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Lee Basham is Resilient and Ubiquitous
23 Plays4 years ago
Josh and M continue their foray into Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre with a look at 2006's "Conspiracy Theory: Resilience and Ubiquity" by Lee Basham. Meanwhile, Lord Morissey Morrisey and Pluddles debate just how many apostles there are...
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Josh is @monkeyfluids and M is @conspiracism on Twitter
You can also contact us at: podcastconspiracy@gmail.com
You can learn more about M’s academic work at: http://mrxdentith.com
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Transcript
Morrissey's Return to the Church and the Mystery of Thirteen
00:00:16
Speaker
Morrissey was in such a state about returning to the church that he only reluctantly allowed me to return to my room to fetch an overcoat. As such, I found myself feeling rather cold as we stood amongst the ruins of the church of orphans. Thirteen, pluddles. Thirteen. Yes, Morrissey. That cryptic advertisement features the number thirteen, and I can't help but feel it is the solution to whatever Archibald and Mericat, if indeed those are their real names, are attempting to seek.
The Church of Orphans and the Missing Apostle
00:00:43
Speaker
His Lordship flung himself onto the paved floor of the church, counting everything he saw. Thirteen paving slabs? No. Thirteen apes? No. Thirteen... Uh, Marcy? He looked up at me. Yes? Marcy, remind me how many apostles there were.
00:00:59
Speaker
Well, Pluddles, that is a curious question. I believe scholars are divided on the exact number, given the list of named apostles conflicts with the commonly assumed amount of them. You see, in the Gospel of... I was not anxious to hear yet another sermon on Morrissey's heterodox views on the Christian creed. Be that as it may, Morrissey, but how many are there commonly assumed to be? Well, Pluddles, surely you know that. Then, do you not find the freeze of the apostles above the altar a little suspicious? Morrissey leaped to its feet and dusted himself off.
00:01:28
Speaker
Pluddles, I have already counted the number of Apostles. There are twelve, which is the commonly assumed number, even if it doesn't match the list of named Apostles in the four Gospels. But Morrissey, do you not think they're arranged above the altar a little oddly? Morrissey stared at the frieze, tapping his temple with an index finger. Pluddles, I have been a fool whilst you have seen things precisely.
Secret Passage Discovery at the Church
00:01:50
Speaker
Yes, this is the secret of the Church of Orphans. Morrissey clambered onto the altar to get closer to the frieze.
00:01:56
Speaker
I had not noticed that our apostles were not strictly centred with the isle. It is as if, as you have correctly noted, there should be a thirteenth apostle on the left hand side. Sinister. Yes, pluddles. Very sinister indeed. His lodge oppressed where the thirteenth apostle could have been, and the stone, with some noise, sunk into the wall. Then, behind us, we heard one of the paving slabs Morrissey had been lying on drop open.
00:02:24
Speaker
Pluddles, whatever stickle's final secret was, it lies beneath.
Podcasting During COVID-19 with Josh Addison and Dr. Emdentith
00:02:41
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr Imdentive.
00:02:51
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. I am Josh Edison. They are Dr. Emdentith. We are socially distancing, but only by a little bit in Auckland, together in the same room. And I mean, it's basically virtue signaling, because we were French kissing before, but now we are looking distanced. It's all about appearances. To make sure that you know at home
00:03:15
Speaker
You should also socially distance and not French kiss your co-host. No, yes, I licked every doorknob on the way here. Not a euphemism. Well, it is. Well, it's not a euphemism, it's a lie. Now.
New Zealand's COVID-19 Response and Public Reaction
00:03:30
Speaker
Yeah, I suppose for our overseas viewers, maybe the old bit of the old COVID update, I suppose, here in New Zealand. So Auckland is now out of its temporary lockdown, but into a less severe lockdown where we're still supposed to be responsibly socially distancing.
00:03:45
Speaker
We could have eight more people in this room. We could. But that's it. That's it? Yeah, no. Gatherings of 10 people. And an interesting change from last time, they've made mask wearing mandatory, but only on public transport at the moment. But it's strongly encouraged elsewhere.
00:04:02
Speaker
It is. And that means there are people engaging in mask-related protests. Yep, a little bit. A little bit. There was one fella on the news the other day who sort of went on his Instagram or whatever about how he didn't wear his, didn't wear him and his partner didn't wear their masks on the train and someone sort of had a word with them and kind of said, you should wear your mask, dude. And he said, well, you're going to arrest me.
