Results for 'echo chambers, epistemic bubbles, conspiracy theories'

988 found
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  1. Responding to the Spread of Conspiracy Theories.Nader Shoaibi - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Conspiracy theories are spreading faster than ever and pose a real danger to our societies. It is natural to accuse the consumers of conspiracy theories of irrationality – that they are either not looking at or appropriately sensitive to all the available evidence. In this paper, I attempt to determine if we can make sense of this general idea. I argue that we cannot: conspiracy theories do not spread because the people who believe them (...)
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  2. Bubbles and Chambers: Post-Truth and Belief Formation in Digital Social-Epistemic Environments.Massimiliano Badino - 2022
    It is often claimed that epistemic bubbles and echo chambers foster post-truth by filtering our access to information and manipulating our epistemic attitude. In this paper, I try to add a further level of analysis by adding the issue of belief formation. Building on cognitive psychology work, I argue for a dual-system theory according to which beliefs derive from a default system and a critical system. One produces beliefs in a quasi-automatic, effortless way, the other in a (...)
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  3. Echo chambers and epistemic bubbles.C. Thi Nguyen - 2020 - Episteme 17 (2):141-161.
    Recent conversation has blurred two very different social epistemic phenomena: echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Members of epistemic bubbles merely lack exposure to relevant information and arguments. Members of echo chambers, on the other hand, have been brought to systematically distrust all outside sources. In epistemic bubbles, other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined. It is crucial to keep these phenomena distinct. First, echo chambers can explain (...)
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  4. Of Sheeple and People: Echo Chambers, Pseudo-experts and the Corona Crisis.Lily Tappe & Daniel Lucas - 2022 - Disputatio 11 (20):119-131.
    All through the COVID-19-crisis Conspiracy Theories and False Information spread all around the globe. In this article, we want to suggest that the spreading and retainment of disinformation despite counter-evidence is best to be understood in the context of echo chambers as described by Chris Thi Nguyen. Moreover, we want to argue that people active in those echo chambers are at the same time perpetrators as well as victims of epistemic injustice to different amounts. Although (...)
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  5. Online Echo Chambers, Online Epistemic Bubbles, and Open-Mindedness.Cody Turner - 2023 - Episteme 21:1-26.
    This article is an exercise in the virtue epistemology of the internet, an area of applied virtue epistemology that investigates how online environments impact the development of intellectual virtues, and how intellectual virtues manifest within online environments. I examine online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles (Nguyen 2020, Episteme 17(2), 141–61), exploring the conceptual relationship between these online environments and the virtue of open-mindedness (Battaly 2018b, Episteme 15(3), 261–82). The article answers two key individual-level, virtue epistemic questions: (Q1) (...)
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  6. 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 (...)
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  7.  21
    Epistemic Bubbles and Echo Chambers in the Digital Infosphere. Alienation and Recognition at the (Non)-Place.Kristina Khutsishvili - 2023 - Azimuth. Philosophical Coordinates in Modern and Contemporary Age 2 (22):99-108.
    This paper aims to reflect on the anthropological nature of the digital infosphere being contextual for phenomena such as epistemic bubbles and echo chambers. Is the digital infosphere, the general context for phenomena such as epistemic bubbles and echo chambers, an anthropological place or a non-place? The answer to this question is important to better understand the issue, and to learn how to approach it in a good enough way to minimize the potential harms such as (...)
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  8. The seductions of clarity.C. Thi Nguyen - 2021 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 89:227-255.
    The feeling of clarity can be dangerously seductive. It is the feeling associated with understanding things. And we use that feeling, in the rough-and-tumble of daily life, as a signal that we have investigated a matter sufficiently. The sense of clarity functions as a thought-terminating heuristic. In that case, our use of clarity creates significant cognitive vulnerability, which hostile forces can try to exploit. If an epistemic manipulator can imbue a belief system with an exaggerated sense of clarity, then (...)
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  9. Playfulness versus epistemic traps.C. Thi Nguyen - 2022 - In Mark Alfano, Jeroen De Ridder & Colin Klein, Social Virtue Epistemology. Routledge.
