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Conspiracy Theories

Polity Press (2019)

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  1. The power of second-order conspiracies.Alexios Stamatiadis-Bréhier - 2024 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy (Online):1-26.
    A second-order conspiracy (SOC) is a conspiracy that aims to create (and typically also disseminate) a conspiracy theory. Second-order conspiracy theories (SOCT) are theories that explain the occurrence of a given conspiracy theory by appeal to a conspiracy. In this paper I argue that SOC and SOCT are useful and coherent concepts, while also having numerous philosophically interesting upshots (in terms of epistemology, explanation, and prediction). Secondly, I appeal to the nature of two specific kinds of second-order conspiracies to make (...)
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  • Conspiracy Theorist's World and Genealogy.Nader Shoaibi - forthcoming - Social Epistemology.
    Conspiracy theories pose a serious threat to our society these days. People often dismiss conspiracy theory believers as at best gullible, or more often unintelligent. However, there are cases in which individuals end up believing conspiracy theories out of no epistemic fault of their own. In this paper, I want to offer a diagnosis of the problem by focusing on the genealogy of the conspiracy theory beliefs. Drawing on a novel interpretation of Nietzsche’s use of genealogies, I argue that the (...)
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  • Misinformation, Content Moderation, and Epistemology: Protecting Knowledge.Keith Raymond Harris - 2024 - Routledge.
    This book argues that misinformation poses a multi-faceted threat to knowledge, while arguing that some forms of content moderation risk exacerbating these threats. It proposes alternative forms of content moderation that aim to address this complexity while enhancing human epistemic agency. The proliferation of fake news, false conspiracy theories, and other forms of misinformation on the internet and especially social media is widely recognized as a threat to individual knowledge and, consequently, to collective deliberation and democracy itself. This book argues (...)
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  • 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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  • Manufacturing the Illusion of Epistemic Trustworthiness.Tyler Porter - forthcoming - Episteme:1-20.
    Abstract: There are epistemic manipulators in the world. These people are actively attempting to sacrifice epistemic goods for personal gain. In doing so, manipulators have led many competent epistemic agents into believing contrarian theories that go against well-established knowledge. In this paper, I explore one mechanism by which manipulators get epistemic agents to believe contrarian theories. I do so by looking at a prominent empirical model of trustworthiness. This model identifies three major factors that epistemic agents look for when trying (...)
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  • Conspiracy theories, epistemic self-identity, and epistemic territory.Daniel Munro - 2024 - Synthese 203 (4):1-28.
    This paper seeks to carve out a distinctive category of conspiracy theorist, and to explore the process of becoming a conspiracy theorist of this sort. Those on whom I focus claim their beliefs trace back to simply trusting their senses and experiences in a commonsensical way, citing what they take to be authoritative firsthand evidence or observations. Certain flat Earthers, anti-vaxxers, and UFO conspiracy theorists, for example, describe their beliefs and evidence this way. I first distinguish these conspiracy theorists by (...)
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  • Akratic Beliefs and Seemings.Chenwei Nie - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
    How does it come about that a person akratically believes that P, while at the same time believing that the available evidence speaks against that P? Among the current accounts, Scanlon offers an intuitive suggestion that one’s seeming experience that P may play an important role in the aetiology of their akratic belief that P. However, it turns out to be quite challenging to articulate what the role of seeming experience is. This paper will offer a novel development of Scanlon’s (...)
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  • Absurd Stories, Ideologies, and Motivated Cognition.Marianna Bergamaschi Ganapini - forthcoming - Philosophical Topics.
    PENULTIMATE DRAFT. At times, weird stories such as the Pizzagate spread surprisingly quickly and widely. In this paper I analyze the mental attitudes of those who seem to take those absurdities seriously: I argue that those stories are often imagined rather than genuinely believed. Then I make room for the claim that often these imaginings are used to support group ideologies. My main contribution is to explain how that support actually happens by showing that motivated cognition can employ imagination as (...)
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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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  • Is ‘Conspiracy Theory’ Harmful? A Reply to Foster and Ichikawa.Scott Hill - 2023 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 12 (9):27-31.
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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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  • Capturing the conspiracist’s imagination.Daniel Munro - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (12):3353-3381.
    Some incredibly far-fetched conspiracy theories circulate online these days. For most of us, clear evidence would be required before we’d believe these extraordinary theories. Yet, conspiracists often cite evidence that seems transparently very weak. This is puzzling, since conspiracists often aren’t irrational people who are incapable of rationally processing evidence. I argue that existing accounts of conspiracist belief formation don’t fully address this puzzle. Then, drawing on both philosophical and empirical considerations, I propose a new explanation that appeals to the (...)