00:04:25
Speaker
No, but wear your mask. But then he was all like, aha, you see, no, you're right. They can't make me wear a mask. That's not the attitude of a three year old.
00:04:34
Speaker
No, I must say, because I'm involved in a project at the moment looking at Covid-19 disinformation and conspiracy theories in the build-up to the election here in Aotearoa, New Zealand, I am of the firm opinion that our she'll be right attitude of, we'll talk to the people first and tell them they're doing wrong and then eventually we'll find them.
00:04:56
Speaker
once they've done it two or three times is the wrong attitude because it only requires one person to be asymptomatic with COVID-19, not wearing a mask on public transport for that to be a vector for infection for a large number of people. So in that situation I think instant finds all the time.
00:05:13
Speaker
Well, yes. Yeah, I mean, there's been there's been as with anything, there's been a fair bit of political calculus. I mean, people are sort of saying, oh, it shouldn't be a political decision, but it's a decision being made by politicians. Surely it's political by definition. And in that we went down to this level.
00:05:30
Speaker
when like previously we had the big four-week massive lockdown of the whole country and we came out of that when there had been sort of zero new cases for several days and so on that we're still getting cases popping up at the moment but I think people fairly rightly assumed that if they carried on the lockdown too long then people would start acting like dicks anyway so
00:05:53
Speaker
It's a bit of a balancing act between what would be the best, most sensible thing to do in medical terms and what's going to piss people off the least and have least risk of a backlash.
Evaluating New Zealand's Lockdown Measures
00:06:04
Speaker
Yes. There's a calculation which in a few years' time we'll be probably looking back upon with the benefit of hindsight and going, maybe we should have gone harder for another week in lockdown or maybe we should have gone harder for three more weeks in lockdown.
00:06:21
Speaker
Yes, we'll just have to see. But anyway, so that's where we are. We can go out, we can do things. We should just probably be wearing a mask while we do it. But we don't have to, unless we're on a train. But we should. But then we might get away with it anyway. But we should. We should. We should.
Exploring Conspiracy Theories and Philosophical Debates
00:06:37
Speaker
Now...
00:06:39
Speaker
Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre. Indeed, another exciting episode where we'll be delving into the work of an author we've covered several times before on this illustrious podcast. An author who you could possibly describe in two words as both resilient and ubiquitous. It's very true and has many thoughts both after and before
00:07:07
Speaker
Before what? The chime? The chime! Nice rescue!
00:07:16
Speaker
Yes, so today we are looking at Afterthoughts on Conspiracy Resilience and Ubiquity by one Lee Basham. Now this one I assume is another chapter from the book, from the Conspiracy Theories of the Philosophical Debate. It is indeed. So yes, we are now looking at Lee's contribution to Conspiracy Theories of the Philosophical Debate as edited by David Coady and published by Ashgate. Ashgate?
00:07:49
Speaker
gate that you let your asses in and out of. It's true, and not asses, as maybe Americans might say, back in 2006. So, this continues as we pretty much used to by now, the whole point-counterpoint debate kind of thing. We had Brian Keighley said something, Lee Basham reacted to that, Brian reacted to that, and now Lee's reacting straight on back again.
00:08:08
Speaker
S is an S gate.
00:08:15
Speaker
No, you forget about Steve reacting to that as well. But then, yes, then mixed in, Steve reacted to stuff, and so everyone's reacting to everyone. It's positively filthy. It's quite reactive. Another fairly short one. Only about two and a half thousand words, but there's a lot packed in there. There really is.
00:08:37
Speaker
So obviously, as in all the cases of these conspiracy theory Masterpiece Theater 1s, this is something with which you're intimately familiar, but with which I was reading for the first time.
Social Epistemology's Role in Conspiracy Theories
00:08:50
Speaker
And yeah, reading this, it did seem to sort of solidify the idea that we sort of had the likes of
00:08:56
Speaker
Brian Keeley taking a look at the epistemology of conspiracy theories themselves and then you have Steve Clark who rather than doing that sort of went off to look at the psychology of conspiracy theorists and Lee Basham really does seem to be most
00:09:12
Speaker
into the eye, looking at sort of society, the world in which these conspiracy theories occur and in which these conspiracy theorists operate. In which case he's basically doing social epistemology at this stage. So looking at the situation of epistemic knowers, such as ourselves, in communities of other knowers or epistemic agents. And so he's going, well, look, given the kind of societies we exist in,
00:09:38
Speaker
And given the kind of assumption expectations of the societies in which we exist, our knowledge is constrained or liberated, depending on what those assumptions are. And so we can't do conspiracy theory without thinking about actual conspiracies and the history of conspiracy in our polities. Does this social epistemology get applied to numerous other areas? How's that?