    What is the value of intellectual playfulness? Traditional characterizations of the ideal thinker often leave out playfulness; the ideal inquirer is supposed to be sober, careful, and conscientiousness. But elsewhere we find another ideal: the laughing sage, the playful thinker. These are models of intellectual playfulness. Intellectual playfulness, I suggest, is the disposition to try out alternate belief systems for fun – to try on radically different perspectives for the sheer pleasure of it. But what would the cog-nitive value be (...)
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  10. Hostile Epistemology.C. Thi Nguyen - 2023 - Social Philosophy Today 39:9-32.
    Hostile epistemology is the study of how environmental features exploit our cognitive vulnerabilities. I am particularly interested in those vulnerabilities arise from the basic character of our epistemic lives. We are finite beings with limited cognitive resources, perpetually forced to reasoning a rush. I focus on two sources of unavoidable vulnerability. First, we need to use cognitive shortcuts and heuristics to manage our limited time and attention. But hostile forces can always game the gap between the heuristic and the (...)
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  11. The preference for belief, issue polarization, and echo chambers.Bert Baumgaertner & Florian Justwan - 2022 - Synthese 200 (5):1-27.
    Some common explanations of issue polarization and echo chambers rely on social or cognitive mechanisms of exclusion. Accordingly, suggested interventions like “be more open-minded” target these mechanisms: avoid epistemic bubbles and don’t discount contrary information. Contrary to such explanations, we show how a much weaker mechanism—the preference for belief—can produce issue polarization in epistemic communities with little to no mechanisms of exclusion. We present a network model that demonstrates how a dynamic interaction between the preference for belief (...)
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  12. In Defense of (Some) Online Echo Chambers.Douglas R. Campbell - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (3):1-11.
    In this article, I argue that online echo chambers are in some cases and in some respects good. I do not attempt to refute arguments that they are harmful, but I argue that they are sometimes beneficial. In the first section, I argue that it is sometimes good to be insulated from views with which one disagrees. In the second section, I argue that the software-design principles that give rise to online echo chambers have a lot to recommend (...)
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  13. Online Intellectual Virtues and the Extended Mind.Lukas Schwengerer - 2021 - Social Epistemology 35 (3):312-322.
    The internet has become an ubiquitous epistemic source. However, it comes with several drawbacks. For instance, the world wide web seems to foster filter bubbles and echo chambers and includes search results that promote bias and spread misinformation. Richard Heersmink suggests online intellectual virtues to combat these epistemically detrimental effects . These are general epistemic virtues applied to the online environment based on our background knowledge of this online environment. I argue that these online intellectual virtues also (...)
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  14. Epistemically Pernicious Groups and the Groupstrapping Problem.Kenneth Boyd - 2018 - Social Epistemology 33 (1):61-73.
    Recently, there has been growing concern that increased partisanship in news sources, as well as new ways in which people acquire information, has led to a proliferation of epistemic bubbles and echo chambers: in the former, one tends to acquire information from a limited range of sources, ones that generally support the kinds of beliefs that one already has, while the latter function in the same way, but possess the additional characteristic that certain beliefs are actively reinforced. Here (...)
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  15. The Conspiracy Pathology.Ryan Wasser - 2024 - The Peerless Review 1.
    [To readers: Please consider visiting the journal's website to read this work.] In spite of referring to the human tendency to "breath together" or share the same spirit, the word "conspire" has developed a negative connotation in contemporary society, specifically as it pertains to theorizing about conspiracies as a result of the human proclivity to recognize patterns recognition and coalesce common themes amongst those with shared perceptions into something resembling a unified narrative. This proclivity has only become more pronounced with (...)
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  16. Echo Chambers, Epistemic Injustice and Anti-Intellectualism.Carline Klijnman - 2021 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 10 (6):36-45.
    C. Thi Nguyen's (2020) recent account of echo chambers as social epistemic structures that actively exclude outsiders’ voices has sparked debate on the connection between echo chambers and epistemic injustice (Santos 2021; Catala 2021; Elzinga 2021).In this paper I am mainly concerned with the connection between echo chambers and testimonial injustice, understood as an instance whereby a speaker receives less epistemic credibility than they deserve, due to a prejudice in the hearer (Fricker 2007). In (...)