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  • When to Dismiss Conspiracy Theories Out of Hand.Ryan Ross - 2023 - Synthese 202 (3):1-26.
    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 (...)
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  • On the origin of conspiracy theories.Patrick Brooks - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (12):3279-3299.
    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 (...)
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  • Betting on Conspiracy: A Decision Theoretic Account of the Rationality of Conspiracy Theory Belief.Melina Tsapos - 2024 - Erkenntnis 89 (2):1-19.
    The question of the rationality of conspiratorial belief ¬divides philosophers into mainly two camps. The particularists believe that each conspiracy theory ought to be examined on its own merits. The generalist, by contrast, argues that there is something inherently suspect about conspiracy theories that makes belief in them irrational. Recent empirical findings indicate that conspiratorial thinking is commonplace among ordinary people, which has naturally shifted attention to the particularists. Yet, even the particularist must agree that not all conspiracy belief is (...)
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  • Beyond belief: On disinformation and manipulation.Keith Raymond Harris - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-21.
    Existing analyses of disinformation tend to embrace the view that disinformation is intended or otherwise functions to mislead its audience, that is, to produce false beliefs. I argue that this view is doubly mistaken. First, while paradigmatic disinformation campaigns aim to produce false beliefs in an audience, disinformation may in some cases be intended only to prevent its audience from forming true beliefs. Second, purveyors of disinformation need not intend to have any effect at all on their audience’s beliefs, aiming (...)
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  • Revisiting Maher’s one-factor theory of delusion.Chenwei Nie - 2023 - Neuroethics 16 (2):1-16.
    How many factors, i.e. departures from normality, are necessary to explain a delusion? Maher’s classic one-factor theory argues that the only factor is the patient’s anomalous experience, and a delusion arises as a normal explanation of this experience. The more recent two-factor theory, on the other hand, contends that a second factor is also needed, with reasoning abnormality being a potential candidate, and a delusion arises as an abnormal explanation of the anomalous experience. In the past few years, although there (...)
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  • Conspiracy theories are not theories: Time to rename conspiracy theories.Kevin Reuter & Lucien Baumgartner - forthcoming - In Manuel Gustavo Isaac, Kevin Scharp & Steffen Koch (eds.), New Perspectives on Conceptual Engineering. Synthese Library.
    This paper presents the results of two corpus studies investigating the discourse surrounding conspiracy theories and genuine theories. The results of these studies show that conspiracy theories lack the epistemic and scientific standing characteristic of theories more generally. Instead, our findings indicate that conspiracy theories are spread in a manner that resembles the dissemination of rumors and falsehoods. Based on these empirical results, we argue that it is time for both re-engineering conspiracy theory and for relabeling "conspiracy theory". We propose (...)
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  • Genealogical Undermining for Conspiracy Theories.Alexios Stamatiadis-Bréhier - 2023 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy:1-23.
    In this paper I develop a genealogical approach for investigating and evaluating conspiracy theories. I argue that conspiracy theories with an epistemically problematic genealogy are (in virtue of that fact) epistemically undermined. I propose that a plausible type of candidate for such conspiracy theories involves what I call ‘second-order conspiracies’ (i.e. conspiracies that aim to create conspiracy theories). Then, I identify two examples involving such conspiracies: the antivaccination industry and the industry behind climate change denialism. After fleshing out the mechanisms (...)
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  • Conspiracy Theories, Scepticism, and Non-Liberal Politics.Fred Matthews - 2023 - Social Epistemology 37 (5):626-636.
    There has been much interest in conspiracy theories (CTs) amongst philosophers in recent years. The aim of this paper will be to apply some of the philosophical research to issues in political theory. I will first provide an overview of some of the philosophical discussions about CTs. While acknowledging that particularism is currently the dominant position in the literature, I will contend that the ‘undue scepticism problem’, a modified version of an argument put forward by Brian Keeley, is an important (...)
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  • (1 other version)Some problems with particularism.Keith Raymond Harris - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1-16.
    Particularists maintain that conspiracy theories are to be assessed individually, while generalists hold that conspiracy theories may be assessed as a class. This paper seeks to clarify the nature and importance of the debate between particularism and generalism, while offering an argument for a version of generalism. I begin by considering three approaches to the definition of conspiracy theory, and offer reason to prefer an approach that defines conspiracy theories in opposition to the claims of epistemic authorities. I argue that (...)
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  • Rethinking conspiracy theories.Matthew Shields - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-29.