00:10:05
Speaker
I mean, so social epistemology basically is going away from the individualized epistemology that's kind of traditional in the Western canon of being focused on individual epistemic agents engaging in, well, how do I know X? Well, I know X because I have a justified true belief that blah.
00:10:23
Speaker
And social epistemology goes, well, actually, hold on. A lot of our knowledge is constituent by social mores, social connections, trust and the like. And so to do epistemology, you really do need to think about society as a whole and how that constrains or liberates you as an epistemic agent within that society.
00:10:46
Speaker
So it applies to basically everything. So standpoint epistemology, where you go, well, if I was a woman in the society, how would this affect my ability to gain information ends up being part of the social epistemology pantheon. So it applies to lots of different fields.
00:11:04
Speaker
healed. You do the social epistemology of politics, the social epistemology of science. We start thinking about groups of scientific agents engaging in scientific inquiry. There are limits to those inquiries depending on the kind of society in which you live. Social epistemology applies to everything. It's everywhere, Josh. You're breathing it in now. Yum.
00:11:28
Speaker
Now, I guess we should start with the opening paragraph.
The Nature and Impact of Conspiracy Theories
00:11:32
Speaker
Is it my turn? Well, I've said it's always your turn. That's always my turn. OK. So Lee Basham's paper, Afterthoughts on Conspiracy, Theory, Resilience and Ubiquity begins as follows.
00:11:44
Speaker
Recent work in epistemology has tried to pinpoint adequate grounds for rejecting conspiracy theories as unwarranted, but the love it appears to succeed. What has emerged instead is that conspiracy theories turn out to be remarkably wily and resilient epistemic creatures. They are extremely difficult to discount.
00:11:59
Speaker
A primary concern is that contemporary philosophers have put far too much effort into trying to discredit conspiracy and intelligent attempts to identify it, instead of achieving a better appreciation of conspiracy and conspiracy theory's natural place in life, and then embracing a more honest respect for conspiracy's powerful potential in our world.
00:12:16
Speaker
A dismissive attitude toward conspiracy in its theory is to be expected, I suppose, from those in the grips of the official civil religion of Western free democracies, that we live in an open society consisting of mutually balancing centres of power governed by the informed will of impartial, compassionate citizen-consumers. A dismissive attitude in attendant rationalisations is also natural for those surrounded by the economic ease and the securities of an affluent Western lifestyle, but I do not believe it is quite the best philosophical attitude. I suspect it is merely a comforting and ultimately negligent mythology.
00:12:46
Speaker
Quite a lot of buzzwords there. Quite a bit of, he's nailing his colours to the mast or the flagpole or whatever it is you nail colours onto right there. And what are those colours Joshua? Oh, green. Interesting choice. So,
00:13:06
Speaker
He starts off basically addressing Brian Elkely's reactions to him. So if you remember from Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition, where he finished by saying basically,
00:13:21
Speaker
If one wishes to be malevolent on a global scale, why waste time and energy maintaining a conspiracy when history shows that one can get away with it in the open? Sort of arguing against this idea that Lee put forward that sort of the world we live in is a world in which conspiracies occur and we don't have the sort of trust in social institutions. Or so-called pragmatic rejection.
00:13:46
Speaker
And Brodell Kitty said, but hang on, look at these things that happened. The Holocaust happened. The Spanish Inquisition, witch trials, all sorts of things happened and they didn't. And even where things happened a little bit in secret, like the Dunkirk landings of World War II, they were secret to a point in terms of the details, but they still, everybody knew that the attack was coming. They just weren't quite sure of the exact details. So he basically said, you don't need to posit
00:14:13
Speaker
these grand overarching conspiracies because people are perfectly capable of being malevolent on a global scale without the need for conspiracy.
00:14:26
Speaker
And so Basham, nevertheless, has accounted to that. He does, which is to say, well, yes, we can accept that the Dunkirk landings were kind of signalled, even if elements were kept secret. We can expect the Spanish Inquisition. We can expect that people will do some fairly dreadful things in the open.
00:14:49
Speaker
But conversely, a lot of the planning of these dreadful things is done in secret. Because if you plan these dreadful things openly from the get go, people are going to stop you. So we need to be talking about the prior stuff that gets us to those vile deeds, although the Dunkirk landings really wasn't particularly bad at all.
