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00:00:01
What is a conspiracy theory, really?
414 Plays13 days ago
Josh talks to M about their recent presentation at the University of Waikato.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction & Scheduling Challenges
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. I am Josh Eddison. and And are you in Zhuhai, China, Dr. Denter? I am in Zhuhai, China. is like ii so So listeners to the show will be aware that our schedule has been somewhat irrational. So we we came back in February with a blockbuster episode and then we promised regular installments. And frankly, those regular installments have not been at all regular Now this is largely due to me because not only have I returned back to China to work, but I've returned back to China with my partner who has started a new job.
Settling Back in China & Technical Difficulties
00:01:08
Speaker
We've moved apartments and there's just been a lot of rigmarole about setting an apartment up, going to work, going away from work, traveling to work, traveling away from work. There's a lot of finagling going on. But now, now things have settled down, and I am confident in my assurances of the notion that regularity will resume.
00:01:32
Speaker
map From this point on absolutely nothing can go wrong apart from the half-hour stuff that went wrong before we started recording this one. yeah anyway yeah we've got we've hit If today's recording is slightly weird, slightly off, or just slightly strange, we have both technological issues with the recording equipment I'm using in Zhuhai because I've moved most of the recording equipment to Guangzhou.
00:01:56
Speaker
and Also, i think Zencastr isn't working properly at once. has been a little flaky, yes. so So i guess that probably means we should we should start talking about something substantive fairly quickly, just in case it all falls apart. That's
Dr. Denteth's Academic Activities
00:02:12
Speaker
true. So what we're going to talk about today, though, is of course, you. You, Dr Denteth, and the crazy things you've been up to and this intervening period. Not really crazy. Well, no, not really, but but I'm trying to sell it. I'm trying to hype you up a bit. I mean, they might be abnormal or strange to people who aren't research academics, but actually we're talking about a very normal part of my life.
00:02:36
Speaker
That's true. No, because I can't remember if we mentioned this in either of the previous episodes, but while you were back here, you did attend a little, but what would you call it, a mini conference?
00:02:46
Speaker
A two-day workshop. I mean, we're getting into a really interesting semantic difference here between ah a conference or a workshop in that normally when people talk about workshops, you're workshopping paper ideas.
00:03:00
Speaker
And yet actually what we really had was a conference, because conferences are basically workshops of ideas, and that normally in most academic settings, when you attend a conference, you are presenting a paper that is not yet published.
00:03:16
Speaker
Which means you are technically workshopping it at a conference, as opposed to workshopping it at a workshop. Which means that most workshops are conferences, and most conferences are workshops. And really, it's just a nomenclature thing as to whether you call something a conference or a workshop, whether it takes place on one day or two days. Which is to say, it was a workshop, but some people might call call call us a conference, and frankly, I wouldn't blame them for doing so. Right, well, this workshop slash conference, it was kind of organized in your honor, from what I gather. The fact that you were back in the country was the excuse for putting this thing together. At University of Waikato, was it?
00:03:53
Speaker
yeah Yeah, so Joe Ulytowski, who works in the... program The philosophy program, trying and to remember how we refer to things back in Aotearoa, New Zealand now, because in the old days we had departments of philosophy and there really aren't that many departments of philosophy left. You have philosophy programs, you have philosophy schools.
00:04:15
Speaker
The philosophy program at the University of Waikato was invited me to basically give a talk and we decided that we would make it into a workshop slash conference thing instead.
00:04:27
Speaker
So over the course of two days, we had grand old times down in Waikato talking about conspiracy theories, fake news, disinformation, and the threats or apparent threats thereof.
00:04:43
Speaker
So at this at this this conference slash workshop, you presented a paper. i who who at How many other, I guess, papers were there? So we had so Friends of the Pod podcast. We had Melina Sapos and Julia Dukes give papers.
00:05:02
Speaker
Papers Alexios was going to give a paper as well, but he was struck down by a vile illness and was unable to present Steve Clark, who we've heard from on this podcast, also gave a paper.
00:05:16
Speaker
So there are Joe gave a paper. on Andre gave paper. I don't actually know whether Andre listens this podcast. don't think he's a podcast listener. But Andre, if you are listening, you gave a paper that I can attest to.
00:05:30
Speaker
There were a number of papers given. I think about basically six papers per day. So, but but what we, are this is your podcast, so we're going to talk about your paper. Our podcast, Josh, our podcast. Well, it is, but but but but in in relation, I i certainly, did there is no our paper, there's only your paper, so I was just going for a bit of bit of parallelism there.
00:05:53
Speaker
But at any rate, your paper is what we're going to talk about today, so let's chuck a chime in or something, and then let's do that.
