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A Chat with Melina (Tsapos) and Pat(rick Brooks)
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M chats with Melina Tsapos and Patrick Brooks, two newly minted PhD holders whose works are on or at least touch on the philosophy of conspiracy theory theory.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Previously on the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. My face! My beautiful face! And now on the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. Here's a picture of a cat.
00:00:11
Speaker
And scene... To get all meta, but what the hell was that about? Oh, you'll understand when you've listened to the interview I've recorded with Lena Sarpos and Patrick Brooks. But I have listened to it, and no, I don't understand.
00:00:25
Speaker
Then listen again.
Upcoming Interview with Philosophy PhDs
00:00:26
Speaker
Then listen with me.
00:00:36
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Edison and Ian Dentist.
00:00:56
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. I am Josh Addison in Guangzhou, China. They are Dr. M-R-X-Denteth. and And we're going to record butter all for this episode because the work the work's already been done for me.
00:01:10
Speaker
i say me because M has already done the work of of of recording an interview that we're going to play now. We are. We are. Do we have we are anything to say before we get into it? And by it, I mean pausing and then recording an outro for this episode.
00:01:25
Speaker
Well, I have one thing to say, Josh, and that is buckets. Good. Now, I suppose we should do some intro. Pat pat is um is is no stranger to this podcast, but Melina is a new voice, I believe.
00:01:38
Speaker
Can you give a bit of introduction slash reintroduction to your two interlocutors? Well, both Melina and Pat just finished their PhDs in philosophy. Melina's PhD is actually on conspiracy theory theory in a full set, and that her entire PhD is on conspiracy theory theory.
00:01:58
Speaker
Pat's PhD touches on conspiracy theory theory. ah Both are PhDs which are largely collections of papers as opposed to what I wrote, which was a full-length dissertation.
00:02:12
Speaker
So Melina's PhD has kappa, which is a kind of literature review and theory introduction that goes before her papers. Pat's PhD is papers, papers, papers without the kind of kappa you get in a Swedish PhD.
00:02:30
Speaker
As suggested by the fact that she Swedish PhD, Melina did her PhD at Lund in Sweden. Pat did his PhD at Rutgers in the United States of America.
00:02:42
Speaker
I've known them both for a while now. I've known Melina slightly longer than I've known Pat, although we actually met in person. Actually, no, that's not true. I say we met in person in the same place because we did all meet in Amsterdam at the second international conference.
00:02:59
Speaker
conference on conspiracy theory theory but I forgot that actually Melina and I met a few weeks earlier in Italy so we actually met around about the same time but technically I met Melina in person before I met Pat even though it was on the same junket Right, so you're you're all a bunch of international jet-setting gadabouts. So there's the message I'm taking from that.
00:03:23
Speaker
wouldn't say gadabouts, I'd say gadflies. Gadflies is fine by me. ah so how did this interview come about? Why then, why the y now? Well, actually, it came about because both Melina and Pat basically finished their PhDs at around about the same time. So Pat finished his PhD a few months before Melina finished hers.
00:03:44
Speaker
And I thought it would be interesting to talk to people who have just completed PhDs around about 10 years after i finished mine. and find out what it's like to write a PhD on conspiracy theory, theory and philosophy in the year of our Lord 2025, as opposed to what it was like to finish a PhD in the year of our Lord around about circa 2012.
00:04:11
Speaker
twelve So that was really the entire rationale. I had two friends who had finished PhDs that either are about conspiracy theory theory or touch on conspiracy theory theory.
00:04:22
Speaker
And I wanted to find out what the difference is between when I was doing that work and how that work is being understood and done today. And because I know them both, I just flipped off an email saying, hey, wouldn't it be a great idea to a podcast interview with the two of you?
00:04:40
Speaker
And they both immediately said, yes, that is a great idea. You are fantastic. You are the greatest philosopher who's ever lived. And yes, we want to be beholden to you for about an hour and a half.
00:04:51
Speaker
I may have made some of that up. I don't believe it Well, then, in that case, let's not waste any more time.
Why Study Conspiracy Theories?
00:04:59
Speaker
Let's play a chime and then play an interview.
00:05:07
Speaker
So today I have the great pleasure of talking with two people who have recently gained their PhDs in philosophy. One is a PhD which is on conspiracy theory theory quite explicitly.
00:05:20
Speaker
The other is a PhD which touches upon conspiracy theory theory. So I'm joined by Melina Sarpos and Patrick Brooks. Melina is in Sweden. Patrick is located somewhere within the United States and they have recently been awarded their PhDs in philosophy. And as I say, these are PhDs either on or touching on conspiracy theories. So Pat and Melina, hello and welcome Melina to the podcast. And Pat, welcome back to the podcast.
00:05:49
Speaker
Thank you so much. Yeah, lovely to be here. Thanks for having me back again. So you've both finished PhDs. The first question, why do a PhD in philosophy in the year of our Lord 2025? you want to start with Antas or I'll go first?
00:06:05
Speaker
Yeah, sir, I'll start. Well, I think to anybody who is considering getting a PhD in philosophy in 2025, I would say don't do it. You shouldn't do it. um And you shouldn't do it because the job market is a big nightmare.
00:06:19
Speaker
um Now, if you're like independently wealthy or you just want to spend five to six years of your life having a good time reading stuff and studying up on things and maybe getting a modest stipend, then sure. But, you know, people told me this when I started and I'm just paying that forward now.
00:06:37
Speaker
i think I think you should do it if it's if it's the only thing you can imagine yourself doing. It's like that, um that's like Vonnegut said. if you If you can imagine yourself doing anything other than being a writer, you should do that.
00:06:49
Speaker
But if you can't, then, well, what are you going to do Now, Melina, are you going to pitch up or pitch down from that answer? um Well, maybe pitch up, but following a bit on what Pat said towards the end there, that you shouldn't definitely do it if it's not what you really, really want to do.
00:07:04
Speaker
But I still think that even if the job market is awful, and maybe don't do it to get a job. That's not the smartest. Like we've all seen these memes of, you know, philosophers that don't have a job in the end and everybody lost to tease us about it.
00:07:17
Speaker
But I think that if you, the four years doing a PhD in philosophy is so fulfilling. If you really burn for philosophy, I mean, if that's a subject that you really love. And yeah, I wouldn't have done it otherwise, even if that means that i you know, have to work in there and a, on McDonald's or something. No, i don't think, you yeah not that that's a bad thing, but then yeah.
00:07:38
Speaker
So I still think it's a worth, well, worth, worthy thing to do or something worth to do. Now, something more specific question, why do a PhD on conspiracy theories or touching on conspiracy theories?
00:07:53
Speaker
What is it about the moment that makes conspiracy theories philosophically interesting? I don't think it's just the moment, to be honest. like I think it's something that's been interesting philosophically for a very, very long time. But obviously, the increase in talking about conspiracy theories in the media and ah has made it interesting for many more reasons.
00:08:16
Speaker
So i don't know, for me, it was really interesting to do a PhD on the topic because I so i started in metaphysics and ah that was, I mean, it's interesting. And, you know, I loved to think about the problems in metaphysics and so on, causation and stuff like that.