00:15:14
Speaker
Yes, no, the Holocaust was the one that gets brought up. You need to think about, well, how did they get to the point where they could start acting in the open? Because that's the point we need to be talking about conspiracy. Yes, indeed.
00:15:30
Speaker
When Keeley says, why do you need to have a conspiracy when history shows you can get away with it in the open, Lee basically says, so that you can get away with it in the open. Yes, the Nazis weren't campaigning for day one on we're going to do our best to exterminate the Jewish people, although that was presumably Hitler's goal all along. A lot of the preparation, a lot of the initial planning happened in secret. And had they been completely open about it, they may very well not have got away with it.
00:16:01
Speaker
And he also, Lee Basham, reacts to Brian Keeley's claim that it's a, you know, while he's quite willing to accept that conspiracy theories do, yep, they are common, low level ones, high level ones happen all the time. But he said, you know, there's a big jump from adultery and insider trading with his examples to global conspiracies. But then Lee Basham, again, sticking with the Spanish Inquisition, talked about how well you're in that
00:16:26
Speaker
you sort of had people being targeted for political ends or to intimidate and so on. And that would sort of happen at a larger level, but then sort of down into villages and then sort of possibly down at the level of family and so on. And so the same thing that operates at a higher society level can operate at a smaller personal level anyway. So possibly the distinction between the smaller scale and adultery businesses inside of training and large scale global movement conspiracies is not as important.
00:16:54
Speaker
which is why he talks about the ubiquity of conspiracy. And notes, it is important to keep before us the fact that far from being a nefarious fringe activity, conspiracy and its theory are commonplace within the most profound personal experiences and commitments of billions of human beings.
00:17:16
Speaker
Far from a rarity, both conspiracy and its theory are fundamental modes of human cognition and have been for millennia. So this is Lee's claim that look, part of the problem with this discussion of conspiracy and conspiracy theory is that we think these conspiracies are rare.
00:17:36
Speaker
and thus we can appraise them as if they are uncommon events. Lee counters that by going, well, look, actually, conspiracies happen all the time, from the organisation of surprise parties to large scale political malfeasance. It's all a spectrum of conspiracy there.
00:17:54
Speaker
And people theorize about these conspiracies all the time. If you think that your friends are organizing a surprise party and they are keeping it from you, you are theorizing about a conspiracy in the same way that if you think that the government is keeping something from you about their COVID-19 response, you are also theorizing about a conspiracy. Both cases are commonplace, and we should recognize that people have these suspicions all the time.
00:18:24
Speaker
and it's perfectly normal.
Religion and Conspiracy: A Comparative Analysis
00:18:27
Speaker
And then he makes a slightly eye-opening move in that my eyes were open while I read it, because that's how reading works. You should have got the audiobook. Well, yes.
00:18:38
Speaker
That you can see my eyes flipped open when I heard the following words. Well he basically says that organised theistic religion is kind of the ultimate conspiracy and one that has been with us for thousands of years and he probably before recorded human history.
00:18:55
Speaker
Time you put in. Because he describes traditional theistic religion as any belief that accepts one the world is the creation of a morally superior powerful supernatural intelligence or God to the world has suffered the introduction of a power evil or some other highly undesirable causal property such as pan illusion
00:19:16
Speaker
or Maya. Three, this power has a supernatural dimension. Supernatural intelligences exercise it on their own and via human beings. Four, the creator actively resists the efforts of these agents of evil on its own and through human beings. Five, both these good and evil intelligences are presently active in our world and influence many momentous personal and world events. And finally, six, much, easily most of their activity is intentionally hidden from the majority of humanity. So
00:19:45
Speaker
Sounds like he's describing parties working together in secret for a common goal.
00:19:52
Speaker
And indeed, this is a common refrain in the skeptical literature to moving outside of philosophy into largely American skepticism and the notion that organized religion is kind of a scam designed to milk or grift its followers and the idea that actually believing in these higher powers operating behind the scenes
00:20:16
Speaker
does seem a lot like subscribing to an official conspiracy theory that it's okay to believe it. And then he sort of goes on to say okay well if you change God, replace God in his previous definition with sort of forces of democracy or America and evil with communism then you have the sorts of
00:20:38
Speaker
conspiracy theories that the John Birch Society trafficked in. If you replace communism with Islamism, then you have plenty of the anti-Muslim type conspiracy theories which we still see plenty of to this very day. And indeed, because this was written back in 2006, Lee is making particular reference to the US Attorney General John Ashcroft,
00:21:01
Speaker
who was the Attorney General under the W. Bush administration that talked about a vague Al Qaeda conspiracy theory, which was of course part of the rationale for the invasion to both Afghanistan and also Iraq.
