Abstract
Given that conspiracies exist, can we be justified in dismissing conspiracy theories without concerning ourselves with specific details? I answer this question by focusing on contrarian conspiracy theories, theories about conspiracies that conflict with testimony from reliable sources of information. For example, theories that say the CIA masterminded the assassination of John F. Kennedy, 9/11 was an inside job, or the Freemasons are secretly running the world are contrarian conspiracy theories. When someone argues for a contrarian conspiracy theory, their options are to appeal to eyewitness testimony, incriminating documents, photographs, audio recordings, video recordings, allegedly scientific evidence, anomalies, or considerations of cui bono (who benefits). Most laypeople don’t know how to adequately respond to arguments for contrarian conspiracy theories, but this doesn’t mean that it’s dogmatic to reject them. I argue that many laypeople are defeasibly justified in rejecting a variety of contrarian conspiracy theories based on testimony and this justification is rarely defeated by arguments for contrarian conspiracy theories even if we don’t know how to respond to these arguments.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Cara Cummings, Chris Arledge, Michael Williams, Paul Martin, the anonymous reviewers, and my audience at the Long Island Philosophical Society Conference for helping me make many improvements to this paper.
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This work was partially funded by the Sachs Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University.
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Ross, R. When to dismiss conspiracy theories out of hand. Synthese 202, 67 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04257-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04257-5