Abstract
Conspiracy theories are rather a popular topic these days, and a lot has been written on things like the meaning of conspiracy theory, whether it’s ever rational to believe conspiracy theories, and on the psychology and demographics of people who believe conspiracy theories. But very little has been said about why people might be led to posit conspiracy theories in the first place. This paper aims to fill this lacuna. In particular, I shall argue that, in open democratic societies, citizens justifiably presuppose that the epistemic authorities—journalists, academics, scientists, and so on—are engaged in a good faith pursuit of the truth. This presupposition generates certain normative expectations on the behaviors of the epistemic authorities—they ought to be open to new evidence, possess a healthy degree of skepticism, be willing to engage with opponents, and so on. So, when an epistemic authority is presented with some putatively anomalous data or an alternative hypothesis for some event or phenomena, people expect the epistemic authority to respond in a way that is consonant with these norms. In some instances, however, the epistemic authorities do not respond in this way and instead are dogmatic, dismissive, and engage in ad hominem. From the point of view of the citizen, there’s a tension here between how the epistemic authorities ought to behave and how they have, in fact, behaved which is best resolved either by taking the epistemic authorities less seriously or by positing a conspiracy theory. Put another way, the failure of the epistemic authorities to adhere to the norms by which we take them to be governed when presented with apparent anomalies or alternative hypotheses is one reason for which one might initially posit a conspiracy theory.
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Notes
Here, I follow Dentith (2014) and take a conspiracy theory to be an explanation of an event which cites a clandestine plan enacted by a set of agents in order to bring about some end to be a salient cause of the event.
Any particularist definition will do here, really. I do not discuss generalist definitions of conspiracy theories because I think generalism is false.
Intuitively, we could also use “standard view” to mean something like “the majority opinion of ordinary people (or a subset of ordinary people).” For example, the standard view among Cleveland Browns fans might be that the Browns will win the Super Bowl next season, while the standard view among the epistemic authorities in football might be that the Browns will never win a Super Bowl, especially not next season. I mention this sense of “standard view” only to set it to one side.
Given how I’ve set things up here, the official explanation of an event need not be identical to or even consistent with the standard or dominant explanation. In general, however, it seems that the official and dominant explanations hang together. If the two do diverge, they seem not to stay apart for long. This apparent interplay between the state and the epistemic authorities is worth investigating, but I will not take up the question in this essay.
It’s worth noting that the the same pattern of tensions could arise between two perfect strangers. Suppose, for example, that I ask someone for directions to a local restaurant and they tell me to take some bizarre route. Even if I don’t know anything at all about whatever city I’m in, I know enough about cities in general that this will strike me as odd enough to generate an apparent factual tension. Suppose further that I express some incredulity at these directions. If my would-be guide responds by, say, assuring me that he’s a very, very honest person who would never in a million years lead a traveller astray, I will almost certainly take his protesting too much to be evidence that he’s up to something.
On my view, Smith is justified in concluding that Jones is hiding something or other. Potentially, however, her secondary conclusion that Jones is having an illicit affair might not be justified. Whether it is will depend upon a number of background factors, e.g., whether Jones has a history of infidelity. In any case, Smith’s assumption that Jones is having an affair is a very standard human reaction to this sort of situation (it’s a frequent plan device in works of fiction, after all). Indeed, it seems as though humans are compelled, for whatever reason, to construct explanations—usually negatively valenced—when given reason to think someone is hiding something. See, for example: Simmel (1906), Hofstadter (1964), Walmsley and O’Madagain (2020).
Of course, if the supposed anomalies are merely apparent, then the factual tension will be merely apparent, too.
It’s important to note that, from an outside perspective, one can explain an expert’s condescending behavior by supposing that his or her interlocutor is stupid. For example, if A proposes an alternative hypothesis or says “what about such and such anomalies” to some expert B and B then responds in a condescending and dismissive way, I might suppose that B responded in such a way because A is stupid. When A = me or someone suggesting alternatives or raising concerns with which I’m sympathetic, however, this explanation is simply not available.