00:21:17
Speaker
So he then says theists of the nature he described are conspiracy theorists, if they are right.
Conspiracy in Societal Structures and Historical Narratives
00:21:25
Speaker
The essential trajectory of the world is a conspiracy. So he's basically rounding out by saying that conspiracy is baked into the very fabric of society and has been for a decent chunk of human history.
00:21:38
Speaker
Now what's interesting about this, as we will see in a few weeks' time, there's a more recent paper by a friend of the show, Brian Alkely, about God as the ultimate conspirator. So we'll be returning back to this interesting tangent about religion very soon.
00:21:59
Speaker
But for now, let's turn, as Lee Basham does, at this point to looking at what Steve Clark had to say. You'll remember his talk of degenerative research theories. In that kind of Lakatosian mode. So doing the philosophy of science from the point of M. Ray Lakatos, as opposed to say you're Thomas Kuhn.
00:22:22
Speaker
And you recall, he doesn't go into so much of the psychology of it, but more the way that Clark treats it in a sort of philosophy of science mode.
00:22:36
Speaker
and has a look at what he says. I mean, first of all, he makes the point that it isn't quite clear, and I believe Clark said this himself in his own paper, when a research theory becomes degenerative in the same way that we've seen problems with Brian Elkely talking about his mature unwarranted conspiracy theories, when exactly is it mature?
00:22:56
Speaker
Something I'm still struggling with with my own work with respect to COVID-19, given that COVID-19 conspiracy theories are relatively new, given they emerged at the earliest back in November of last year, or most likely actually around about March of this year. And yet I'm labeling a whole bunch of those as being unwarranted conspiracy theories, because they appear to be quite mature, and yet no good evidence is presenting. So it is a rather vague metric.
00:23:26
Speaker
Although, as I think you said, and I've heard Joe Skinski say, a lot of these, quote unquote, new conspiracy theories do tend to sort of base themselves on existing ones that have been around for ages and ages and just sort of piggyback on, you know, just put a new veneer over the...
00:23:45
Speaker
Yes, so there are certain archetypes you see repeated again and again and again where the only new thing is going, oh, what crisis can we apply this particular claim of conspiracy to? Oh, in this particular case, it's COVID-19. It was 5G earlier on. Before that, it was 4G radio signals causing cancer. Before that, it was probably the radio. Before that, it was reading. Well, before reading, it was, et cetera, et cetera. Yes.
00:24:13
Speaker
But anyway, that's sort of more of a side point really. He goes on to say that treating conspiracy theories in the same way that you do philosophy of science is a problem. In particular, quoting here, the real problem with appealing to it in the context of conspiracy theory is that while nature does not presumably fake the data essential to our physical theories, in the case of our social theories, people do, which is a point that's come up before and I cannot for the life of me remember where.
Evaluating Conspiracy Theories: Evidence and Agnosticism
00:24:39
Speaker
Who first said that?
00:24:40
Speaker
That is Brian Alkele. Well, there we go.
00:24:44
Speaker
Yes, so I mean it isn't the two aren't entirely directly comparable because part of the nature of conspiracy theories is that people are trying to hide themselves from you, whereas you would hope that the object of a scientific study is meant to be just this permanent objective reality that you're trying to get to grips with. So maybe that's our first suggestion that possibly we're off in the wrong direction.
00:25:13
Speaker
And when he gets down to it, you sort of, actually, let's just read the quote. The apparent degenerate status of a conspiracy theory, failure to be able to generate a great many new successful predictions and reliance on auxiliary hypothesis to maintain the theory, is exactly what a fairly well-constructed conspiracy would eventually leave investigators with. A closed door to additional investigation and a wealth of false leads and disinformation produced by the conspirators and those they influence.
00:25:39
Speaker
in order to obscure the conspiracy. So we've only returned to the question, how do we distinguish good from bad conspiracy theories? And this is one that he sort of comes back to a bunch of times throughout the paper. As we look at these things, we're trying to sort of talk about conspiracy theories, but then we end up just bottoming out and, well, OK, then there are good ones and bad ones, and how do we tell the two apart, which is not allegedly what these people were trying to figure out in the first place.