    I argue that that an influential strategy for understanding conspiracy theories stands in need of radical revision. According to this approach, called ‘generalism’, conspiracy theories are epistemically defective by their very nature. Generalists are typically opposed by particularists, who argue that conspiracy theories should be judged case-by-case, rather than definitionally indicted. Here I take a novel approach to criticizing generalism. I introduce a distinction between ‘Dominant Institution Conspiracy Theories and Theorists’ and ‘Non-Dominant Institution Conspiracy Theories and Theorists’. Generalists uncritically center (...)
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  • Can You Keep a Secret? BS Conspiracy Theories and the Argument from Loose Lips.Ryan Ross - 2022 - Episteme 21 (2):545 - 564.
    According to an argument that I will call the argument from loose lips, we can safely reject certain notorious conspiracy theories because they posit conspiracies that would be nearly impossible to keep secret. I distinguish between three versions of this argument: the epistemic argument, the alethic argument, and the statistical argument. I, then, discuss several limitations of the argument from loose lips. The first limitation is that only the statistical argument can be applied to new conspiracy theories. The second limitation (...)
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  • Understanding Delusions: Evidence, Reason, and Experience.Chenwei Nie - 2021 - Dissertation, University of Warwick
    This thesis develops a novel framework for explaining delusions. In Chapter 1, I introduce the two fundamental challenges posed by delusions: the evidence challenge lies in explaining the flagrant ways delusions flout evidence; and the specificity challenge lies in explaining the fact that patients’ delusions are often about a few specific themes, and patients rarely have a wide range of delusional or odd beliefs. In Chapter 2, I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of current theories of delusions, which typically appeal (...)
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  • Bullshit, trust, and evidence.Adrian Briciu - 2021 - Intercultural Pragmatics 18 (5):633-656.
    It has become almost a cliché to say that we live in a post-truth world; that people of all trades speak with an indifference to truth. Speaking with an indifference to how things really are is famously regarded by Harry Frankfurt as the essence of bullshit. This paper aims to contribute to the philosophical and theoretical pragmatics discussion of bullshit. The aim of the paper is to offer a new theoretical analysis of what bullshit is, one that is more encompassing (...)
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  • Radicalizing Populism and the Making of an Echo Chamber: The Case of the Italian Anti-Vaccination Movement.Natascha Rietdijk - 2021 - Krisis 41 (1):114-134.
    A recent study dealing with Western European countries suggests a connection between vaccine skepticism and support for populist parties (Kennedy 2019). Of all countries in the study, Italy scored highest on both counts, with 44% of the electorate voting for populists in 2014 and 14% of the population not deeming vaccinations important. The study concludes that both phenomena have a common root in the distrust of elite and experts. While that seems plausible, this paper establishes that there is much more (...)
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  • "Sensible relativism", virtue epistemology and contextual realism.Francois-Igor Pris - 2020 - Philosophy of Science (Novosibirsk) 3 (86):15-48.
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  • Een genealogie van het wetenschappelijk onderzoek naar complottheorieën.Massimiliano Simons - 2022 - Tijdschrift Over Cultuur and Criminaliteit 12 (2):20-39.
    This article takes the scientific study of conspiracy theories itself as an object of inquiry. It looks at the three main frameworks to look at conspiracy theories: a psychological, epistemological and a sociological approach. These different approaches exist somewhat separately and often do not get along. The central claim that follows from a genealogy of these research programs is that the conflicts between these different approaches should be understood not merely as disagreements about how the world works, but as a (...)
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  • The clinical significance of anomalous experience in the explanation of monothematic delusions.Paul Noordhof & Ema Sullivan-Bissett - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):10277-10309.
    Monothematic delusions involve a single theme, and often occur in the absence of a more general delusional belief system. They are cognitively atypical insofar as they are said to be held in the absence of evidence, are resistant to correction, and have bizarre contents. Empiricism about delusions has it that anomalous experience is causally implicated in their formation, whilst rationalism has it that delusions result from top down malfunctions from which anomalous experiences can follow. Within empiricism, two approaches to the (...)
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  • (1 other version)The IKEA effect and the production of epistemic goods.Justin Tiehen - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (11):3401-3420.
    Behavioral economists have proposed that people are subject to an IKEA effect, whereby they attach greater value to products they make for themselves, like IKEA furniture, than to otherwise indiscernible goods. Recently, cognitive psychologist Tom Stafford has suggested there may be an epistemic analog to this, a kind of epistemic IKEA effect. In this paper, I use Stafford’s suggestion to defend a certain thesis about epistemic value. Specifically, I argue that there is a distinctive epistemic value in being an active (...)
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