00:06:06
Speaker
Now Josh, I gave you two options for experiencing this paper. I gave you a written form and also a video of the paper. Which one did you devour?
00:06:18
Speaker
um more more i I was going to say more the former than the latter, but I realize I have immediately forgotten which order you gave those options in as you said them. But what I did was I started watching the video and I watched you introduce the paper, um but then when you started actually going into the paper, i stopped and switched but to reading it because I can read faster than you can talk, basically.
00:06:41
Speaker
um so so I don't lie and I refuse to believe it. So so i yeah I went through your paper in um in written form, but I did get to hear and give your justification. went through paper in excruciating detail. Oh, God, barely at all.
00:06:54
Speaker
But no, I did get to hear you introduce it and say that it's basically a petty act of vengeance, or at least petty act of pettiness. Yeah, which I don't mention in the paper version, ah only in the presentation version.
Conceptions & Critiques of Conspiracy Theories
00:07:08
Speaker
So... There is a school of thought that goes on amongst some philosophers that there is a stable conception held by the folk as to what a conspiracy theory is.
00:07:19
Speaker
And that stable conception is that conspiracy theories are, in some sense, mad, bad, or dangerous theories slash beliefs. So when people talk about conspiracy theories, what they're talking about are theories or views that they take to be prima facie false at least prima facie irrational. If you hear about a conspiracy theory, ought not to believe it.
00:07:43
Speaker
Now, I'm not sure that there is a stable conception held by the folk as to what a conspiracy theory is, because I take it from what we know about folk beliefs, about conspiracy theories, they're rather fuzzy. All of the polling data we have indicates that some people think that conspiracy theories can be true.
00:08:03
Speaker
Some people think all conspiracy theories can be false. Some people worry about whether something is labeled as being a conspiracy theory as an accurate like label, et cetera, et cetera.
00:08:13
Speaker
So I'm doubtful there is a stable conception held by the folk that we can point to then say, well, look, this is what the folk believe about conspiracy theories. I also think it's a ridiculous notion to then say we should insist that we use folk notions in academic research.
00:08:30
Speaker
So there's a long-standing debate in the philosophy of the sciences and philosophy of the social sciences, which is basically just because the folk believe X about a scientific hypothesis, that shouldn't constrain scientists from acting on that folk notion. um Historically, one of the better examples of this is that most people have entirely the wrong idea about heat.
00:08:56
Speaker
So when they think about heating their homes, they are thinking about keeping the cold out. So they pump their houses full of heat to try and push the cold away.
00:09:07
Speaker
Well, actually, when you think about it, what you need to be doing is keeping the heat in. You want to insulate your home from the outside world. And this led in the UK in the middle of the 20th century to the British government basically having to re-educate the British population to go, look, when you're heating your home, close your bloody windows. Because yes, you're pumping lots of heat into your homes.
00:09:32
Speaker
But if your windows are open, that heat is escaping. You need to insulate your home from the outside world, which then led to encouraging people to keep their windows closed in winter to trap heat heat within their homes, and then double g gla glazing and now in some countries triple or quadruple. Glazing.
00:09:52
Speaker
Folk notions are often quite wrong, and it seems to be inappropriate to insist that people doing research into rarefied ideas use fuzzy and abstract notions.
00:10:04
Speaker
So I've always had this skepticism about this appeal to an ordinary language conception of conspiracy theory, And so this paper was basically a reaction or a preemptive strike against people who go, oh we should use the ordinary language conception of conspiracy theory in academic research.
00:10:25
Speaker
But crucially, I'm not going down the philosophy of science route of simply saying, look, It's ridiculous that we should be using folk notions in academic research.
00:10:36
Speaker
I go for a slightly different way of approaching this problem. Now, in in your video, you did mention having been, at least in part, motivated to do this by reviewers or possibly one reviewer rejecting papers on the grounds that they did not use a folk definition of conspiracy theory.
00:10:55
Speaker
Yes. it's been slightly your stab at them. There's one reader out there who is going around advising major revisions or outright rejection because people aren't using ordinary language conceptions of conspiracy theory.
00:11:10
Speaker
And I just don't think the argument is there to insist that people have to use the ordinary language conception in academic debate, especially given When they make that argument, they're pointing towards literature which doesn't really support the contention that the ordinary language conception is in wide use outside of philosophical discussion um on conspiracy theory theory. Hence leading to your paper with the title, Do We Agree What Exactly Is a Conspiracy? Well, that's workshopped title there. I'm still not entirely sure that title has the kind of zing I need, but it's doing for the time being.