00:26:02
Speaker
No, so he continues, an answer to this question should determine when we take a positive or negative attitude towards a conspiracy theory, not anything believed about conspiracy theorists as a group. Which sounds an awful lot like a particularist viewpoint.
00:26:20
Speaker
Indeed, and very soon we'll be looking at the two people who coined the notion of particularism and generalism in this field, which is Bunting and Taylor. Their work will be coming up very soon. And it's a fascinating paper for the sheer fact that it's
00:26:40
Speaker
It's flawed, and yet its central contribution, which is talking about generalism versus particularism, is very important for labelling a whole bunch of practices. And the two authors themselves have completely left the game.
00:26:55
Speaker
So they wrote this very important, although I say flawed, paper about how we appraise, how we talk about conspiracy theory and its analysis. And I don't even know whether they're aware of how well they're cited now. Oh, well, another one to look forward to.
00:27:15
Speaker
Yeah, so this is where Lee Basham finds himself, pointing out that when we try to evaluate conspiracy theories in general, we end up instead having to distinguish between particular ones because we know that some conspiracies happened. We can look at the history of the world of all these conspiracies that were real, that people had theories about, and it turned out to be true.
00:27:40
Speaker
And we want to accept or reject, if we're taking the particular viewpoint, we want to accept or reject these things based on the evidence. But as he just said, a lot of the time the evidence is the thing we don't actually have full access to. And indeed is the kind of thing that conspiracy theorists are concerned about, that there are things we're not being told we ought to know about.
00:28:01
Speaker
And so then Lee comes back to I think his point that he's made in his previous papers, we should acknowledge the implications of this lack, a studied agnosticism about many of the current conspiracy theories that proliferate around the globe. When I read that I did have to wonder though,
00:28:17
Speaker
is like in the past that we were interested in epistemological warrant, so not necessarily are these things true, but should we believe them? When are they plausible to believe given the available evidence? And so in the previous papers where Brian Alkely has been reacting to his views and so on, he's made a point of distinguishing between truth and warrant. We may not
00:28:42
Speaker
be able to tell if a conspiracy theory is true, but maybe we can say whether or not it's warranted, and also the difference between whether it's possible and warranted, because again in the previous book he said, well yes, it's possible that anything, any giant malevolent global conspiracy you want to name could be happening, but we're not interested in possibility, we're interested in warrant. And is Lee talking about warrant here, or has he moved away from it a bit?
00:29:05
Speaker
So I think part of the problem here, and this is part of my reappraisal of Brian's paper, is that actually there are multiple ways of talking about warrant within philosophy, which is, is it justifiable to believe versus is it justifiable to believe given the available evidence we have at a time? And I think Lee is concerned with the first form, which is, if you don't have enough evidence,
00:29:31
Speaker
then you should just be agnostic. Whilst Brian I think is more concerned with the second sense, which is actually we kind of have to make decisions, given the available evidence we have. So we can be worried that there's evidence out there we can't see, but we can't do anything about it. We simply have to make decisions about whether we think something is plausible, given what we know now, and an acknowledgement of our limitations.
00:29:56
Speaker
So I think there's a disjunct here between the two ways that they're talking about warrant in an epistemological way. But I do have to ask a very important question here, Josh. Are you wearing Captain America's shoes?
00:30:08
Speaker
No, they just happen to... I'm wearing Con's. I'm wearing Converse shoes and the symbol of Converse shoes, of course, is the star. And it just so happens that these shoes are... Are red, white and blue? Well, they're white and blue with a little bit of red on them, but not really Captain America shoes. They're just... You do know he's dead. Have you stolen Captain America's shoes? In what continuity are we talking about?
00:30:37
Speaker
Oh, I don't watch Marvel films. No, well, there you go. I thought you were talking about Chris Evans is dead.
Chadwick Boseman and Associated Conspiracy Theories
00:30:42
Speaker
He hasn't got there. The rocks got COVID, but Chris Evans hasn't as far as I know. And Black Panther's dead. What the hell is up with that? Chadwick Boseman, 43 years old. Also, actually, so even though we don't, we normally get to the pop culture stuff at the end now. So there's actually been a kind of interesting conspiracy about that for a while in that it's been fairly obvious that the scribes at the MCU
00:31:05
Speaker
have been looking at making one of the other main characters from Black Panther, the eventual replacement to Black Panther. And people online would go, oh, Chadwick Boseman must be really, really angry. He's only got to make one film, and they're already looking for his successor. I mean, it's just, it's woman's lip gone mad, et cetera, et cetera. And now everyone's being quiet because people are going,
00:31:30
Speaker
No, maybe the MCU were looking for a replacement for Chadwick Boseman because Chadwick Boseman was dying of cancer. And presumably he wasn't thinking, oh, what's really annoying you're replacing me. He was probably actually going, if I live long enough, we can do a film to pass the mantle on. And it turns out that hasn't happened. Oh, yes. Very, very unfortunate. Yeah. Very sad. Very sad. Most sad.