00:08:30
Speaker
But doing a PhD, I realized that it had to be something that I was really passionate about and really, really felt like I could add something ah to it. And I had to be, you know,
00:08:42
Speaker
interested and and interested in it enough to want to do it for four years and to be thinking about it and really get to the bottom of, you know, and actually to do the subject justice in a way, you know?
00:08:54
Speaker
and And so that's how this moment, if you want to call it that, especially during COVID when I started my PhD, I had to write the project that I wanted to do, I started.
00:09:05
Speaker
And so it was very personal in a way as well, the whole debate and discussion ah when the pandemic became global and how the media was treating the discussion around it.
00:09:16
Speaker
and So yeah, that that was why I chose that subject because I really felt personally involved and passionate about the subject. Now, Pat, your PhD touches on conspiracy theories, but isn't a PhD in conspiracy theories per se. It's simply one part of the package of papers you wrote.
00:09:36
Speaker
What got you into this? Right. So for me, it's very similar to to what Melina was just saying. i started off at Rutgers as a sort of hardcore philosophy of language person.
00:09:49
Speaker
My writing sample was on the semantics for gradable adjectives. So when are flat things flat and when are tall people tall, you know, things like that. And I really love that stuff still. um But it was it was sort of during the pandemic for me also.
00:10:03
Speaker
And when... You turn on the news or or turn well put on a YouTube video and they would just be, so the you know, the the the anchors would be saying things about anybody who was curious about the origins of the virus or anybody who was, you know, unclear about what whether the what the way forward was, that these people were, the you know, just the worst people.
00:10:23
Speaker
just and i was and And for me, it was like, well, I know these people. And they're not the worst. They're actually pretty good. And they're not dumb. They're actually pretty smart. So what's going on here? why Why is it that anybody who questions what's what's happening officially branded as a lunatic?
00:10:41
Speaker
And so that's what what i what what sort of got me thinking about these things was like, well, look, I know these people that are being decried as all sort of epistemically vicious.
00:10:53
Speaker
Maybe I could write something about this. Now quite curious how your projects or your subprojects were treated by your supervisors. So in 2007-2008, when I'm pitching my PhD on conspiracy theories to philosophers at the University of Auckland, the general consensus by philosophers then was Why the hell would you want to write something on conspiracy theories? there's nothing epistemically interesting about this particular topic.
00:11:22
Speaker
Surely the stuff that Charles Pigden and Brian L. Keeley has written kind of just covers all the bases here. So there was actually quite a lot of effort on my part to persuade the Department of Philosophy at the University of Auckland.
00:11:35
Speaker
This project is something which has legs and will produce fruitful outcomes in the future.
Philosophy and Media in Conspiracy Theories
00:11:41
Speaker
How did your supervisors treat the idea of doing work in conspiracy theory theory?
00:11:47
Speaker
Melina, we'll start with you, given that your project is a big one in this area. Right. And also because I didn't just join a project that was already, you know, I had to write it myself and it had to be chosen amongst, you know, i think it was like 40 or 50 other ones.
00:12:03
Speaker
So um that was actually a big, I don't know if I should call it a risk, but it was something, it was and a decision by my supervisor to want to take on this project, right?
00:12:14
Speaker
Not just me, but also the project of conspiracy theories. and I think, well, I can't be actually more proud and happy to have had my supervisor because and it is ah sometimes can be a little bit of a contentious ah subject, you know, even amongst philosophers.
00:12:30
Speaker
And ah my my supervisor was super open to but both at the same time, trying to stay honest and true to and looking at this phenomena ah with philosophical tools.
00:12:43
Speaker
and you know trying to make it more clear, so to speak, and not have this political aspect to it, even though there was, you know, you could feel a lot of pressure sometimes ah from others, not but never from my supervisor to have to you know say certain things about ah conspiracy theories. You know, for example, like i don't know if you guys have experienced this, but and it's often grouped together with other topics like misinformation, filter bubbles, eco chambers, the fake news, all this kind of,
00:13:13
Speaker
ah talk that came, especially after, well, my feeling is like the politics have been more you know polarized, especially in the US and so on. But that never was a pressure from my supervisor.
00:13:24
Speaker
So and I could stay true to you know just trying to be applying really good philosophical rigor to the topic of conspiracy theories. So yeah, I've just had a really good supportive supervisor in this front. And i I should also add, at around this time, he himself started to experience, like having stigmatized views.
00:13:46
Speaker
So he was also experiencing kind of being a little bit excluded from the more established people or views in in academia, but also in the Swedish popular culture, so to speak.
00:14:00
Speaker
and Yeah, so that that I think also had an appeal for him to try to make it more justice. and And Pat, you were doing a perfectly normal PhD in philosophy, and then one day you go to your supervisor, hey, got the I've got these conspiracy theories I want to discuss. How did that conversation go down?
00:14:19
Speaker
Well, I think I'm lucky that I was in the U.S. because would be helpful for listeners that may maybe know that the the U.S. PhD system and the sort of broader PhD system and globally tends to be a bit different. So in the U.S., you apply for a PhD program, you'll have two years of coursework and then three to four years of writing your thesis.
00:14:41
Speaker
Now, it sounds like in Sweden and I know in the U.K., lot of the times these are not taught PhDs, which is to say there's no coursework components so Yeah, so effectively in the Australasian system, for example, you do either a BA or a BA-ons.
00:14:56
Speaker
Then if you don't do a BA-ons, you do an MA and then you go into a PhD. Whilst in your system, you essentially do the BA-ons and then you go straight into a PhD program.
00:15:06
Speaker
Yeah, or or in like in my case, you do a BA and then a master's so you can have a better chance of getting into better PhD programs. It's a very, it's a whole thing. I've been in school for so long. But so so that's the nice thing about Rutgers is that you show up and you have two years of coursework.
00:15:22
Speaker
And what that means is like you don't have an advisor right away. You go in and they expect you, they they so they suspect that you'll work on what your writing sample was on. So like I came in as a philosopher of language.
00:15:33
Speaker
Yeah. But they also understand that you might take some courses and get excited about something else and then change. So you normally don't you know select an advisor from um amongst the faculty until your third year.
00:15:47
Speaker
So by that point, i you know you you have a little bit of rapport with some faculty. And I remember asking about who who became my advisor, Alex Guerrero. Whether like I remember emailing him something like I would like to write a dissertation about conspiracy theory type stuff.
00:16:03
Speaker
Is that something I can even do? Like, is that reasonable? and And his response was great. He was like, yeah, of course. I mean, you should work on what you want to work on. and and I think.
00:16:14
Speaker
I'd like to append this to my first response about should you get a PhD? If you're going to, you should work on something you really want to work on. If you're write dissertation, it should be on something that you think is awesome and really exciting, as Melina said. and And so that was the advice I got.
00:16:29
Speaker
and And he was actually very cool with... um with working with me on this stuff. And I sent him some papers and some ideas and we met like every couple of weeks and it was great. It was super helpful.
00:16:40
Speaker
He's a very yes and kind of advisor. I think other people's mileage may vary with their advisors, but yeah, I had a super positive experience. Everybody on my committee was interested and super on board. Yeah, it was it was cool. It was very cool to see that, especially a place like Rutgers, which has a reputation for not being so like that. Now I'm curious to see, when I did my PhD, literature on conspiracy theories and philosophy was quite small.
00:17:08
Speaker
I've always joked you could basically read all the papers written at the time I started my work, 2007-ish, over the course of a weekend. I don't think that's true now.
00:17:21
Speaker
What was it like having the idea of writing something on the philosophy of conspiracy theory theory? And were you aware there was a literature? Or did you discover there was a literature when you went, oh, this is a cool concept to look at?
00:17:37
Speaker
So Melina, we'll start with you. Yeah, I started actually when ah got the idea to to write my project proposal on conspiracy theory. So that's when I started looking up because I'm like, surely there must be something in philosophy. But I'm a little bit surprised now that I had no idea. I had never even looked into it before.
00:17:54
Speaker
And then the sad part is that one of the first ah or one of the first writings that I encountered were from Kassim Kassam. But the really, really good news is that straight after that was your book, The Philosophy on Conspiracy Theories.
00:18:09
Speaker
So I was really happy that at least there existed some literature that was ah challenging to what, you know, this mainstream view of conspiracy theories that we hear about. So I was happy that, you know, there seemed to be philosophers. Like then I discovered, of course, Brian, Brian Keely's paper and Lee Basham, as you mentioned them,
00:18:29
Speaker
and And then, of course, more of your papers. But the the literature, how it how it's changed. I mean, yeah, of course, there is so much. But I also feel like maybe this is, i mean, probably it's nothing compared to how you feel. But I feel like it's really exploded even more since COVID.
00:18:44
Speaker
Or like, yeah, when I started even just looking into it. So especially especially within philosophy, I feel like. There's so many papers coming up all the time. good and I mean, i I think it's a really good thing because if I feel maybe a bit optimistically that it's getting better and better.
00:18:59
Speaker
So I feel like the field is getting more, and I mean, it's really an opportunity to make it more interesting than, yeah, what i what this um more just you know bashing on conspiracy theories, so to speak.
00:19:13
Speaker
Yeah, what Charles Pigden calls the conventional wisdom, that everyone thinks that conspiracy theories are necessarily bad, doesn't seem to be the kind of emergent consensus view, at least we're seeing in philosophy at this time.
Conspiracy Theories: Social and Philosophical Analysis
00:19:28
Speaker
Although, of course, there is a ah side issue here about what's going on outside of philosophy, which we'll come back to in just a moment. But yeah, Pat, how was your experience of finding out or interpreting the literature?
00:19:41
Speaker
I mean, it was kind of exactly the same as Molina's. i like I had this idea that like, oh, I'd like to write about conspiracy theories. And then a friend of mine at IU, I was talking to who who we were at Texas Tech together, sent me a link to Kassam's book.
00:19:57
Speaker
He was like, oh, you should you should have a look at this book. It's on conspiracy theories, because that's one thing that happens that like not this doesn't happen with any other discipline, think or any other like subfield. It's just people just send me random conspiracy theory stuff at all times. They're like, hey, have you looked at this?
00:20:12
Speaker
um and so And so I read Kassam's book and I was like, wow, this is this is not good. But ah fortunately, he it was a pathway to some other voices in the literature. And I think, am I read your, pe I think your Pelgrave book, your first one from 2014 whatever? Yeah, the Pelgrave-McMillan book. Yeah.
00:20:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. um And then from there, I got hip to the um the the David Cody edited volume, The Conspiracy Theory is the Philosophical Debate, which I have a hard a copy of that I paid like $60 for because I also have a hard copy It's now been reprinted as a much cheaper softback But when I bought my copy In 2008 It was 110 New Zealand dollars So spent an absolute fortune On something which I suddenly realised Most of this is made up Of papers that have been published That I could download on the university Intranet for free But yes I have a hard copy as well Actually
00:21:17
Speaker
I have your book and the one taking conspiracy theories seriously, because I really wanted to buy, of course, your 2014 one as well, but that was ridiculously expensive. So I couldn't afford that one. But taking conspiracy theories seriously, I'm really, really happy about that one because I can't access all of the papers in there as papers online. So, yeah, that's a really good one to have as well.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yeah, so so i read through so I read through your book, Em, and and then i and and i I was like, ah, yeah, this is much, like, this this is where this is what I, so sort of to some of the things I've been thinking about, and this seems reasonable.
00:21:46
Speaker
and then, yeah, I read through the Cody anthology, so I you know read Charles' paper, and then it'll, the Lee Basham stuff and the David Cody stuff. um and I liked all that pretty good. And then, um and then, yeah, then I think I got into the conspiracy theory, theory, social group, the reading group that we do pretty early on because you were a keynote at a conference that I presented at in on Zoom in Ireland.
00:22:11
Speaker
Oh, yes. is when i invited me in i was i was in the quarantine hotel in Guangzhou when that conference was going on. So spent three weeks in one room and that conference was one of the highlights because it gave me something to do in that hotel room for a day and a half.
00:22:31
Speaker
Yeah. So so, yeah, so that's what so I got into the conspiracy reading group shortly after that. And then, you know, that was a nice, a nice steady stream of of literature there, too. And then, you know, just then then you discover, you know, Joe Yusinski and other edited volumes and this and that, you know. can Can I just say, though, I i just now, when I was finishing my thesis and I had to write something in Swedish, what we call kappa, like the introduction to the the the papers that that I have in my thesis.
00:23:02
Speaker
And I went back to your book, m the 2014 one, and it's really cool to see how, i mean, it still holds really, really well today. I mean, I don't know if it's because that book maybe be set the tone for a lot of the debate and the discussion going forward, or if it's like you already nailed it from the beginning, that that was kind of, ah you raised so many of the issues with conspiracy theories and also with how it is being studied and so on.
00:23:29
Speaker
That is still, I mean, so and yeah on point still today. That was a sponsored plug for the philosophy of conspiracy theories. No, I just, am with yeah, because i I wanted to even tell you that because I really still use that as a reference and writing the introduction. So was like, shit, you already had everything in 2014. So I... i so I have read your kappa and I am quite pleased by the number of times I get cited throughout. Although it does mean i end up skimming over parts. Now I'm lin just talking about my work. I'll skip to the next paragraph.
00:24:03
Speaker
Sorry, Pat, you were about to say something. I will i will say, if were if we're doing praise for the 2014 book, I will say, I remember starting reading it and and and thinking pretty quickly, like, well, this this means that birthday parties count as conspiracy theories. And then, like, the next paragraph, you were like, this means that birthday parties count as conspiracy And fine with that. And I was like, okay.
00:24:20
Speaker
I appreciate, like, so often people don't see the bullets they have to bite and just ignore them, and you did not do that, and I was like, all right, this is good. I'm enjoying this. i mean You might be the only person who agrees with me on that particular issue. Other other people continue, oh, it's too broad, it's too broad, and I go, no, no, we have to have a very minimal definition of conspiracy, we have to admit that conspiracies are ubiquitous, and yes, your friends are conspiring against you when they want to organize you a good time. Yeah, I think that's fine because I think, I mean, you know this is maybe a bit ah more substantive than we wanted to go on this podcast, but i think that you can like append other conditions for the purposes of ah like. So in my first paper, like I take your definition and I go, well, but we're going to talk about these specific subclass of these, which are the contrarian ones.
00:25:08
Speaker
And think that's a totally fine thing to do. We do it with with other subfields all the time. So we start broad and then we we sort of append conditions where conditions need appended and then remove them when they need removing. I think that's totally fine. and Well, yes, because Melina, in your cap, you kind you kind of you you You decide to eventually confront me and go, well, actually, Dentist's definition of conspiracy theory is a little bit too broad.
00:25:34
Speaker
We need to bring a kind of proviso that it's against the interest of others. And I think that's a perfectly fine thing do if we want to narrow a concept down to then go, well, look, when we're talking about conspiracy theories, we tend to be talking about political conspiracy theories, or we tend to be talking about conspiracy theories with a particular feature, because it allows us to then apply the concept more easily to certain types of debates.
00:26:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there's, of course, the big risk of like pejorative, right? So that I'm kind of totally agreeing with that. That's a really bad idea to just make it pejorative and to think about it like that. But as Pat was saying as well, of course, i agree with both of you here that and you can start with a perfectly broad definition and then narrow into whatever and define it more specifically to whatever purpose purpose it is that you're after.
00:26:27
Speaker
But I think still that including birthday parties, um It's almost touching on changing the subject, at least considering what we're talking about, what most of us seem to be interested in when we're talking about conspiracy theories.
00:26:40
Speaker
I think even even both of you, I don't haven't i have i don't have this knockdown argument on what exactly is different, like evolutionarily or something like that. But when I say that it's against someone's interest, it's this capability of ah reasoning when you have reason to suspect someone doing something against your interest. I think there is a slight difference there than just in the positive because people do things you know in secret all the time that were maybe that's a positive for us, like you know the secret service, for example.
00:27:12
Speaker
it's not the same thing as when we're suspecting them out doing something. I think that's a slightly different phenomenon. But yeah. Pat, you have a, a, a response to that? hundred sorry. I'm turning this into a, a debate now.
00:27:24
Speaker
Now we'll go, now we'll turn to the, the representative from America for a response on this particular contentious issue. Yeah, I mean, I think that's reasonable. i do think i do think as an interesting consequence, it it would seem as though ah surprise party can count as a conspiracy theory depending upon how one feels about surprise parties. Yeah, yeah of that's true. though yeah So, you know, maybe it's a little maybe maybe maybe this is a nice this is a nice bridging sort of I mean, so i mean i think but i think that's actually in the acknowledgements of the 2014. So one of the one one of the persons who helped me copy edit that book is now a Green Party activist and wannabe MP for the Green Party back home in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
00:28:10
Speaker
And she pointed out that if anyone ever organized a surprise party for her, she would be Absolutely livid at the idea. She does not want any surprise parties at all So organizing a surprise party would be against her interest I just think that would be there. They would be conspiring against me even if they wanted to give me the best time possible Psychologically my immediate response was you bastards That's under my definition, a conspiracy theory.
00:28:40
Speaker
Definitely. Yeah. So in that sense, yes. So surprise when birthday party can still be conspiracy theory. It's just the positive aspect of it. So I think because you mentioned in the 2014, like you include things as, um, what is it called? that then part The legend park, Leichen Park? Bletchley Park, so the the code, well, amongst the things we know the people at Bletchley Park did was the code breaking of Enigma. And turns out there's a whole bunch of other stuff they also did, which is still under the Official Secrets Act in the UK and won't be revealed until halfway through the century.
00:29:18
Speaker
But yeah, they were involved in, I would argue, a conspiracy against the Nazis. Yeah, exactly. So for the for the Nazis, if they thought about that, or if they are you know reasoned about the the British doing this, it would definitely be a conspiracy theory that they are were speculating.
00:29:35
Speaker
But I think for a normal British person living you know next door or something, ah where they were doing this project, I don't think for them being suspicious about it, or like not suspicious, but kind of having a hunch that it's happening, I don't think that they it's a conspiracy theory in the same way.
00:29:52
Speaker
I think there's a fundamental difference there. And I mean, this might be getting into a kind of interesting debate about whether there a kind of common language or ordinary understanding of what both a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory is, which of course is a big issue in the wider literature, which is why I think it's really interesting, Melina, in your capper,
00:30:16
Speaker
You don't just talk about the philosophical work on conspiracy theory. You also take a bit of a deep dive into work in the social sciences and psychology as well.
00:30:27
Speaker
What was that like, getting into that literature along with the philosophical stuff? Very frustrating sometimes, and to be honest. and I felt like it was very messy and um kind of sometimes it felt like it was out of control, just trying to even...
00:30:43
Speaker
understand the different terminology that was being used. Uh, you know, one uses conspiracism for one thing, and then, you know, and and then they, some of them, when you start off reading it, they even agree with philosophers on, you know, this simple definition and they provide a definition, but then they just don't stick to it when they're actually doing the research.
00:31:04
Speaker
And it's like, nobody even realizes that this is problematic. and when So, I mean, yeah, it was frustrating, but also I think in a lot of ways helpful trying to understand how I think about it and and why, you know, trying to sort out why I thought it was so problematic was really in the end of a learning experience. Yeah.
00:31:24
Speaker
And here's a potentially problematic question. Is there anything in the social sciences and psychology that philosophers should be paying attention to when talking about conspiracy theory theory? yeah i think so. I think, I mean, that's why also I'm interested in it because I think sometimes philosophers don't engage with the empirical sciences or the social sciences on this topic and on many other topics as well for that matter. And I'm of that maybe sometimes controversial opinion.
00:31:51
Speaker
that philosophers i think we can do better philosophy we do pay attention to that as well and and we're informed by it a bit and so i think that's a really good question what is that we need to pay attention to now maybe just that that you know this cognitive difference or psychological difference between for example somebody just um suspecting some secret activity versus the suspiciousness that some people have.
00:32:19
Speaker
What kind of difference that does that make, that especially this trust the question of trust? And that is an empirical question that could be you know investigated and how that plays a part. Yeah, that should definitely be taken into account in philosophy. I'm not saying it's not being done, but that is something that we should look at also and and and acknowledge.
00:32:39
Speaker
And I mean, there is something interesting in the social sciences and psychology about the character of the conspiracy theorist. So often the work in the social sciences and psychology isn't actually strictly on conspiracy theories per se.
00:32:55
Speaker
It's beliefs expressed by people that we often pejoratively call conspiracy theorists. And that I think brings us quite nicely, Pat, to your contribution here, because you have a rather interesting paper in your PhD project looking at what appears to be a kind of intractable kind of conspiracy theorist.
00:33:17
Speaker
So okay tech can you tell us a little bit about the work you did in your PhD on conspiracy theories? Yeah, so so the first paper I wrote, and that the paper that people who listen to this podcast will have heard me talk about before, is this on the origin of conspiracy theories paper, which sort of ah attempts to explain why people, or offer an explanation for why people posit some conspiracy theories. And and and essentially, it's...
00:33:41
Speaker
It's this idea, as you as many of you probably remember, people have certain expectations for how things ought to go when they ask questions about things. And when those expectations are frustrated or or fail to be met, they they wonder why that might be the case.
00:33:55
Speaker
And for for a various number of reasons, one thing that they wind up wondering might be a conspiracy theory. so So that's sort of the – that was the genesis of the whole dissertation project, actually, is that there seems to be this thing that happens where we have view worldviews um about, like, how things ought to go in the science. and with respect to politics and and so on and so forth. I call these in the dissertation political paradigms.
00:34:24
Speaker
And essentially it's a worldview into which you're born and which you're raised. And it sort of tells you what to expect, right? Like how how the world ought to go, what kinds of things there are and what kinds of things there is there's not, um what processes or reasonable methods to solve problems, what which ones aren't and so on and so forth.
00:34:42
Speaker
And I think these really shape how we view the world. And when... You know, and they're they're they're they're pretty ready made and they're fairly workaday and they're, you know, they're they're meant to be sort of coarse grained enough to apply to a bunch of situations. And nevertheless, you have these situations in which the world fails to accord with what you expect. It's just like in the sciences, right? You know, yeah we're going to see such and such. We didn't see such and such. Well, now what do we do?
00:35:08
Speaker
I think same thing happens in the politics case. We were meant to see such and such. We didn't see such and such. Well, what's going on? Now what do we do? And I think people have these really strong worldviews. And when anomalies happen, they begin to wonder what explains the anomalies. And I think those things can be conspiracy theories. And I think at the at the same time, and you wind up having people in in sort of opposite political paradigms, just like with, you know sort of competing scientific paradigms at which, you know, these paradigms become incommensurable, as Kuhn talks about, which is to say that there's no common language into which both could be translated such that you could
00:35:41
Speaker
you could communicate across these lines. And then you just wind up with like hyper polarization where people with one paradigm, you know, say, say people who have like a very America good paradigm, we're going to think various sorts of things about various sorts of things. And people who have abandoned that paradigm and in in favor of some version of an America is bad paradigm are going to think all sorts of other things.
00:36:03
Speaker
And never the twain shall meet. Sadly, I think we're all sort of, i think it's, it's, it's game set match here before too long. um And I think you're going to have really intractable conspiracy theories about other groups across those lines.
00:36:17
Speaker
And I, and I think just polarization is going to get worse and worse and it's going to be, it's going to be no good, but you know, i don't want to bring us down too much. Yeah, and that's where the psychologising or the social science explanations of people being conspiracy theorists either complement the work that's being done in philosophy or kind of start being torn apart by the kinds of analyses we do.
00:36:41
Speaker
So if you take it that being a conspiracy theorist is a rational response with respect to certain phenomena, then but it turns out the literature is psychologizing that response instead, then you kind of get this mismatch between the kind of
Future Directions in Conspiracy Theory Research
00:36:57
Speaker
work that's been done in philosophy and maybe been done in social psychology.
00:37:02
Speaker
Yeah, just just one one one more quick thing. like I think an important question that social psychologists could maybe address is just, what's suppose there's some conspiracy mindset or or one of these you know these structures that they talk about. um What's the base rate occurrence of that? Because that's an interesting question, right? and you know You might imagine that in a perfect society, right one in which like there is no mismatch between how we think the world ought to be and how it is, that there would still nevertheless be some conspiracy theorists.
00:37:31
Speaker
but There would be some people who were like, man don't know, doesn't seem fishy to me. um And I think it'd be interesting to know what the base rate occurrence of that kind of person is, because it seems like a lot of the stuff that that the three of us have have given out about in social psychology would nevertheless apply to that small number of people who are who are legitimately suffering from some psychological pathology such that they see conspiracy theories where or conspiracies where there are not.
00:37:58
Speaker
I think The three of us ah would agree also like what's more interesting is the number of people who would not otherwise think there are conspiracies who nevertheless think there are conspiracies. That's like the cool group. That's the interesting group that needs theorizing about, because I think those things tell us something about society Whereas, you know, the people who are going to wear tinfoil hats, regardless of whether a tinfoil hat is required. Well, that's like that's not super interesting. There's there of course there are crazy people. There will always be crazy people.
00:38:27
Speaker
But we shouldn't we shouldn't start there and then theorize inward and apply that to everybody. That seems like a ah bad move to me. and And one that social psychologists often make. Yeah, I think the question about the base rate and the kind of the background noise of conspiracy in society something which we probably can never get to the actual number of.
00:38:49
Speaker
But we can have suspicions about it maybe being varying over time. Sorry, Melina, you were about to interject. Yeah, just if I can add to my previous answer as well, um just on this point, because of how I see what is interesting to study and what we can learn from the social sciences is that it is a social phenomenon, I think, in the end, conspiracy theories.
00:39:13
Speaker
And the interesting part about how we reason on these social events and social structures that we have. established in society. So I think that's something unique about conspiracy theorizing.
00:39:26
Speaker
And so just as you said, that's why the focus is on conspiracy theorists, and but a lot from the psychologist viewpoint. And if I can also just plug that into my framework, what I'm arguing there is that you could look at all these things. Like also the pathology can be interesting to look at, like what is it that we have in common, for example,
00:39:46
Speaker
I mean, so not we, but normal people that reason on social events. So when it comes to trust issues or people that just want to come to the bottom of things, because we know that conspiracies do happen, how those are correlated or not correlated at all in what what situations are there, any connections or not.
00:40:04
Speaker
And also with the pathologies, like we see in dementia patients, for some reason, it's the prefrontal cortex pathologies that seem to be more conspiratorial. And I think that's fascinating because And on the flip side, we see that that's the last thing to develop in children, ah being able to think and reason conspiratorially, especially when it comes to institutions or authority. And so if there is a connection there, maybe, I think that can teach us a lot about both the human mind and also ah rationality and so on.
00:40:35
Speaker
So I think that is an interesting perspective. That is different. I think that is different from, for example, just looking at or or what other scientists are doing, looking at phenomena in the world.
00:40:46
Speaker
Yeah, looking at the actual developmental neurology of the human being, go, well, look, actually, there are some interesting parallels, both in cognitive development and cognitive decline.
00:40:57
Speaker
Actually does tell us something interesting about individuals, but it only tells us about them as theorists. it doesn't tell us much about the theories themselves. Right, exactly. but But it is reasoning on conspiracy theories.
00:41:13
Speaker
So it's not the truth or falsehood of the kind of the theory itself, and but conspiracy theories are, even whether they're true or false, are, I say, i think, I believe, reasoning, social reasoning, which is different than trying to reason on, for example, I don't know if...
00:41:31
Speaker
if atoms are, you know, dividable or not, or whatever, you know, some kind of scientific question. I can't make one up right now. That's interesting. But I don't know like, for example, figuring out if the earth is flat or not.
00:41:42
Speaker
I think that's a different kind of reasoning but that is applied. Pat, thoughts? i think I think no, mostly because I haven't read your thesis, Malina. I don't want to... ah yeah like so i do I do wonder, though, like different kind of reasoning in, guess, in what way? like Reasoning with different kind of premises or reasoning in a different kind of like reasoning inductively and abductively rather than like just going and checking? or and no because i just wonder what you mean.
00:42:15
Speaker
Yeah. So what I mean is that, for example, if I want to find out if the earth is flat or not, typically you would be motivated by that, epistemically motivated to find out the truth, if the earth is flat or not.
00:42:25
Speaker
But I think with conspiracy theories, because they're essentially social, there is a lot of things, and for example, trust, or like you might not even be able to get to the bottom of it. So you have to take at the end, you have to take somebody's word for it.
00:42:39
Speaker
and If the conspirators already are all dead or you know you will never or potential conspirators, you um might never even be able to find out that question. Typically, that's not the case with questions scientific questions. right Normally, you would have some kind of...
00:42:54
Speaker
ah way of of trying to figure it out. That doesn't include the social part, the social cognitive aspect and that is required when we do reason about social circumstances and social events.
00:43:08
Speaker
But I that's also going to be the same for historical theorizing, to large extent, economic theorizing as well, because you're, mean, to go back to Brian Keely,
00:43:21
Speaker
Atoms, electrons don't lie about their superposition. this It either is or it isn't. Human beings, of course, can lie about where they were on the night of November 1st, 1963. There there are interesting aspects to the way these stories are told because in the sciences we are dealing with what we take to be cold hard facts about the world which are inviolate they either are or they aren't whilst when we're dealing with social phenomena we're dealing with events which on a metaphysical sense happened or didn't happen but often reported through the lens of human beings who are
00:44:03
Speaker
to a certain extent, unreliable narrators, even of their own lives. Yeah, and and also I think that and it is part of of how we come to know things or reason around social.
00:44:16
Speaker
and These kinds of things that do involve other humans, for example. That is different from just solely wanting to ah reflect on facts. right Just exactly like you said, that an electron won't lie to you. so it's just up Or at least that's what the electrons want us to think.
00:44:32
Speaker
That's true. So I think what's interesting is like, I view, i mean, I'm a Kuhnian about this stuff. So I view science as a so as and as an essentially social practice also.
00:44:43
Speaker
so so So for me, like, yeah, yeah, there are like there are truths about some of these things. um But I think science is ah is a social practice just in the same way that other kinds of theorizing are social practices.
00:44:56
Speaker
um So i wonder I wonder what that would mean for for how much our views come apart, but I feel like that's probably a conversation for another time. But that's it's actually a really good point. It did become a quite contentious during my defense. Exactly. but joe yes Now I'm right in thinking, you get a sword after you complete your PhD in Sweden?
00:45:16
Speaker
No, that's Finnish people. Oh, all right. Okay, so that's right so so I had to get my honorary doctorate in Finland. Or like we get a golden ring, which is really beautiful because it's like you went to university. so As opposed to a ring which then binds you to the Dark Lord Sauron. In the land of Mordor where the shadow...
00:45:37
Speaker
Yes, become, Ronald. You are one of the ringwraiths now. Okay, all right. So, Finnish honoree PhD, get sword, have to somehow persuade Juhal Riker to endorse my work. Okay, work to be done there.
00:45:51
Speaker
Work to be done there. And I mean, I think that brings us on quite nicely... What do you think happens next in the philosophy of conspiracy theory theory?
00:46:04
Speaker
Have we kind of covered all of our bases? Or is there more work to be done? Pat, I'll start with you. Um, so I think, I think there's still more more work to be done. I mean, hopefully for all of us, there's still more work to be done. Um, I think that two, two things are at least two things are true.
00:46:24
Speaker
I think that with the increased awareness of our little cottage industry, we're going to see more and more papers in print that are so retreading old ground, but hopefully in a new and interesting way that that will give us something to respond to in new and interesting ways.
00:46:45
Speaker
I don't think that will be like, there will be a ton of that. um I think a lot of them will be frustrating for us to look at, but I do think there will be the occasional one where we're like, hey, we hadn't thought of that. That's pretty good.
00:46:56
Speaker
what what should What should the particularist or the the social theorist say about this? So I think that's one thing. and And I do think that there are some remaining puzzles. um I think that, you know, the the reconciling generalism and particularism is is a remaining puzzle.
00:47:14
Speaker
I think there's some way of doing that. I don't know what it is, but i I think that there's most people that I meet out in the wild just think that we're we're engaged in a linguistic dispute. Yeah. And I think I think there might be something to that. I think something like that might be worth exploring. And I think there's just a bunch of ah a bunch of empirical questions about where people believe conspiracy theories and and why they believe them. And if we could and if we can make any sort of interesting cor correlational observations about these different societies and things like this. So I think there's I think there's more to be said.
00:47:48
Speaker
I think there's a lot of longstanding sort of canards, like this idea about like, well, you know, you shouldn't believe in conspiracy theories because like 30 or 40 people have to keep it a secret for a long time. And I think that's probably like, wow, there's papers that suggest that like that's not actually that big a deal. So I think there's, yeah I think there's lots of stuff for us to do.
00:48:05
Speaker
Yes, so one day, one day i'm going to put a generalist hat on and probably write anonymously pro-generalism paper along the lines of, I think there's a kind of what we might call cultural generalism in particular cultures with particular kinds of political arrangements.
Post-PhD Reflections and Academic Challenges
00:48:24
Speaker
I think citizens in those cultures are entitled to a general dismissal and suspicion of things labelled as conspiracy theories by the institutions and that make up those particular cultures.
00:48:37
Speaker
The kicker for such a paper is I don't think we have any societies currently which satisfy the criteria to license that kind of cultural generalism.
00:48:48
Speaker
But that's a paper for a future time and now revealed it in a podcast. So basically someone can now write it. but yeah But even so, I still think the problem is when they're so worried about epistemically, that it's an epistemic problem, right?
00:49:05
Speaker
and That there are voices that are ah sort of saying, and like contradicting what the mainstream are saying, even if, you know, they're not 100% warranted. I think that's an even bigger problem.
00:49:18
Speaker
this trying to silence contradictory views, you know trying to think that it or argue that it's epistemically bad for for us. Anyway, so but you can argue that paper, but I will still argue against that.
00:49:30
Speaker
I'm going to write it anonymously, so you'll never know it was made. It's about the fact that I've just told you that it is. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay, it has to be super. And the thing is then then the journal will send it to me and I'll give it a withering review. Okay, well, this is pathetic paper. and I mean, it ignores most of the particular literature. How can somebody even argue a position like this? It'll be fun all the way through.
00:49:55
Speaker
That was really fun. You'll have to undergo that thing that they do in that show Severance, where you're half particularist and half generalist. Oh, so yeah, so I've got an any generalist and an outie particularist. Oh, now that. And then there could be my own critic. This is a great idea.
00:50:15
Speaker
Just responding to yourself ad infinitum. It's one way to get your H index up. father But yeah, on the question of what's still left to be done, I think, I mean, I'm also bit optimistic now, maybe bit like Pat, because recently the papers that I've gotten to review have been surprising to me how ah it's starting to, it it feels like it's the literature is starting to get more focused and the the arguments are getting actually worked at. So for all these issues that have been debated and argued,
00:50:53
Speaker
ah lot I feel like the, the arguments, the actual philosophical arguments are getting more and more polished. So it's kind of like, we have to have all this, uh, you know, arguing back and forth.