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  17. The Ethics of Social Media: Being Better Online.Joe Saunders - 2024 - In Carl Fox & Joe Saunders, Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Media Ethics. Routledge. pp. 307-18.
    Social media is a mess. Philosophers have recently helped catalogue some of the various ills. In this chapter, I relay some of this conceptual work on virtue signalling, piling on, ramping up, echo-chambers, epistemic bubbles, polarization, moral outrage porn, and the gamification of communication. In drawing attention to these things, philosophers hope to steer us towards being better online. One form that this takes is a call for more civility (both online and off). There is a good case (...)
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  18. Vulnerability in Social Epistemic Networks.Emily Sullivan, Max Sondag, Ignaz Rutter, Wouter Meulemans, Scott Cunningham, Bettina Speckmann & Mark Alfano - 2020 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 28 (5):1-23.
    Social epistemologists should be well-equipped to explain and evaluate the growing vulnerabilities associated with filter bubbles, echo chambers, and group polarization in social media. However, almost all social epistemology has been built for social contexts that involve merely a speaker-hearer dyad. Filter bubbles, echo chambers, and group polarization all presuppose much larger and more complex network structures. In this paper, we lay the groundwork for a properly social epistemology that gives the role and structure of networks their due. (...)
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  19. Developing a Model of Groupstrapping: A Response to Baumgaertner and Nguyen.Kenneth Boyd - 2019 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 8 (8):32-39.
    In their responses to my article “Epistemically Pernicious Groups and the Groupstrapping Problem” (Boyd, 2018), Bert Baumgaertner (“Groupstrapping, Boostrapping, and Oops-strapping: A Reply to Boyd”) and C. Thi Nguyen (“Group-strapping, Bubble, or Echo Chamber?”) have raised interesting questions and opened lines of inquiry regarding my discussion of what I hope to be a way to help make sense of how members of groups can continue to hold beliefs that are greatly outweighed by countervailing evidence (e.g. antivaxxers, climate-change deniers, etc.). (...)
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  20. Cognitive islands and runaway echo chambers: problems for epistemic dependence on experts.C. Thi Nguyen - 2020 - Synthese 197 (7):2803-2821.
    I propose to study one problem for epistemic dependence on experts: how to locate experts on what I will call cognitive islands. Cognitive islands are those domains for knowledge in which expertise is required to evaluate other experts. They exist under two conditions: first, that there is no test for expertise available to the inexpert; and second, that the domain is not linked to another domain with such a test. Cognitive islands are the places where we have the fewest (...)
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  21. Conspiracy Theories, Populism, and Epistemic Autonomy.Keith Raymond Harris - 2023 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (1):21-36.
    Quassim Cassam has argued that psychological and epistemological analyses of conspiracy theories threaten to overlook the political nature of such theories. According to Cassam, conspiracy theories are a form of political propaganda. I develop a limited critique of Cassam's analysis.This paper advances two core theses. First, acceptance of conspiracy theories requires a rejection of epistemic authority that renders conspiracy theorists susceptible to co-option by certain political programs while insulating such programs from (...)
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  22. The Harm of Social Media to Public Reason.Paige Benton & Michael W. Schmidt - 2024 - Topoi 43 (5): 1433–1449.
    It is commonly agreed that so-called echo chambers and epistemic bubbles, associated with social media, are detrimental to liberal democracies. Drawing on John Rawls’s political liberalism, we offer a novel explanation of why social media platforms amplifying echo chambers and epistemic bubbles are likely contributing to the violation of the democratic norms connected to the ideal of public reason. These norms are clarified with reference to the method of (full) reflective equilibrium, which we argue should be (...)
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  23. Feminist Epistemology and Social Epistemology: Another Uneasy Alliance.Michael D. Doan - 2024 - Apa Studies on Feminism and Philosophy 23 (2):11-19.
    In this paper I explore Phyllis Rooney’s 2003 chapter, “Feminist Epistemology and Naturalized Epistemology: An Uneasy Alliance,” taking guidance from her critique of naturalized epistemology in pursuing my own analysis of another uneasy alliance: that between feminist epistemology and social epistemology. Investigating some of the background assumptions at work in prominent conceptions of social epistemology, I consider recent analyses of "epistemic bubbles" to ask how closely such analyses are aligned with ongoing research in feminist epistemology. I argue that critical (...)
