do I know all this? I had two boots-on-the-ground sources who lived in the area, one of whom I’d known for years. I trust them more than I trust, say, CNN (none of whose people were present).
going back to 9/11: the thermite residue found in the dust analyzed by competent chemists such as Denmark’s Dr. Niels Harrit, who had nothing to gain and much to lose from revealing what he’d claimed to have learned: predictably, his colleagues also called him a “crackpot.” The most we can say is that the jury is still out on this one, and unless there is a new (and honest!) investigation, may always be.
The novel coronavirus: Dr. Luc Montagnier, French virologist, who won a Nobel Prize for having isolated the HIV virus that causes AIDS, created a firestorm with his contention, based on his expert examination, that this coronavirus had to have originated in a laboratory and not “in bats.” Oh, we peons are not supposed to touch that one! Nor are we supposed to listen to the many doctors who say they have used hydrochloroquine to treat COVID patients successfully. Are we peons free to ask just why the only acceptable “cure” for COVID is to be a (probably highly profitable) vaccine, or are we just to obey our political-economic (and epistemic) masters? Are we peons entitled to wonder what is really going on when Bill Gates, who has no actual medical or epidemiological or public health credentials, can use his billions to practically buy the public health community (via the WHO and the CDC) to push the narrative that only a vaccine for COVID will enable us to get “back to normal”?
rampant black-on-white violent crime, far more prevalent than the reverse, and which is almost never reported as such again by major media. (Trigger warning: racist, racist, racist!)
Perhaps I should apologize for the occasional flashes of sarcasm here. But these kinds of hit pieces are a dime a dozen. And what are we supposed to think, when the Internet really does allow us to snoop around, gather information on our own, and judge for ourselves who is telling the truth?
No, we free minds won’t always get things right, but neither does anyone else. Frankly, I’m all for retiring the phrase “conspiracy theory” from our discourse. It might have sounded credible for those who identify with authority for the past 53 years (since the CIA weaponized the phrase back in 1967 to circumvent criticism of the Warren Commission Report — it was Document 1035-960, look it up).
But today, I have to wonder how many people, at whatever level of education and whatever walk of life — probably including some academic boys and girls with PhDs — still expect truth or honesty from government and mainstream media sources. As long as this state of affairs holds, I don’t think “conspiracy theories” will be going anywhere.
Over the past two decades a number of philosophers have explored the epistemology of conspiracy theories. They include Charles Pigden, Brian Keeley, David Coady, Lee Basham, Steve Clarke, Neil Levy, Pete Mandik, M Dentith, Juha Räikkä, Quassim Cassam, Joel Buenting, Jason Taylor, Patrick Stokes, Keith Harris, and me too. Though not all agree, a near consensus has emerged that individual conspiracy theories ought to be taken seriously according to their own particular merits or faults—this has been called “particularism.” This conclusion is grounded in the fact that, though there is some disagreement regarding the best way to understand the term “conspiracy theory,” all sides admit that some conspiracy theories have turned out to be true.
I’ve gone a bit further than most of my above-mentioned interlocutors in defending controversial conspiracy theories, including 9/11 conspiracy theories. I argue not that they are true, but that academic attempts to refute them have failed, and often exhibited poor reasoning in the process. The degree to which such reasoning is exhibited by otherwise competent scholars suggests to me that a strong bias against conspiracy theories is in operation in the academy. Boudry’s essay, above, tends to confirm this view. It uses dismissive language, exaggeration, and some appeal to false particulars, to encourage a negative attitude toward conspiracy theories, but doesn’t actually provide good reasons to refuse to fairly consider the evidence provided for particular conspiracy theories on a case-by-case basis.
On the positive side, Boudry seems right to suggest that theories that require extraordinarily clever and powerful conspirators have a significant strike against them. Indeed, there are many such considerations that allow one to evaluate conspiracy theories without falling into the kind of epistemic nihilism that Boudry wrongly implies characterizes the thinking of those who take conspiracy theories seriously.
In the current context, one issue that is often included in the category of “conspiracy theory” (whether or not that is appropriate in this case) is support for early treatments for COVID-19, such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. The labeling and censoring of advocates for such treatments, and the summary rejection of their claims, in my view, cannot truly be grounded in science and good reasoning. We ought to have an inclusive process in which all views are given fair consideration. But for some reason that does not seem to be happening, despite the gravity of the situation. The explanation for this need not be conspiratorial, but speculation in that general direction is understandable—not as a mere quirk of evolution but as a genuinely rational response.
Anti-conspiracy theory: Boudry’s first step.
The first step to resolving any confusion is to exhibit confusion. The second, not to deny it. Dr. Boudry provides an important and interesting list of remarks on “conspiracy theory”. I appreciate these. I think we can work together with an attentive thinker like this. Of course there are replies and objections, but the fact he composed a helpful essay of this attention is encouraging. I would invite him to enter into our literature, but I would also like to add my own impression of this piece. Admittedly some of it will not be in agreement, nor agreeable, but here we find a new voice and one who should engage with the extant literature and join the journey.