00:31:58
Speaker
But anyway, returning to the paper, we're nearly at the end here anyway, so Lee Basham, not Chadwick Boseman, goes to talk in favour of a general definition of what counts as a conspiracy, just rounding out his views here at the bottom. And he says something which was quite interesting to me.
00:32:22
Speaker
This paragraph near the end of his paper says, We also need to be cautious about unduly limiting the notion of a conspiracy theory, perhaps in the service of our own political expectations. It is perfectly general. It is a functional term, a term that identifies a phenomenon in terms of how it works. Conspiracy theory works to explain various events in particular ways. Whatever does this, regardless of who offers it to us, is a conspiracy theory. For this reason, conspiracy theories can be both obscure and utterly mainstream.
00:32:50
Speaker
in direct opposition to what was it, David Cody's one previously. And then finishes by saying, the current popular and official understanding of the attack on the United States World Trade Center is a conspiracy theory. Its main explanatory elements are conspirators and their conspiracies. It is hard to imagine any explanation of this event that isn't, which is a point we've made over and over again in this podcast. Is that the first time somebody made that point?
00:33:15
Speaker
In philosophy, yes. Well, there you go. It may have been made by non-philosophers elsewhere, but yes, in philosophy, that is the first time it's been written down. Well, there we go. So you heard it here first, only you didn't, but Lee wrote it here first. You heard it here 14 years after it was written. And so there we go. So the next bit in my notes is the conclusion to all of this. Is there anything you'd like to say before we get there?
00:33:43
Speaker
No, I mean, no, but I should have got something else to say. So yes, and that should just say nothing and then complete the circuit. What is interesting about what's going on here is this does appear to be the first paper to go, look, here's our theory of what counts as a conspiracy theory.
00:34:06
Speaker
The only way to sort between good and bad examples of conspiracy theories is looking at the evidence. Isn't it terrible that we might not have all the evidence we would like? But at the same time, we can only judge whether a conspiracy is good or bad on the evidence. We cannot walk into this debate with assumptions about whether conspiracy theories are prima facie, good or bad. We can only engage in evidentialism about them.
00:34:37
Speaker
So, Libacham sums it up by saying,
Critique of Skepticism Towards Conspiracy Theories
00:34:55
Speaker
Nor should we be immediately dismissive. It would be surprising if such a powerful and commonplace cognitive template failed to sometimes animate our lives in even great stretches of human history. This, if anything, is the proper attitude for those whom Clark calls intellectuals. My own experience is rather different than his, however, because in my own experience, it frequently is.
00:35:14
Speaker
Now that's actually dig at Clark for Clark trying to justify the suspicion that intellectuals have about conspiracy theories, because Basham is going, should we even think it's worth justifying in the first place? As in, is this as Charles Pigton would call it, just a modern superstition?
00:35:36
Speaker
And there we go. Yeah, so this one did seem quite sort of significant to read, I guess. It seemed to really set up some of the quite fundamental concepts, I suppose, in conspiracy theory theory. What you could call it is the end of the plotter for the first season of conspiracy theory theory in philosophy.
00:35:57
Speaker
Yes, that would be very good. I thought you were going to say seminal, and we're going to have a good snigger like we did about the old times. I mean, the old times as in two or three weeks ago. As in a few months ago, yeah. Yes, so another interesting little read there.
00:36:14
Speaker
But I assume we have a new interesting different places to go. Well, the next major piece I think we're going to read is a piece by Charles Pigdom. And it's quite Shakespearean. And I mean that literally, it's quite Shakespearean. I look forward to it then. You can look forward to it in two weeks time, I suppose. You can. Next week. Do we know what we're doing next? Last week, we did one of those, we haven't talked about this yet, have we? We should talk about that moment. So I can't remember what it was. Was it loose change?
00:36:45
Speaker
We were talking about something, said that's the thing we've never actually devoted an episode to. It'll be in the bonus episode because, of course, last week was the David Ferrier interview. Yes. And yes, and we always plan to make a note. And we never do.