00:11:51
Speaker
I myself would say, Do We Agree What Exactly a Conspiracy Is? But I don't know. Anyway, that's that's that's the that's the working title. And i mean a lot of it, the first, I don't know, half, maybe two-thirds of it is is very much that sort of literature survey kind of a thing where you refer to lots lots of different people saying lots of different things about conspiracy theories and how they define them. And ah the the the the desire or possibly need for and an ordinary language version of conspiracy theories
00:12:25
Speaker
people talking about that and then And i sort of I'm kind of skipping past the first bits fairly quickly because a lot of it is stuff that we have said before. in your section two, you get onto the ordinary language argument of people saying why we need... Oh, sorry, that's here we go. I'm just scrolling down to that. But there was the business about um unnecessary antagonism and needlessly belligerent argumentation. to some people Have some people suggested that that by by sort of
00:12:58
Speaker
And sticking your heels in and saying, no, we need to define things this way, that you're just holding up what could otherwise be a fruitful discussion with your pedantic definition business.
00:13:11
Speaker
Yeah, so Juha Riker, Juha Ritalo, M. Julian Napolitano and Martin Baldry have made similar claims. So Juha Riker and Juha Ritalo have taught... That's where the neat ne needlessly but belligerent argumentation quote comes from their paper. i think it's on climate change conspiracy theories.
00:13:34
Speaker
And they seem to be arguing that, you know, philosophers have been arguing for particularism, And it's just getting in the way of ah of evolving a decent social science of conspiracy theories.
00:13:48
Speaker
M. Julia Napolitano and Martin Boundary have kind of made a joking comment that, you know, we're digging our heels in and thus we're we it's we have to persuade those pesky social scientists to get on track.
00:14:01
Speaker
And I find this both needlessly belligerent on their behalf in that normally philosophical argumentation, there is a certain degree of antagonism because you are attacking each other's ideas either in order to refute them or to improve them And so what is normal philosophical practice here has been treated as being strange, ab not abnormal and aggressive. So I think it's an interesting move to think, oh, there are people criticizing ah our views. They're being needlessly belligerent about it, which is unfortunately...
00:14:40
Speaker
That's how philosophical argumentation works, in that you attack ideas and not people, and yet by talking about our work as being but needlessly belligerent, you're attacking the people giving the ideas, rather than the quality of the ideas on display.
00:14:57
Speaker
But the other thing which amuses me about this is that I'm one of the few philosophers who is doing work with social scientists on conspiracy theories theory. theory I was invited to the workshop in Kent last year.
00:15:12
Speaker
I work with Joe Uysinski. I'm one of the few philosophers that the social scientists are actually interested in workshopping ideas with. So if I am being neatly belligerent,
00:15:25
Speaker
The social scientists don't seem to think that is happening. It seems to be the philosophers who think that, not the people that apparently I'm being aggressive towards. And that allows me to kind of say that I was invited to give a commentary on a recent piece by Lottie Plummerer and Karen Douglas on the effective model of conspiracy theory belief, which has just come out in Psychological Reports. I was invited by those authors to write a reply piece to it.
00:15:58
Speaker
So I am one of the few philosophers who is involved in the social science literature, despite the fact that I'm being accused of getting in the way of that literature. Yes, and that's that's a little bit the theme of this paper, it sounded like, that people make claims about what people think, but when you actually look at what they say and think, possibly those claims are not true.
00:16:21
Speaker
um But earlier, so in in your second section where you talk about what people say, one thing that I saw coming up a couple of times in the in the the quotes that you give is people sort of saying, it seems like they're saying,
00:16:35
Speaker
We want folk definition, and we want a definition that builds in sort of a pejorative sense to conspiracy theories, because what we're interested in talking about are the ones that are mad, bad, or dangerous, because it's not a fruitful question to ask why do people believe perfectly sensible things, because they're perfectly sensible. We want to know why do people believe things that are in some way dangerous.
00:16:57
Speaker
irrational or or silly. um And so there that seems fair enough. and and And spoilers, I think you do have sort of a response to that at the end. But... um It does lead into the it lead into your section three, which is these people who think there is this folk definition of what a conspiracy theory is, and that's what we should be looking for, because that allows us to ask the questions that we're interested in.
Defining Conspiracy Theories & Public Perception
00:17:23
Speaker
The thing that they think people think about conspiracy theories may not actually be what they think. And so your section three, what do the ordinary language journalists think the folk think, um goes through a bunch of people giving a bunch of definitions of um what people think. And i found I found this very interesting, the way the the things that people say, like we've we've we've looked in papers plenty where people say, you know, ah define conspiracy theories as conspiracy theories.
00:17:57
Speaker
by definition malevolent or by definition contrary to the official view and what have you. But there are few sort of um ah few a few nuances that I hadn't seen before.