Kurtis Hagen’s critique is insightful and correct. Yate’s reply is quite valuable, too; inventive and to my mind, points to a way out that we should consider. In general: An evidential, salience-guided particularism sets aside Boudry’s understandable stereotypes and antiquities. Boudry’s approach is known as the “pathologizing approach” in the literature. Conspiratorial suspicions are pathologies of mentality; reason, ethics and emotion. The real pathology is clear here.
Boudry’s piece resembles an establishmentarian broadside but does not represent the extant epistemic literature. The term critical thinking expert Don Hatcher might apply to his remarks is “weak sense” critical thinking. This is where one reports some of your opponents’ position and then distorts or simply dismisses it. Often, condescendingly. The political project Boudry is in service of is especially disturbing: censorial explanatory hegemony. He illustrates a certain deafness to how these have been worked through in the last 20 years of research. Consider,
“Lack of evidence for your conspiracy theory. As pointed out already, absence of evidence need never discourage you. If there really is a conspiracy going on, absence of evidence is precisely what you would expect. Didn’t I tell you the conspirators are very devious?”
This is not a serious remark. We already discovered it is rhetoric. Good rhetoric. It was dismissed in the early 2000s for a variety of reasons, including by the pioneer, Brian Keeley, its insightful source in the literature (“Of Conspiracy Theories”, JOP, 1999). Conspiracy theories are easily falsified on the basis of evidence and other factors. Conspiracy theorists, which are all of us—at least if currently and historically literate—are well aware of this.
To see the political project of treating rational suspicion of powerful corporations and government activity as a mental disorder appear on an APA platform is interseting. The political pathologizing project is at best a form of “epistemic paternalism”. Our knowledge base is controlled, ostensibly, for our own good. While space does not allow us to discuss the many problems facing the epistemic paternalism they endorse, those in the pathologizing approach might inquire as to what source of warranted belief they wish to enforce, since political and mainstream media pronouncements are frequently, systematically flawed, especially in crisis events, especially when we need methods of securing relative veracity for warranted, evidentially justified social beliefs and narratives. Advocates of the pathologizing approach must provide an account before they argue we proceed with their “curative” and “decontaminating” program. They have in the main studiously avoided to do so, and I believe we know why: Only an authoritarian regulation of “information” could suffice; an authoritarian “epistocracy”. One ought to know and explain via only what epistemic authorities wish you to. The APA membership, or other philosophers, should not take this seriously or embrace its censorial designs.
Here the APA is witness to political piety: Official stories are the end of the story. Political piety is subject to deconversion: The loss of basic assumptions about how to interpret the world one experiences. In this case, an evidence based, studied distrust of political statements and actions. While we should not hold important beliefs without sufficient reason, political piety appears to generate and operate in just that way. Education if conducted openly with real access to the evidence, can help. But the new “educations” suggested by the pathologizing project appear suspect as tools within functional democracy. Clearly, Boudry is toying with these. We’ve seen this before,
From the Le Monde declaration,
“Let’s fight conspiracy theories effectively
The Ministry of Education must test its pedagogical tools against conspiracy culture. The wrong cure might only serve to spread the disease.
Conspiracy theories are on many people’s minds and are the object of all kinds of initiatives, sometimes local, sometimes more ambitious. The French government is among them, evidenced by the collaboration between the Ministry of Education and France Télévisions to produce and diffuse a ‘video-kit’, available to all in the teaching profession (https :
. They also explore suitable responses to the worrying spread of these ‘theories’ by proposing, here and there, an intellectual defence or critical response. Ultimately, these associations come together to fight against this particular form of contemporary misinformation known as ‘conspiracism’.” (Douglas, et. al, Le Monde, 6 June 2016, p. 29)
While both conspiracy and its attendant conspiracy theorizing are quite normal in human affairs, and we all rightfully engage in both, it is helpful to distinguish conspiracy theories that are of little political-social moment, and so do not offend our default, background political and social piety, with those that directly attack this background political and informational piety. These theories, when accepted as rationally, evidentially more likely than not, initiate the familiar and often rational process of deconversion.
As for irrationality instilled by cognitive evolution, Boudry might be exemplar; compliant to the explanation governing hive-mind, and rather vocal about being so. He shouldn’t be. A misplaced attempt at social climbing? More likely misunderstanding. This should not distract serious philosophy. Serious analysis is the goal and gauge. I recommend, on this topic, Boudry consider a bit of deconversion. Boudry surely recognizes he is a conspiracy theorist on many salient topics, and he ought to notice that, and notice he is not irrational nor unwarranted in this. Deconversion from the pathologizing approach is then entailed. It’s nice out here. And we’re here to help. Charles Pigden might say Boudry can escape his “intellectual black hole” with some small attention to current events and history.
I sense an excellent new contributor to our discussions and look to forthcoming publications and always, open discussion,
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham