What is "race"? What role, if any, should race play in our moral obligations to others and to ourselves? Ethics along the Color Line addresses the question of whether black Americans should think of each other as members of an extended racial family and base their treatment of each other on this consideration, or eschew racial identity and envision the day when people do not think in terms of race. Anna Stubblefield suggests furthermore that white Americans should consider the same (...) issues. She argues, finally, that for both black and white Americans, thinking of races as families is crucial in helping to combat anti-black oppression. Stubblefield is concerned that the philosophical debate—argued notably between Kwame Anthony Appiah and Lucius Outlaw—over whether or not we should strongly identify in terms of race, and whether or not we should take race into account when we decide how to treat each other, has stalled. Drawing on black feminist scholarship about the moral importance of thinking and acting in terms of community and extended family, the author finds that strong racial identification, if based on appropriate ideals, is morally sound and even necessary to end white supremacy. (shrink)

We offer a particularist defense of conspiratorial thinking. We explore the possibility that the presence of a certain kind of evidence—what we call "fortuitous data"—lends rational credence to conspiratorial thinking. In developing our argument, we introduce conspiracy theories and motivate our particularist approach (§1). We then introduce and define fortuitous data (§2). Lastly, we locate an instance of fortuitous data in one real world conspiracy, the Watergate scandal (§3).

As the end of the Millennium approaches, conspiracy theories are increasing in number and popularity. In this short essay, I offer an analysis of conspiracy theories inspired by Hume's discussion of miracles. My first conclusion is that whereas Hume can argue that miracles are, by definition, explanations we are not warranted in believing, there is nothing analytic that will allow us to distinguish good from bad conspiracy theories. There is no a priori method for distinguishing warranted conspiracy theories (say, those (...) explaining Watergate) from those which are unwarranted (say, theories about extraterrestrials abducting humans). Nonetheless, there is a cluster of characteristics often shared by unwarranted conspiracy theories. An analysis of the alleged explanatory virtues of unwarranted conspiracies suggests some reasons for their current popularity, while at the same time providing grounds for their rejection. Finally, I discuss how conspiracy theories embody an anachronistic world-view that places the contemporary zeitgeist in a clearer light. (shrink)

In the social science literature, conspiracy theories are commonly characterized as theories positing a vast network of evil and preternaturally effective conspirators, and they are often treated, either explicitly or implicitly, as dubious on this basis. This characterization is based on Richard Hofstadter’s famous account of ‘the paranoid style’. However, many significant conspiracy theories do not have any of the relevant qualities. Thus, the social science literature provides a distorted account of the general category ‘conspiracy theory’, conflating it with a (...) subset of that category that encourages unfairly negative evaluations of conspiracy theories. Generally, when evaluating theories, one should focus on the most plausible versions; the merit of a theory is independent of the existence of less plausible versions of it. By ignoring this and glossing over important distinctions, many academics, especially in the social sciences, have misclassified many conspiracy theories and in doing so have contributed to an epistemically unfair depiction of them. Further, even theories that genuinely fit the description of ‘the paranoid style’ cannot be completely dismissed on that basis. All conspiracy theories ought to be judged on the totality of their individual merits. (shrink)

Orr and Dentith argue that a recurrent problem in much of the wider academic literature on conspiracy theories is either conceptual confusion or a refusal to put theory before practice. Orr and Dentith show that a naive empiricism pervades much of the social science literature when it comes to these things called ‘conspiracy theories’ which not only runs at odds with the philosophical literature but also the general tenor of the social sciences over the latter part of the 20th Century (...) and beyond. Orr and Dentith argue that central to these confusions or refusals is not just a lack of philosophical rigour when it comes to defining and presenting views, but an active disinterest in such conceptual work. (shrink)

In this paper I trouble some key analytical moves in the burgeoning field of conspiracy studies, and explore alternative approaches which link it to two strands of current social theorizing—governmentality and the politics of affect. First, I go ‘meta’ (Husting and Orr 2007) to ask how the production of knowledge about knowledge itself becomes a form of politics. Here I follow Bratich’s work on conspiracy theories as part of neoliberal governmentality, understanding public anxiety over conspiracy theories to be one instance (...) of a set of “series of prevention strategies for dissent” (p. 12) in neoliberal political economies. Second, I show how a fuller analysis of conspiracy theory discourse requires developing the cultural politics of contempt, or the notion of affective governmentality (Ahmed 2004b; Illouz 2007; Ferguson 2010). I argue that current struggles over the use of the phrase conspiracy theory work in and through a politics of contempt. I use Arendt’s theorization of political action to argue that the emotionality of U.S. conspiracy panic discourse effectively polices the boundaries of what is sayable, knowable, thinkable, and perhaps ‘feelable,’ from the unsayable/unknowable/unthinkable; from the patently ridiculous, pathological, and emotionally suspect. Such abject kinds of knowing place the knower out of bounds of reasonable politics, and for Arendt, violate the conditions on which political action must rest. The argument will have three parts; first an overview of current studies of conspiracy theories; second, an exploration of conspiracy panics as a form of emotionalized governmentality; and third, an exploration of the functions and effects of contempt in conspiracy panic discourse. (shrink)

Presumably authoritative sources, such as social scientists who study conspiracy theorists, are generally expected to be logically rigorous, intellectually honest, and unbiased. This chapter suggests that this expectation may not always be justified. Specifically, it exposes a number of significant problems in an attempt by a group of social scientists to defend the (ostensibly) scientific study of conspiracy theorists. First, they misrepresent their own previously stated intentions. Second, they misrepresent a critique of those intentions. Third, they fail completely in their (...) attempt to show that, regarding the inappropriate pathologizing of conspiracy theorists, their critics are guilty as they are. Fourth, they cite seriously flawed studies as though they offered robust findings. And fifth, their criticism of a central distinction, between “generalist” and “particularist” approaches, is based on a misunderstanding. This raises troubling questions: How can we to have confidence in a program of study undertaken, in part, by scientists who get so much wrong? And, to what degree is this an isolated problem? (shrink)

An introduction to section two, which introduces and summarises two recent critiques of belief in conspiracy theories by social scientists, as well as introducing the various arguments in the section.

Psychological states and illnesses share an important epistemic feature with conspiracy theories: Both do not exist in rem. They are multiform and fuzzy phenomena, not completely understood, and all diagnoses are ascriptions. What is depression? What is intelligence? And, likewise: What is a conspiracy theory, how do we spot it, and how are we able to measure the belief in it? The problem of measuring vague and not directly observable concepts was and is one of the major challenges in academic (...) psychology. This chapter outlines benefits and downsides of the psychometric approach. It is argued that current approaches for diagnosing belief in conspiracy theories are insufficient. They suggest an accuracy in measurement that is impossible given the fuzziness of the construct that is to be measured. They also neglect the cognitive and emotional dynamics behind acquisition and propagation of conspiracy theories. However—these drawbacks in mind—we should not refrain from devising and improving tools and methods that are able to quantify aspects of the belief in conspiracy theories. Used reasonably, they open up the possibility to enrich epistemic discussions with empirical findings. (shrink)