00:18:09
Speaker
I'm skipping down and skipping down. Ah, okay, sorry, yep. the The interesting definitions I was thinking of were actually in your section four, which is why I was having a damn hard hard time finding them in section three.
00:18:21
Speaker
But you talk about you what the the generalists think, the folk think, and then you talk about what the social scientists seem to believe, which is, again, this this this this tension that that supposedly exists, and yet, as you say, there you are working along with them nicely.
00:18:38
Speaker
um So yeah was this this section four was the one that that I personally found the most interesting because it had a about the the first ones were things that were all fairly familiar to me just because they go over ground that we've talked about plenty of times before when we've talked about various papers.
00:18:54
Speaker
It might be useful for the listeners, though, who don't have the ability to peer into your mind. So basically what I said in that earlier section was is that the generalists who ah who think that we should be using an ordinary language conception all seem to have different ordinary language conceptions. So they all think the folk think different things.
00:19:17
Speaker
Juhal Riker thinks that most of the time conspiracy theories are false, but they can sometimes be true. So he's going a kind of prime ah prima facie unlikely claim. Well, M. Julian Napolitano in her own work says, no, they're just by definition false because they're self-sealing views.
00:19:34
Speaker
And she claims that's what the folk believe. But M. Julian Napolitano, when she co-wrote a paper with Kevin Rutter in the same year, has a completely different notion of what the folk think.
00:19:47
Speaker
So the generalists who insist upon an ordinary language conception all seem to be pointing two different ordinary language conceptions, which shows that there is no stable ordinary language conception.
00:20:00
Speaker
And also there's no consensus amongst the ordinary language generalists as to which of those conceptions we should pick out and use. And that seems to be a problem for their project because they're saying, oh, we can just refer to the ordinary language conception of a conspiracy theory as being mad, bad, or dangerous, but they're all diagnosing the mad, bad, or dangerous in ways which are sometimes merely contrary, but sometimes actually contradictory. Yes, yes, thank you. Yeah, I was having trouble saying something about those sections because I just sort of read them and and just kind of nodded the whole way down going, oh, yep, yep, yep, sounds familiar. But it wasn't until I got sick to section four that I started going, oh,
00:20:42
Speaker
That's an interesting take on things. So section four, which is where I survey the social science literature, I think is particularly interesting because I also think particularists have got the social science literature wrong.
00:20:58
Speaker
Or at least we've got it wrong in a really interesting way. So there there are a bunch of quotes from a bunch of different peoples that say things like, so here's thes the first one, i think this is the first one, yes, your first quote in section four from Douglas Susinsky and others.
00:21:15
Speaker
Conspiracy theories are attempts to explain the ultimate causes of significant social and political events and circumstances with claims of secret plots by two or more powerful actors. So there, I mean, I see that one doesn't,
00:21:26
Speaker
doesn't bake the idea of malevolence into it, but significant. Conspiracy theories only apply to significant events, which of course is a fairly fairly vague term, but that's that's a spin I hadn't seen so much before.
00:21:39
Speaker
um the next one the next The next one is fairly fairly standard. The narratives that offer an explanation of important social events, the narrative standards and alternative to the official ones, government, academic, making and institutional, etc., usually containing an assumption about a small group of malevolent, powerful actors collaborating in secrecy. So I think those are all possible conditions.
00:22:03
Speaker
But we've seen people put on things before but then then you have a couple of pages worth of them. So what were the interesting ones? Conspiracy theories are defined as a singular secret plot by a group of powerful elites to gain undue power over the political economy, political system or other institutions from Robertson and others.
00:22:24
Speaker
ah Usually defined as explanations of events based on the concealed role of an evil group. There are another's 2020. Conspiracy theories are attempts to explain the ultimate causes of significant social and political events as secret plots by powerful and malicious groups. That's both of them again.
00:22:40
Speaker
But it was really the one on page 23 by Douglas and Sutton. That's Karen Douglas and Peter Sutton. And Robbie Sutton. Robbie Sutton. So Karen is from Australia. Robbie is from New Zealand.
00:22:52
Speaker
Yeah, well, there you go So the one the one that interested me, that they have a ah longer definition, and it starts, a comprehensive definition describes a conspiracy theory as a belief that two or more actors have coordinated in secret to achieve an outcome, and that their conspiracy is of public interest, but not public knowledge. I thought that was an interest. That's not that's sort ah a spin on it I'd heard before, the idea that a conspiracy is it' something that would be in the public interest, which obviously...
00:23:22
Speaker
discounts your yeah your surprise birthday parties and what have you. um But yes. so surprise A birthday party for a dictator. Possibly, yes. That being in the public interest.
00:23:34
Speaker
But I thought that that one, it goes on. So they say, from these defining features of conspiracy theory, other characteristic features follow logically. um And so here's, this this is where I started raising an eyebrow. They say this, conspiracy theories, A, are oppositional, which means they oppose publicly accepted understanding of events. Well, okay, I suppose, when we're talking about, if if we assume it's something that would be of public interest. and But then B, describe malevolent or forbidden acts, right?
00:24:01
Speaker
which seems like a bit of a jump. I assume it's just because they're not public knowledge. The only reason they're not public knowledge is because they're bad and people don't want you to know about them, but that no one seemed like a bit of a jump. Yeah, I do. That's one of those things where people sometimes keep serious secrets which you might suspect are malicious, but not every secret is kept for a sinister purpose.
00:24:25
Speaker
Secret keeping is suspicious, but it's not necessarily so sinister in nature. Yeah, and then also that means they see ascribe agency to individuals and groups rather than impersonal or systemic forces.
00:24:37
Speaker
ah which I think is possibly a fair enough criticism of conspiracy theories at times, although again I don't know that it follows logically from their definition. And then D are epistemically risky, meaning that though individual conspiracy theories are not necessarily false or implausible, conspiracy theories taken collectively are more prone to falsity than other types of belief.
00:24:59
Speaker
Again, something I think you could possibly argue for, but something that I don't know follows from that that base definition. And E are social constructs that are not merely adopted by individuals, but shared with social objectives in mind, and that have the potential not only to represent and interpret reality, but also to fashion new social realities, which...
00:25:17
Speaker
ah set See above comments, I think so. Yeah, I found it I just found this section out of the whole thing the most interesting to read through um because they it was just an interesting I guess for me as someone who does not read through this sort of stuff all the time unlike yourself to see these things that people are actually saying which are a little bit different to the sorts of things that I'm used to hearing yeah, so my thesis in that section is that the ordinary language generalists are always pointing to the social science literature and going, look, and social scientists are using something close to an ordinary language definition.
00:25:55
Speaker
Philosophers should get on board with that. And so I went, let's actually look at the definitions being offered by the social scientists. And a lot of them, and I would actually say probably a polarity, if not a majority of them, ah if not particularist, because there are particularists who go, look, conspiracy theories need to be of some pith and moment. So Charles Bigden has the idea that you they need to be about big events. you don't You don't have conspiracy theories about surprise parties. You have them about political events.
00:26:26
Speaker
Or they need to be, in some sense, contrary contrary to an official theory, the kind of definition put forward by Curtis Hagen and Patrick Brooks, or my simple and minimal definition which doesn't bake in any of those things.
00:26:41
Speaker
A lot of these definitions are, if not outrightly particulist, particulist-friendly definitions. They're very congruent with the kind of work that's going on in particulism.
00:26:53
Speaker
So if the ordinary language generalist is pointing to the social science literature and going, look, philosophers need to use definitions like those being used in the social sciences, then we can say, well, luckily, we are.
00:27:08
Speaker
You ordinary language generalists, you are the ones who are out of step with the social science literatures. um ah Continuing on in the in the interesting definitions, we have one from Wagner Eger others, 2022, saying that conspiracy theories have, for instance, been recently defined as serious accusations of conspiracy of elites or outgroups without sufficient proofs and labelled as injustice without evidence, which, again, that's that's not a take I'd heard before. It's a conspiracy theory.
00:27:38
Speaker
if it's If it's a ah theory about conspiracies, that doesn't have sufficient proof, which... Yeah, so that's one of the more generalist-friendly definitions you find in that set.
00:27:50
Speaker
But it's not one of the common definitions. No, another one, conspiracy theory is defined as the unnecessary assumption of conspiracy when other explanations are more probable, which, again, bakes in things that I haven't seen before. So you give this, yeah, as you say, this is where in section you're giving some sort of fairly generalist-type definitions and of conspiracy theories, but then, as you say, here are the ones that sound particularist. Here's one from Imhoff. Doug Imhoff?
00:28:21
Speaker
Roland. Where am I getting these first names from? I've heard these names in papers, but my data base is... It's either going to be comic book writers or artists you're associating with conspiracy theorists, or you're the Josh Addison from the parallel reality that used to be a theme. Everybody has different first names, yeah.
00:28:41
Speaker
but hasn't actually been brought brought up in about five years. but but But no, so at any rate, this definition goes, only a subset of specific conspiracy theories are normatively implausible
Particularist Views & Validity of Conspiracy Theories
00:28:55
Speaker
beliefs.
00:28:55
Speaker
Although arguably these are the ones most frequently studied and the most resonant of lay understanding of the term, there are a number of conspiracy theories that have evidence in their favour that the Nazis conspired to annihilate European Jewry.