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  24. Echo Chambers, Ignorance and Domination.Breno Santos - 2021 - Social Epistemology 35 (2):109-119.
    My aim in this paper is to engage with C. Thi Nguyen’s characterization of the echo chamber and to propose two things. First, I argue that a proper reading of his concept of echo chamber should make use of the notion of ignorance in the form of a structural epistemic insensitivity. My main contention is that ignorance as a substantive structural practice accounts for the epistemically deleterious effects of echo chambers. Second, I propose that from the (...)
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  25. Conspiracy Theories and the Epistemic Power of Narratives.Daniel Munro - 2024 - Philosophical Psychology.
    We often turn to comforting stories to distract ourselves from emotionally painful truths. This paper explores a dark side of this tendency. I argue that the way false conspiracy theories are disseminated often involves packaging them as part of narratives that offer comforting alternatives to ugly truths. Furthermore, I argue that the way these narratives arouse and resolve our emotions can be part of what causes people to believe conspiracy theories. This account helps to bring out (...)
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  26. 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 (...)
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  27. ProAna Worlds: Affectivity and Echo Chambers Online.Lucy Osler & Joel Krueger - 2021 - Topoi 41 (5):883-893.
    Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is an eating disorder characterised by self-starvation. Accounts of AN typically frame the disorder in individualistic terms: e.g., genetic predisposition, perceptual disturbances of body size and shape, experiential bodily disturbances. Without disputing the role these factors may play in developing AN, we instead draw attention to the way disordered eating practices in AN are actively supported by others. Specifically, we consider how Pro-Anorexia (ProAna) websites—which provide support and solidarity, tips, motivational content, a sense of community, and understanding (...)
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  28. Conspiracy Theories and the Conventional Wisdom Revisited.Charles Pigden - 2022 - In Olli Loukola, Secrets and Conspiracies. Brill.
    Conspiracy theories should be neither believed nor investigated - that is the conventional wisdom. I argue that it is sometimes permissible both to investigate and to believe. Hence this is a dispute in the ethics of belief. I defend epistemic ‘oughts’ that apply in the first instance to belief-forming strategies that are partly under our control. I argue that the policy of systematically doubting or disbelieving conspiracy theories would be both a political disaster and the (...)
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  29. Echo Chambers and Moral Progress.Tyler Wark - forthcoming - Episteme.
    In this paper, I argue that echo chambers pose a problem for moral progress because of their threat to moral reasoning. I argue for two theses about the epistemology of moral progress: (1) the practical utility thesis: moral reasoning plays an important role in improving moral judgments, and (2) the conflictive social reasoning thesis: the kind of moral reasoning that is important for moral progress involves social reasoning with disputants. Without some conflict, human beings will naturally reason in a (...)
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  30. Conspiracy Theories and the Conventional Wisdom.Charles Pigden - 2007 - Episteme 4 (2):219-232.
    Abstract Conspiracy theories should be neither believed nor investigated - that is the conventional wisdom. I argue that it is sometimes permissible both to investigate and to believe. Hence this is a dispute in the ethics of belief. I defend epistemic “oughts” that apply in the first instance to belief-forming strategies that are partly under our control. But the beliefforming strategy of not believing conspiracy theories would be a political disaster and the epistemic equivalent (...)
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  31. Conspiracy Theories and Evidential Self-Insulation.M. Giulia Napolitano - 2021 - In Sven Bernecker, Amy K. Flowerree & Thomas Grundmann, The Epistemology of Fake News. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 82-105.
    What are conspiracy theories? And what, if anything, is epistemically wrong with them? I offer an account on which conspiracy theories are a unique way of holding a belief in a conspiracy. Specifically, I take conspiracy theories to be self-insulating beliefs in conspiracies. On this view, conspiracy theorists have their conspiratorial beliefs in a way that is immune to revision by counter-evidence. I argue that conspiracy theories are always irrational. Although (...)
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  32. 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 (...)
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  33. Suspicious conspiracy theories.M. R. X. Dentith - 2022 - Synthese 200 (3):1-14.
    Conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists have been accused of a great many sins, but are the conspiracy theories conspiracy theorists believe epistemically problematic? Well, according to some recent work, yes, they are. Yet a number of other philosophers like Brian L. Keeley, Charles Pigden, Kurtis Hagen, Lee Basham, and the like have argued ‘No!’ I will argue that there are features of certain conspiracy theories which license suspicion of such theories. I (...)
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  34. Echo Chambers and Social Media: On the Possibilities of a Tax Incentive Solution.Megan Fritts - 2023 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 12 (7):13-19.
    In “Regulating social media as a public good: Limiting epistemic segregation” (2022), Toby Handfield tackles a well-known problematic aspect of widespread social media use: the formation of ideologically monotone and insulated social networks. Handfield argues that we can take some cues from economics to reduce the extent to which echo chambers grow up around individual users. Specifically, he argues that tax incentives to encourage network heterophily may be levied at any of three different groups: individual social media users, (...)
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  35. Where conspiracy theories come from, what they do, and what to do about them.Keith Raymond Harris - 2024 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Philosophers who study conspiracy theories have increasingly addressed the questions of where conspiracy theories come from, what such theories do, and what to do about them. This essay serves as a commentary on the answers to these questions offered by contributors to this special issue.
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  36. Some Conspiracy Theories.M. R. X. Dentith - 2023 - Social Epistemology (4):522-534.
    A remarkable feature of the philosophical work on conspiracy theory theory has been that most philosophers agree there is nothing inherently problematic about conspiracy theories (AKA the thesis of particularism). Recent work, however, has challenged this consensus view, arguing that there really is something epistemically wrong with conspiracy theorising (AKA generalism). Are particularism and generalism incompatible? By looking at just how much particularists and generalists might have to give away to make their theoretical viewpoints compatible, I (...)
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  37. Conspiracy theories are not theories: Time to rename conspiracy theories.Kevin Reuter & Lucien Baumgartner - forthcoming - In Manuel Gustavo Isaac, Kevin Scharp & Steffen Koch, 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 (...)
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  38. Extreme beliefs and Echo chambers.Finlay Malcolm & Christopher Ranalli - forthcoming - In Rik Peels & John Horgan, Mapping the Terrain of Extreme Belief and Behavior. Oxford University Press.
    Are extreme beliefs constitutive of echo chambers, or only typically caused by them? Or are many echo chambers unproblematic, amplifying relatively benign beliefs? This paper details the conceptual relations between echo chambers and extreme beliefs, showing how different conceptual choice-points in how we understand both echo chambers and extreme beliefs affects how we should evaluate, study, and engage with echo chambering groups. We also explore how our theories of extreme beliefs and echo chambers (...)
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  39. Investigating Conspiracy Theories – Introduction to the Special Issue.M. R. X. Dentith, Duetz Julia & Melina Tsapos - 2024 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy:1-9.
    This introduction to this special issue of Inquiry looks at recent work in the philosophy of conspiracy theory theory. Looking at two related worries expressed in the wider conspiracy theory theory (the academic study of conspiracy theories) – the Problem of Conspiracy Theories and the Problem of Conspiracy Theorists – this special issue argues that recent work in the philosophy of conspiracy theories is getting all the more closer to not just (...)
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  40. Political Genealogies for Conspiracy Theories, Debunked.Alexios Stamatiadis-Bréhier - 2025 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 14 (1):27-40.
    In a recent paper, Nader Shoaibi (2024) makes a valuable contribution to the discussion on genealogies and conspiracy theories (CTs) by focusing on a particular kind of genealogy: what he calls 'political genealogies'. Roughly, political genealogies are not so much interested in the epistemic warrant (or rationality) of a given belief or theory. Rather, their function is to illuminate the social and political conditions that give rise to the spread of (unwarranted) CTs. Shoaibi also notes that such (...)
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  41. 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 (...)
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  42. In defence of conspiracy theories.Matthew Dentith - 2012 - Dissertation, University of Auckland
    The purpose of this doctoral project is to explore the epistemic issues surrounding the concept of the conspiracy theory and to advance the analysis and evaluation of the conspiracy theory as a mode of explanation. The candidate is interested in the circumstances under which inferring to the truth or likeliness of a given conspiracy theory is, or is not, warranted.