00:51:04
Speaker
ah but it feels like it's getting more and more mature so that we can have real good arguments and maybe like even names for them. So we can have shorthands and don't have to have like a million examples every time.
00:51:16
Speaker
somebody disagrees with a particular conspiracy theory, but we can use like standardized examples. Maybe this is just my wish. So we can skip a lot of the steps that have already been, you know, established and argued to sort of like all other areas in philosophy. You know, I wish we could move move more towards that.
00:51:32
Speaker
And it feels like we are slowly, but at least in that direction. So I still think there's a lot of work to do. And I'm maybe a bit optimistically hopeful that we are moving in the right direction.
00:51:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. it would be quite nice that in a few years' time, we don't have to particularism a term introduced by Booting and Taylor back in 2007, that we don't need to do that constant work.
00:51:57
Speaker
these people originated in the name. No, this is just a standard term when it comes to talking about conspiracy theory theory in philosophy at this time. It'd also be be quite nice if people outside of philosophy also started using some of that terminology as well.
00:52:14
Speaker
I mean, it's interesting. We are seeing the reinvention of particularism going on in psychology at the moment. So a lot of the work that Roland Imhoff is doing, for example, pointing out that a conspiracy mentality doesn't just predict people believing in unwarranted conspiracy theories.
00:52:37
Speaker
It also predicts people believing in warranted conspiracy theories as well. means we're seeing a kind of particular stance coming out by at least some psychologists now.
00:52:48
Speaker
And if they just adopted the terminology from philosophy, and we all know that these psychologists at least know of that terminology, given that we have associated with or corresponded with them in the past,
00:53:04
Speaker
it might make life easier for everyone in general. Exactly. And also, if I can add to that, ah it feels like the subject or the topic is getting to shine and and develop in its own as well. like So if i I feel like before it was very much tied to you know misinformation and this whole other baggage of problematic views, so to speak.
00:53:27
Speaker
But I feel like it's also interesting and becoming more interesting as just in and of itself, like conspiracy theories as a topic without having to you know conflate it with the eco chambers or something that people are interested in.
00:53:41
Speaker
Yeah, and there is an increasingly kind of interdisciplinary aspect to conspiracy theory theory as it's developing now. And hopefully, philosophy can kind of take central role in helping people to navigate through the metaphysical and epistemic aspects of what count as conspiracy theories and what makes belief rational or irrational in those theories at particular times or in particular cultures.
00:54:09
Speaker
Actually, so on the on the example of examples, what do we think of the kind of examples that are being used in the literature?
00:54:19
Speaker
So the kind of motivating examples that people use to develop their theory of conspiracy theories. Because Pat, you have quite interesting discussion in your first paper on conspiracy theories of views which most people would go, oh, well, that's just...
00:54:38
Speaker
That's a bit weird, but you do the defense saying, well, look, actually, given a particular context of people seeing responses by ostensible authorities in the world, these views aren't actually all that weird, given expectations as to how we think the world generally should work.
00:54:58
Speaker
Yeah. So I think in the paper I used, I used like the the Roswell example where like, you know, I think it's, it's all, it's all very twee now and very funny to think about. Like there's aliens really. They crash landed 70 years ago. Like, come on.
00:55:13
Speaker
But when you look at the story, right? Like, And i think I think this is a thing that people don't do enough of in their papers, um which is like really get into the particulars of the theories that we're talking about.
00:55:24
Speaker
Because I think once one understands some of these theories, um or at least understands them in like so sort of fairly fine-grained strokes, you know, I think they make some sense, right? Like if you were following the Roswell thing, for example, then you you say say you were following it in the fifty s You're like, oh, my gosh, there's, you know, the Roswell paper said that something crash landed in this guy's field and it was it was a spaceship.
00:55:47
Speaker
And, you know, this is the you got to keep in mind, this is like the height of like the hard science fiction. so So something crashed in somebody's field and it was a spaceship. And the army is like, no, it wasn't. No, it wasn't. It was it was this.
00:56:00
Speaker
And then you're like, oh, maybe it wasn't that. Maybe it was whatever they said it was. And then like a year later, they're like, actually, it was this other thing. And you're like, whoa, whoa, really? And then a few years after that, they're like, actually, it was the first thing. and you're like, all right, now you're trying to wind me up.
00:56:14
Speaker
Like, if you were invested in this story and the story kept changing, i mean, look, if if you were hanging out with your buddies and one of your friends told you a story, and then the next time they told you that story, they changed a bunch of things.
00:56:27
Speaker
And then the next time they told you that story, they changed a bunch of things back. You'd be like, this son of a bitch is lying to me. Or they were very drunk both times. Yeah, or that, yeah. And I mean, presumably the whole, you know, Pentagon wasn't drunk.
00:56:40
Speaker
um but I don't know. It was the 1960s, Pat. It was the but's this This is true. But I think like i think this is like i think Brian talks about this in his first paper in in his first conspiracy theory paper, the the the of conspiracy theories one about the this anomaly stuff. But, you know, it's not as though these are like the thing to do with the anomalous things isn't to just, you know, make something up.
00:57:09
Speaker
And then change your story later. and I think if you if you look into these things and you're like, well, well, why? Why was all the ATF out of the Murrah building on in late April 95? Like, well, what was what story with that?
00:57:21
Speaker
And you look at that in the in the backdrop of, you know, Ruby Ridge and Waco and you're They're like, boy, the ATF sure had a reputational problem. maybe Maybe they were going to try to stop this. you know it's like It's one of these things like if you get into them and you read what these people are saying and you kind of tilt your head and squint, you can see what they're up to. And the fact that you can do that with with you know varying degrees of head tilting and squinting I think is interesting and I think is worth noting. It's not as though these people, you know, I think example wise, you know, we just say things like and we've all complained about this before. We say things like 9-11 conspiracy theories. Well, which one do we mean Project Bluebeam? Because that's nuts.
00:58:01
Speaker
Do we mean a let it happen on purpose? Because that's less nuts. Like, which of these things do people think and why I think are are super important questions. And I think at the level of example, things we could be getting more mileage out of than what we are.
00:58:14
Speaker
That's my hobby horse. I mean, just to go back to the Oklahoma City bombing. Also, one of the things which strikes non-Americans when you tell the story about the Alfred Murrah building being blown up is is their first response is not normally, sorry, there's a Bureau for Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
00:58:34
Speaker
So there's a federal agency that deals with those three things together. Sorry, you're making this bit up, right? So there are also, I think, from outside of the US, there are certain aspects of the story which make people go, well, there there's something really strict seriously wrong with American society. When you have a Bureau's what? Alcohol, tobacco and firearms?
00:58:56
Speaker
How did that come about? I agree with you guys, but I also see it a little bit differently, this getting the mileage out of um the the particular conspiracy theories. Of course, I think the details are really important, but that's what kind of what I meant. like i'm I'm hoping or I think it would be awesome if we could somehow shorthand our examples. So and to mean exactly what we mean when we talk about them, instead of like, you know, it shouldn't be expected that people should look into the details of whatever happened, if they want to talk about it as true or false. That's, you know, that's, I think, already said and done philosophy.