00:29:07
Speaker
that Mohammed Atta and other Al-Qaeda terrorists plotted in secret to fly passenger planes into the World Trade Center, or that a group of members of the Nixon administration secretly wiretapped and broke into the headquarters of the Democratic Party.
00:29:19
Speaker
What these conspiracy theories have in common is that they are well accepted and there is good evidence for their accuracy. So yes, that sounds like a very ah very particularist sort of view of things. Conspiracy theories are much wider view of things, and it's only particular ones that are um are implausible, whereas others there is good evidence for.
00:29:37
Speaker
Yeah, that Roland Imhoff definition is actually quite fascinating for the sheer fact that Roland is one of the people who's a big ah who pushes the idea of what's called a conspiracy mentality.
00:29:51
Speaker
There are people who are predisposed to have views about conspiracy theories. But interestingly enough, when he talks about a conspiracy mentality, he goes, look, it cuts both ways.
00:30:02
Speaker
You can have a conspiracy mentality that means you see conspiracies that don't exist. so But at the same time, you can have a conspiracy mentality which helps you uncover actual instances of conspiracy.
00:30:15
Speaker
And there also might be a conspiracy mentality that means you end up ignoring actual instances of conspiracies in your policies. So there's nothing inherently wrong about having a conspiracy mentality.
00:30:28
Speaker
You just need to be able to diagnose when that mentality produces positive results as opposed to when it produces negative results. e And so moving on, you have your little section 4.1, which is a particular kind of a definition, which is the I know it when I see it definition.
00:30:47
Speaker
which Which I think yeah is is the thing that without possibly saying it, I think lots of people have been referring to. This is the thing I i always go on about when people... want to say conspiracy theories are implausible and then you say, well, but hang on, there's a whole bunch of conspiracy theories that really happen. And then they essentially reply, yeah, but you know what I'm talking about. I mean, I mean, those ones, the, the, the those particular ones. And so this does seem to be the sort of thing that a conspiracy theory, I may not be able to define one, but I, but I know it when I know one, when I see one.
00:31:17
Speaker
um which I guess, ah yeah yeah, you get onto the idea of motivating examples, which, um yeah, people are motivated. There are questions they want to ask. There are things they want to talk about.
00:31:33
Speaker
And there are these particular examples of conspiracy theories that are good examples of them. Again, nobody wants to talk about why do people believe perfectly reasonable things that there's lots and lots of evidence for. They want to know why do people believe these strange things that there perhaps doesn't isn't much evidence for.
00:31:49
Speaker
um And as examples of those, they can bring up conspiracy theories that appear to fulfill those criteria. um But the problem is ah you You go through a couple of problems, don't you?
00:32:03
Speaker
um the one Actually, but why why am I trying to paraphrase? I can actually quote you directly. The problem is that A, not enough work is done via these motivating examples to license the more general claims about the problems of conspiracy beliefs, and B, the lack of detail provided for these motivating examples means that it is never obvious that the motivating examples are themselves unwarranted.
00:32:24
Speaker
So yes, just because you can point at something that is definitely a conspiracy theory and definitely seems like an irrational thing to believe doesn't mean that you can then say conspiracy theories are irrational to believe, which is a more, again, again motivations.
00:32:39
Speaker
Yes, you can easily point at one conspiracy theory and say this is a weird thing to believe, and but maybe here's why people believe it. But then if you're writing an academic paper, I assume you want to have a larger perspective a conclusion with a greater scope to that to be to actually say something in more general terms because simply proving that one single instance of a conspiracy theory is irrational doesn't doesn't do much for anyone.
00:33:02
Speaker
So I can see here while they want to go from these examples to wider trends but as you say but but it doesn't doesn't quite work that way? Yes, I mean to my mind the issue here is that the definitions in you seem to be quite particularist if not particulars friendly.
00:33:19
Speaker
as I should say, quite particulars friendly, if not actually outright particulars. And then they use examples of what of what the researcher assumes is an obviously false conspiracy theory, often described in such a way that actually you can quibble about whether it's obviously false or not. So the example I've used in the past is that people talk about the umbrella term of nine eleven conspiracy theories as if the entire suite of conspiracy theories under that umbrella, that is a weird mixed metaphor, suite umbrella term.
00:33:52
Speaker
The entire set of conspiracy theories under that umbrella umbrella term must be obviously false. And of course, some of them you might think are obviously false. Hologramatic planes flying into the Twin Towers and explosions being set off seems like a much more false theory than controlled demolition.
00:34:13
Speaker
So the there's a range of plausibility amongst those different options. And there are going to be some actually quite quite plausible conspiracy theories in that set, along the lines of, well, CIA had enough information to stop the event, but for organizational purposes failed to prevent 9-11 from happening and have been engaged in a conspiracy ever since to cover that up, which I take is probably a very plausible conspiracy theory about what happened post nine eleven and the CIA's actions. So you can't just generalize from a vaguely described example.
00:34:54
Speaker
But the other issue is that they're only using these, to the researcher's mind, obviously false conspiracy theories to motivate their analyses.
00:35:05
Speaker
And that seems weird, given the particulars friendly or particulars definitions. Why are they only focusing on these unwarranted ones to get to their conclusions?
00:35:17
Speaker
Why aren't they also going, it is interesting though, isn't it, that according to our definition about sinister elite behavior, some of the things that we call conspiracy theories also end up being true.
00:35:31
Speaker
What do we make of that? So I just think it's unusual, and I think it's what has given particulars the notion the social science literature is generalist, that they only focus on what the researcher thinks is an obviously false theory.
00:35:47
Speaker
Yes, you finish that bit up by saying this seems to also be a problem for the generalists who prefer that we should use an ordinary language conception of conspiracy theories. Sometimes, like Riker, they admit that some conspiracy theories can be true, i e particular theories, but they take it that overall the abstract class of things known collectively as conspiracy theories are in some sense deservedly suspicious.
00:36:09
Speaker
It seems that what is driving such analyses is that people talk about certain well-known and unwarranted conspiracy theories in a dismal way, and this push drives a push towards thinking all such theories are probably dismal in a similar way.
00:36:22
Speaker
Which leads you onto your conclusion, which I, again, I read through this quite quickly and one bit of it really stuck out to me. And as I scroll past, I see that involves skipping over about three pages of argumentation.
00:36:36
Speaker
Okay, two pages of argumentation. um So I'm just going to do that anyway, because this is the bit that I
Academic Approaches & Definitions in Conspiracy Research
00:36:42
Speaker
wanted to talk about. So if if if I skip something that you think is important, do say so. But I liked the the fact that you try to resolve the issue by agreeing that a that you can start with a minimal definition, just as you say, a conspiracy theory is an explanation that cites a conspiracy as a salient clause.
00:37:01
Speaker
and then winnow down that definition to the particular kinds that these researchers want to talk about in their particular paper, because that's what they're interested in in this particular paper. So you say you could, you know, we say, okay, conspiracy theory is any theory about a conspiracy.
00:37:16
Speaker
But in this paper, I'm going to talk about those conspiracy theories that are also counter to official theories, or that also propose that the conspirators are engaged in criminal or immoral acts, or are also unlikely, or are also completely imaginary never happened at all.
00:37:31
Speaker
which does seem a nice sort of um a nice sort of compromise while while staying particularist, but letting people pick out particular classes, I guess, of conspiracy theory. Yeah, or subcategories of theories that they want to look Yeah, and that does seem that does seem sort of more useful because then we... I don't know, it it does sort of seem to be the kind... but don i'm I'm a little bit in two minds of it thinking about it because it seems like in In the philosophy papers we looked at before, at least, that we've had people try to say, here are the here is the subcategory of conspiracy theories that are inherently irrational and that you are allowed to be suspicious of.
00:38:17
Speaker
whether they're mature, unwarranted ones or the various other ones we've looked at, and those never seem to work out too well. So I don't know. i mean, i can sit it certainly seems fruitful to to to look at a particular subcategory of conspiracy theories that have all the same feature.
00:38:33
Speaker
i wonder what sort of conclusions you could draw from such an investigation. Well, yes, I mean, it's an olive branch. So, you know, use a simple, and simple minimal definition.
00:38:44
Speaker
Narrow your scope to the theories that you're interested in. doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get the conclusion you desire. Because as you are rightly pointing out here, you may discover that even when you're investigating the subclass, may turn out that it's not necessarily irrational to hold those particular beliefs.
00:39:04
Speaker
Or there might be some disturbing similarities between beliefs in that subclass and other beliefs which are considered to be widely normal beliefs in our society.
00:39:15
Speaker
So it is an olive ol of branch, olive leaf? Olive branch, yep. I'm suddenly going, don't know why we're just trying to keep the olives here. That's one of those metaphors that when you teach in a foreign country and you start going, what does that actually mean?
00:39:35
Speaker
What does it mean to hold out an olive branch to someone? Why are you holding out an olive branch? What's olives got to do with... piece here. It is an ol olive branch. I don't necessarily mean it's going, I don't necessarily think it's going to be fruitful for the researchers because I still think there's going to be some impediment to their research program with the assumption that they can find the obviously false examples they then want to generalize from.