00:37:00
Speaker
So if you're listening to this podcast, and remember what we promised to do last week, please do get in contact with us to tell us what we promised to do so we actually get round to doing it so we don't break the promise, because the problem is that then requires us to go back and listen to our own work, and I'm frankly reluctant to do that at the best of times. I usually do, just to see how it turned out.
00:37:22
Speaker
But your task is to find out what we promised to do. I'm almost certain it was loose change because we keep talking about it, but we've never actually gone through it in detail and everything. I brought it up a few weeks ago when I said it was 2007, which is when things really kicked off. It's 2020. 13 years have passed. We've got COVID-19. If you don't know about COVID-19, you're in for a wild ride.
00:37:45
Speaker
Well, you can catch me up later. And then you said, when I said Loose Change came out in 2007, you said which edition of it was that, and I said, I don't know. Oh, yeah, we did, yeah. But then I said, look back, and, OK, yes, 2007 was like the third edition. 2005 was when the very first edition of it came out.
00:38:01
Speaker
Okay, so it turns out it wasn't loose change that we promised to do in the previous episode. Please get in contact with us to tell us what else we're meant to be doing as our social secretaries. Exactly. So next week we might talk about loose change or something else entirely. Well, actually next week's liable to be another interview.
00:38:21
Speaker
Oh, we've got one teed up, have you? We've got two teed up. We've got a Joe Yusinski and a Brian Alkeela. Joe Yusinski must be sick of talking to people by now, mustn't he? Well, I want to talk to Joe about polling.
00:38:34
Speaker
Ah, right. Because now I did see, who was it? Someone was linking today about some other survey that reckoned only 14% of Americans hadn't heard of QAnon and that it seemed to say almost the exact opposite of what some of Joe's surveys said. Where was that link? It was probably on Twitter, which is... Was it sent to us or did you just see it? No, I just saw someone talking about it on Twitter. It was probably something David Ferrier linked to. I'll have a look, yes.
00:39:03
Speaker
that would be interesting it would now what is also interesting is the patron bonus content that we give to our patrons who may or may not be acting as our social secretaries at this point in time not this particular point in time just this point in time
00:39:18
Speaker
So this week we'll be looking at a story about QAnon, which is a counter to a story about QAnon we told last week. We'll be continuing our investigation into the poisoning of Alexei Navalny. I think.
00:39:41
Speaker
We're looking at even more Russian interference in the American election. I know. And then we'll be talking about how Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, can see demons. Yes, that is a thing we will talk about. There'll probably be a reference to his appearance in News Radio. I don't see how we can stop it quite frankly. And Babylon 5. Two of my favorite shows ruined by Scott Adams being in them.
00:40:07
Speaker
Ruined's a strong word, but yes. I stand by it. Ruined. Okay. So if you're a patron, stick around and you'll hear some of that when you listen to the bonus episode. If you're not a patron and you'd like to be, then just be one. Yeah. Go to patreon.com and look us up. We're there. One dollar a month is all it requires.
00:40:30
Speaker
um if you're not a patron but you're still listening to this thank you thank you as well because you're our audience and that's just peachy now we appreciate you just not as much as our patrons no no won't be looking your doorknobs that's for sure not a euphemism yes it's a euphemism
00:40:46
Speaker
a bit of a cook it goes both ways just like your mom now uh i think we're at the end of the episode who's upstairs and also downstairs i don't know don't don't don't don't don't tease out my sexual dysphemisms you heard me yeah no sorry i've just got s club sevens don't stop in my head don't stop yeah
00:41:11
Speaker
I thought, didn't they? They also did, don't stop moving to that funky funky bass. I never got into the S Club 7, not even at the time. So I'm afraid I'm not hip to their jive. You missed out on looking at Bradley, go Bradley. Anyway, let's leave them with that image of Bradley. Bradley. And until next week, I will say goodbye. And I'll say Bradley. Bradley.
00:41:43
Speaker
you
00:41:48
Speaker
You've been listening to the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, starring Josh Addison and Dr. M.R. Extended, which is written, researched, recorded and produced by Josh and Em. You can support the podcast by becoming a patron via its Podbean or Patreon campaigns. And if you need to get in contact with either Josh or Em, you can email them at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com or check their Twitter accounts, Mikey Fluids and Conspiracism.
00:42:49
Speaker
And remember, silent green is meeples. Redly. Was he the blonde one? No, he was the black British one. Right, yeah. God's sake. I know none of this. Me neither. You're so racist.