It may be urged that I’m leaving out a live option here: the epistemic authorities are dismissive of anomalies or alternative hypotheses because those hypotheses are “racist,” “sexist,” or otherwise “dangerous.” But I think these explanations are off the table for reasons similar (but not identical) to why believing that we’re stupid is off the table. Namely, most people do not believe of themselves that they’re racist, sexist, or deliberately putting people in harm’s way—it’s not merely that they wouldn’t admit this to others; it’s that they actively disbelieve that they’re racist, sexist, etc. So, it simply would not occur to them to explain the behavior of the epistemic authorities by thinking “Fair enough. I’m racist/sexist/endangering people, after all.” Of course, there are some people for whom this may not be the case, but it’s just not something that would initially occur to the overwhelming majority of people. In the event that this is actually the reason for not engaging, the thing to do seems to be show people why the line they’re treading is, in fact, racist, sexist, or otherwise dangerous.
Think Linus Pauling on vitamin C, Richard Dawkins on philosophy of religion, Sam Harris or Noam Chomsky on foreign policy, and so on.
We might wonder, also, how this will go in a situation where what’s being evaluated is itself a conspiracy theory, as in Dentith (2018) and Dentith and Keeley (2018). Briefly, conspiracy theories often span across multiple domains of expertise. So, the evaluation of, say, some conspiracies about the events of 9/11 will require expertise in demolition, structural engineering, thermodynamics, air traffic control, and military operations (to name just a handful). When someone asserts such a conspiracy theory (or even highlights putatively relevant anomalies), it’s quite possible that the epistemic authority with whom they’ve engaged will be unable to resolve all the factual tensions because there’s no single epistemic authority who’s competent to speak on all of these things. Their unwillingness to engage on things outside their expertise (or their willingness to do so and make mistakes) will then appear to generate a behavioral tension which is best resolved by downgrading their epistemic status or positing a conspiracy theory. In some cases, this might even lead people to expand the scope of their initial conspiracy theory to include those epistemic authorities who have either refused to engage or engaged and gotten it wrong.
This is different, I think, from believing that an expert is stupid, which I’ve said we seem not to do. That would require believing that someone is actually an epistemic authority and stupid. If one is a shill, then one simply isn’t an expert.
It is important to note that the generative mechanism outlined here is only meant to explain why people initially posit some conspiracy theory or other It is not meant to explain why one might posit some particular conspiracy theory. Much like non-conspiracy theories, different conspiracy theories have different contents, and there can be any number of conspiracy theories that purport to explain the same event. Whether a particular conspiracy theory is any good is a separate question from whether positing some conspiracy or other is warranted. It’s plausible under the account on offer that one could be justified in resolving a behavioral tension by positing a conspiracy theory and then go on to posit one that isn’t any good. Again, this is very like non-conspriacy theories: we can be justified in thinking that something needs an explanation and then, for whatever reason, put forth a bad one. To a good first approximation, I think this is what’s going on with certain “deep-state” conspiracies: they (perhaps rightly) see something that needs explaining and then, for whatever reason—it’s fun to tell stories, conspiracy theories are entertaining, and so on—put forth an outlandish conspiracy theory. For more on evaluating conspiracy theories, see: Dentith and Keeley (2018) and Dentith (2018).
Typically, the thought is that this is very bad because people’s diminishing trust in experts and propensity to engage in conspiracy theorizing is unjustified and likely to have a destabilizing effect on society. Put another way, the thought is that people posit conspiracy theories because there is something wrong with them Here, I’m arguing that people posit conspiracy theories because there is something wrong with society, e.g., institutions, scientists, journalist, and academics. So, we should care about minimizing conspiracy theories insofar as doing so is tantamount to fixing what is wrong with society.
And, presumably, our having done such a bad job at this combined with the fact that institutions like media, government, big business, and so on have been deceptive in the past might justify one’s being seemingly too quick to posit a conspiracy theory.
And it’s not clear that such a situation is desirable. See: Basham (2006).
It’s also worth noting that there are, in some instances, trade-offs to consider. To take one example, suppose that an epistemic authority asserts that P even though P is false because he or she has good reason to believe that asserting Q (even though Q is true) will lead to bad outcomes. Here, the expert has to weigh the deleterious consequences of being caught out saying something false (and, perhaps, vilifying those who disagree) with those of saying something true. Cases like these are admittedly tough, but I think the result of either choice will be better understood and more readily forgiven by the public if there is more rather than less good will towards the epistemic authorities. The best way to achieve the requisite levels of good will, on my view, is to make norm violations the exception rather than the rule.
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Brooks, P. On the origin of conspiracy theories. Philos Stud 180, 3279–3299 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-02040-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-02040-3