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  1. Hazards of Conceptual Engineering: Revisiting the Case of ‘Conspiracy Theory’.Matthew Shields - 2024 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 13 (2):74-90.
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  • When conspiracy theorists win.Steve Clarke - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    ‘Generalists’ hold that conspiracy theories, as a class, have epistemic defects. Well confirmed theories that invoke conspiracies, such as the theory that the Nixon administration conspired to orchestrate the break in at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex, on 17 June 1972, – the ‘Watergate theory’ – raise a problem for generalists as it’s hard to understand how such theories can have epistemic defects. The Watergate theory is often not considered a mere conspiracy theory, because it enjoys (...)
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  • Should We be Generalists about Official Stories? A Response to Hayward.Will Mittendorf - 2023 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 12 (10):36-43.
    In “The Applied Epistemology of Official Stories” (2023), Tim Hayward offers a thorough and convincing rejection of Neil Levy’s claim that we ought to defer to official stories from relevant epistemic authorities. In this response, I take no issue with Hayward’s criticism of Levy. Rather, I suggest that Hayward’s position could go further, and he already implies a deeper problem with the concept of an ‘official story’. In fact, I’m so swayed by several of his claims against things called ‘official (...)
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  • Conspiracy theorists are not the problem; Conspiracy liars are.Brian L. Keeley - 2024 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    In an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times (08/06/2022), entitled Alex Jones is no kind of ‘theorist’, LZ Granderson writes that although the ubiquitous recent ‘conspiracy theorist’ of American journalism is Alex Jones, that appellation is not appropriate. He argues that Jones rarely ‘theorizes’ about events; he simply lies about them. In past work, I have argued that the starting points of many conspiracy theories are two forms of errant data: ‘unaccounted for’ data and ‘contradictory’ data. But Granderson’s critique (...)
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  • Racist and antiracist conspiracy theories.Will Mittendorf - 2024 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    In conspiracy theory philosophy the primary debate has been epistemic, but the concern is now also shifting to the ethical and political implications of taking conspiracy theories seriously. This shift is epitomized in the work of Quassim Cassam, whose focus has moved away from the epistemic faults of the theories and theorists to the political function of conspiracy theories. This function, he argues, is to ‘express and promote an ideology’, specifically, racist, antisemitic, and extremist ideology. In this essay, I will (...)
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  • On Ethically Informing Citizens About Political Conspiracies.Jukka Varelius - 2023 - Journal of Media Ethics 38 (2):93-103.
    Conspiracy theorizing can sometimes have regrettable features that speak for suppressing it. Yet, given that an adequately knowledgeable citizenry is a prerequisite of a healthy democracy, the public should be informed about politically important events, including political conspiracies. In this article, I focus on the relationship between informing citizens about political conspiracies and the kind of conspiracy theorizing that arguably should be suppressed. More precisely, I maintain that informing citizens about political conspiracies threatens to lead to the kind of conspiracy (...)
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  • On epistemic black holes: How self‐sealing belief systems develop and evolve.Maarten Boudry - 2023 - Theoria 90 (4):429-447.
    Many pseudosciences, conspiracy theories and other unfounded belief systems have a self‐sealing nature, being equipped with defence mechanisms and immunizing strategies that protect them against counterevidence and criticism. In this article, we discuss the existence of ‘epistemic black holes’, belief systems which posit intelligent agents that are deliberately evading detection and thus sabotaging any investigation into their existence. These belief systems have the remarkable feature that they predict an absence of evidence in their favour, and even the discovery of counterevidence. (...)
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  • What is Interesting about Conspiracy Theories?Melina Tsapos - manuscript
    A central debate in the conspiracy theory research concerns how to understand conspiracy theories in a theoretically fruitful way given our research interest to study the nature of such theories and those who believe in them. However, far from settling on one account, this is still an on-going dispute in which researchers take widely different positions. For instance, while some argue for a purely descriptive understanding, others seem strongly committed to the view that conspiracy theories are, or can be shown (...)
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  • Sub-Category Generalism About Conspiracy Theories.Paul Noordhof - forthcoming - Review of Philosophy and Psychology:1-27.
    I argue for a kind of sub-category generalism about conspiracy theories. I identify four features that negatively contribute to the evaluation of any conspiracy theory that has them. I argue that particularism about conspiracy theories is in conflict even with this moderate position. I explain the implications of sub-category generalism for questions about the epistemic environment in which epistemic agents operate. I argue that even if there are pragmatic reasons for being vigilant about the possibility of malign conspiracies, this does (...)
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