00:40:01
Speaker
yeah But it he um yes but tom as you say, this means we no longer have to track an ordinary language definition or set of definitions and thus not assume, as it seems we've been doing incorrectly, a pejorative dimension to a term that the folks seem to use non-pejoratively.
00:40:18
Speaker
It will allow us to demarcate how we talk about conspiracy theories academically from worries about ordinary language understandings of conspiracy theories. So yes, you... it's It's a nice way to not necessarily hobble yourself by insisting that you stick on stick to a particular definition, which might not be the aspect that you're trying to look at.
00:40:37
Speaker
Yeah. So how how was this received? myself Yes. How was this received? It seemed to be very well received by the attendees. It'll interesting to see how it is received when it goes through review. I'm hoping to finish up work on the paper in the next month or so and then sent send it out. But no, the attendees all seem to agree with me. Justine Kingsbury, who was my former PhD examiner when I did my PhD through the University of Auckland, was going, well, look, it's quite obvious that the psychologists are only interested
00:41:12
Speaker
in those bad beliefs. so you can't expect them to be doing investigations into good conspiracy theory beliefs. only want to diagnose what's wrong with the bad conspiracy theory beliefs.
00:41:24
Speaker
And my response to that it is quite simple. Yeah, just just admit you're working with a subclass. Don't generalize. Admit it's a subclass of belief. We're interested in those conspiracy theories with these particular bad characteristics.
00:41:39
Speaker
don't just then assume they've all got those bad characteristics. Or at least don't give the impression from your research that all conspiracy theories have those bad characteristics when your definition doesn't make that up. Yes.
00:41:55
Speaker
Yes. I mean, there's no... You you can't... in ah In a completely different context, you wouldn't say... yeah People who are interested in in structural failures of bridges or buildings or something, they're only going to study the things that fall down.
00:42:09
Speaker
That doesn't mean that you can say all all bridges or buildings are structurally unsound. it's yeah you'rere You're interested in a particular thing and that's okay because that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, it's that classic and image on the internet of the Spitfire with all of the bullet holes. You actually want to study the substructure which doesn't have the holes, rather than the structure with the holes, because those are the planes that come back.
00:42:38
Speaker
I remember hearing that that I can't remember the details but apparently that picture doesn't actually tell the story like people get the wrong idea about that but I don't know what the right idea is so I'm just going to i'm going to keep using it as well yeah and I'm going to assume that I have the right idea and want to investigate any further because who who has time for research in an era like this Josh? Who has time for research?
00:43:01
Speaker
No, there's only time for listening to podcasts which is what you should be doing, all of you and what you are doing right now And what we have been doing, perhaps... Have you heard that sentence? You were listening to a podcast.
00:43:12
Speaker
The podcast is Guide to the Conspiracy. Yes, and that possibly gives a nice segue into the end of this episode and the beginning of the next one, because we must record a bonus episode for our our patient patrons who've been waiting for a bit for that since the last one.
00:43:29
Speaker
And we're going to talk about podcasts and probably other things as well. Well, yes, I mean, we can't really avoid the news. No, it's a bit difficult. So yes, we'll we'll talk about some stuff. It's so big, it's going to be quite difficult to talk about it as well.
00:43:44
Speaker
So for now, though, that was an interesting look at what you were up to on your break. um so So sorry, I guess I should have just said at the end, you're you are you're going to tidy this up and submit it and hopefully you'll see print in a journal and what have you. So there will be more more to come from this particular paper.
00:44:05
Speaker
Yes, I'm always coming. Yep, always. it's so It's a known fact. So that you anyway, that's that's it. That's it. We're done. I'm putting a line under it. I'm bringing things to a close. I still haven't come up with a decent catchphrase to end episodes on.
00:44:20
Speaker
um So I'm just going to end this episode by saying, ah Jesus, look over there. And I'm off to oscillate an otter. Still don't still stillt think that voice is just too sexy.
00:44:32
Speaker
like yeah I will not be held responsible for what happens to our listenership if you keep using that voice.
00:44:38
Speaker
You want to, don't you? You want to say something else. ah You're editing this episode. You do whatever you want. Leave it in. Take it out. Whip it out. I'm not I'm not fussed. I don't got even care anymore. It's all meaningless.
00:44:51
Speaker
Goodbye.
00:45:00
Speaker
The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy features Josh Addison and Associate Professor M.R. Extentis. Our producers are a mysterious cabal of conspirators known as Tom, Philip, and another who is so mysterious that they remain anonymous.
00:45:14
Speaker
You can contact us electronically via podcastconspiracy at gmail.com or join our Patreon and get access to our Discord server. Or don't, I'm not mum.
00:45:41
Speaker
And remember, he who laughs last is standing behind you right now.