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  43. 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 (...)
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  44. Self-trust and critical thinking online: a relational account.Lavinia Marin & Samantha Marie Copeland - 2022 - Social Epistemology (6):696-708.
    An increasingly popular solution to the anti-scientific climate rising on social media platforms has been the appeal to more critical thinking from the user's side. In this paper, we zoom in on the ideal of critical thinking and unpack it in order to see, specifically, whether it can provide enough epistemic agency so that users endowed with it can break free from enclosed communities on social media (so called epistemic bubbles). We criticise some assumptions embedded in the ideal (...)
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  45. Particularism as the Corrective to the Conventional Wisdom Regarding Conspiracy Theories.Kurtis Hagen - 2024 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 13 (12):30-33.
    In response to several articles on SERRC, I argue that the common pejorative use of the phrase “conspiracy theory” is the fundamental basis for the distinction between generalism and particularism. That is, generalism describes the “conventional wisdom” about conspiracy theories to which particularism is the corrective. Generalism is best understood as the idea that conspiracy theories ought to be dismissed (perhaps even ridiculed) because they are conspiracy theories--for that is the conventional wisdom (as (...)
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  46. Group fanaticism and narratives of ressentiment.Paul Katsafanas - 2022 - In Leo Townsend, Ruth Rebecca Tietjen, Michael Staudigl & Hans Bernard Schmid, The Philosophy of Fanaticism: Epistemic, Affective, and Political Dimensions. London: Routledge.
    The current political climate is awash with groups that we might be tempted to label irrational, extremist, hyper-partisan; it is full of echo-chambers, radicalization, and epistemic bubbles. Philosophers have profitably analyzed some of these phenomena. In this essay, I draw attention to a crucial but neglected aspect of our time: the way in which certain groups are fanatical. I distinguish fanatical groups from other types of problematic groups, such as extremist and cultish groups. I argue that a group (...)
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  47. The applied epistemology of conspiracy theories: An overview.M. R. X. Dentith & Brian L. Keeley - 2018 - In David Coady & James Chase, Routledge Handbook of Applied Epistemology. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. pp. 284-294.
    An overview of the current epistemic literature concerning conspiracy theories, as well as indications for future research avenues on the topic.
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  48. What Does It Mean for a Conspiracy Theory to Be a ‘Theory’?Julia Duetz - 2023 - Social Epistemology:1-16.
    The pejorative connotation often associated with the ordinary language meaning of “conspiracy theory” does not only stem from a conspiracy theory’s being about a conspiracy, but also from a conspiracy theory’s being regarded as a particular kind of theory. I propose to understand conspiracy theory-induced polarization in terms of disagreement about the correct epistemic evaluation of ‘theory’ in ‘conspiracy theory’. By framing the positions typical in conspiracy theory-induced polarization in this way, I (...)
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  49. (1 other version)What is a Conspiracy Theory?M. Giulia Https://Orcidorg Napolitano & Kevin Https://Orcidorg Reuter - 2021 - Erkenntnis 88 (5):2035-2062.
    In much of the current academic and public discussion, conspiracy theories are portrayed as a negative phenomenon, linked to misinformation, mistrust in experts and institutions, and political propaganda. Rather surprisingly, however, philosophers working on this topic have been reluctant to incorporate a negatively evaluative aspect when either analyzing or engineering the concept conspiracy theory. In this paper, we present empirical data on the nature of the concept conspiracy theory from five studies designed to test the existence, (...)
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  50. The 'Incel' Phenomenon in the Digital Era--How Echo Chambers have Fueled the Incel Movement.Eero Salojärvi, Matti Rantanen, Emilia Nieminen, Alina Juote & Heidi Hanhela - 2020 - In S. M. Amadae, Computational Transformation of the Public Sphere: Theories and Cases. Helsinki: Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. pp. 195-210.
    The “incel” phenomenon began after 2010 when like-minded young – mostly straight white – men started to share similar thoughts and worldviews on certain digital platforms and online forums leading to an exclusive community. The phenomenon is characterized by misogynism, racism and homophobia. The most extreme forms of the phenomenon have led to violent hate crimes. The aim of this paper is to understand this phenomenon and analyze it by applying the echo chamber theory.
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