00:59:31
Speaker
But take the Roswell example. Maybe that could be the case that we use when we argue about, you know, constant changing, and narratives as problematic and why people don't trust, don't know, the institutions or something like or let's say and the nine eleven when we talk about 9-11 conspiracy theories, maybe that should be like a standard example for and when we talk ah about the official conspiracy theories versus unofficial conspiracy theories to highlight that problem and or intuition that, you know, sometimes people get wrong versus take when we're talking about 9-11, about building seven, maybe that's a different example, you know, that, that shows some different kind of arguments in philosophy.
01:00:12
Speaker
Yeah. Do you guys follow up And maybe like, Another example could be the JFK assassination. and When people talk about, yeah don't know, whatever the Pope had for breakfast or whatever whatever color the Pope had on compared to the socks that the killer or the shooter was wearing, something like that. there was some kind like Maybe that's an example of you know using yeah evidence that's ah not even relevant or yeah evidence that's not relevant.
01:00:36
Speaker
That's what I meant by standardizing the examples so that for us who are actually researching this, and We don't have to talk because I feel like sometimes philosophers love to get into the lengthy details of particular conspiracy theories.
01:00:49
Speaker
I think that's really interesting in good in a podcast or in other forms of media. But in philosophy, when we want to get to the arguments about what we're talking about, it's not so much the actual conspiracy theory, but the the point that we're trying to make with talking about the that example.
01:01:04
Speaker
you see what I mean? Like why I think it would be beneficial beneficial for philosophy and more efficient? I mean, it would be nice if there were a canonical list of examples that when we talk about a let it happen on purpose versus made it happen on purpose 9-11 conspiracy theory, you can say, well, look, the Lehop example, C. Clarke, 2025, or the made it happen on purpose example, C. Hagen, 2023. You have a list of canonical examples to then index things to.
01:01:37
Speaker
I guess the problem is we would then need that to be done across disciplines because we do see examples of scholars outside of philosophy and inside of philosophy who will then say, oh, you know, as the Woodward and Bernstein investigation of Watergate show, this was not a conspiracy theory because and then you go, but hold on, they're referencing all the president's men here and all the president's men Woodward and Bernstein admit they were speculating wildly for the first six months of their investigation.
Philosophical Debates and Historical Contexts in Conspiracy Theories
01:02:09
Speaker
So they were indeed engaging in conspiracy theorizing. So if we want to have canonical examples, i mean, it would be great to have them within philosophy, but we then need to kind of have canonical examples outside of philosophy, so that when we're hinging our critiques of people using examples in different ways,
01:02:28
Speaker
go, well, look, there's a ah big difference between Karen Douglas talking about this example and Lee Basham talking about this example. And that might explain their different theoretical perspective or through or through point.
01:02:42
Speaker
Yeah, I would say, too, that like, so this is going to sound like a tangent, but I swear to God it's not. So in Ted Sider's book, Logic for Philosophers, in in the beginning, he talks about like why you should learn a bunch of formalism.
01:02:53
Speaker
And his argument is like, well, you want to do this so you don't get formally bullied. Right. You don't want to pick up a paper about Bayesian epistemology and go, well, I don't know what they're saying, so I guess I'll just go with it. Right. You want to you want to have enough chops to be able to make it through this stuff so people just can't bully you with formalism. And I think the same is kind of true with some of these examples, at least for now. Right. Like you want to be conversant enough in the popular kinds of examples that people use so that you have something to say when some generalist makes up some like unreal conspiracy theory and go, see, look how dumb these people are. You want to be able to go, no, no, well, that's ah that's a fictional thing that you italicized and indented and then told a little tale.
01:03:37
Speaker
But like, here's a real example from the real world. And here are the details that matter. And I think for now, i think we kind of need that. But I do agree, Melina, it would be good if we could settle on some like, when I say that pee, I mean this.
01:03:53
Speaker
Exactly. um But... i I think very, very small baby steps are still made that way. like when when I think philosophers successfully argued that, you know hammering home the point that some conspiracies do turn out to be true.
01:04:08
Speaker
and i think I think that the Watergate scandal is a good example because we see that all the time now, even in psychology, where they say that excluding true conspiracies you know like the Watergate and So we do see that popping up. And I think it is because philosophers have successfully argued and used the example of the Watergate scandal.
01:04:27
Speaker
So if we can just do that with other things as well, like other examples. and Because I just feel like sometimes the some people just enjoy talking too much about the details of the conspiracy theories, which is fine. And, and you know, I think it's really fun too.
01:04:41
Speaker
I just think it's like not advancing necessarily the study of conspiracy theories. If we just talk about, you know, different and conspiracy, because it's going to keep cupping up new ones. Like now we have the Charlie Kirk conspiracy theories, and some of them are just the same thing, but with different examples.
01:04:57
Speaker
So if we can categorize that, I think it would be super interesting. On that I agree. I think a taxonomy of like, oh, that's a type B conspiracy. That's a, you know, you you know that's that's one of those it's the Jews conspiracies. Like, so we can, we don't need to worry about that.
01:05:12
Speaker
You know, that would be great. Or like, not just that we don't need to worry about that. It's just that we draw, we know it's like a shorthand. We know what we're talking about. You know, we we know which arguments to address.
01:05:23
Speaker
Because, you know, otherwise people like us, we'd have to keep arguing over and over and over with new examples. And I mean, of course it it is, that's what will eventually make the argument, you know, being established that we do rehash it many times. Maybe it's just part of the project and the the process, but I'm just saying that I wish we were maybe... trying to pay attention to it, you know, that there are certain things that do keep repeating themselves and we don't have to rehash them every single time. I mean, I'm sure m can attest to this being, I mean, the patience that you have sometimes is, um I mean, all of it. So yeah, you must've heard this many, many more years than I have. So.
01:06:01
Speaker
But hey, this is, but ah you know, The cynical view is that, hey, this is job security, right? Like the more times we have to say the same stuff over and over again and print, like the the higher RH indices get. So that's true. I mean, I still think that will be necessary.
01:06:18
Speaker
um But I just think, you know, maybe I'm comparing it too much to like the philosophy of mind. Because if you go through the philosophy of mind, there is certain examples that you just know straight away, you know, thought experiments that we philosophy, we use those to know what we're talking about. So we don't have to reinvent the wheel every single time.
01:06:34
Speaker
And then once people learn that, they don't have to keep... Okay, maybe that's, you're right. i'm I'm trying to get rid of our jobs. But I think we can still get to more interesting things if we can establish those things. So like, let's say, you know, Searle's Chinese room argument.
01:06:47
Speaker
We all know, okay, it has to do with syntax and semantics. Like that's the distinction that that example it is made for, and to make that distinction clear. So maybe we can say the same thing with like, okay, 9-11 conspiracies. It's to make the distinction between conspiracy theories that are official and not official. You know, just things like that.
01:07:06
Speaker
Yeah. But you're right, maybe... and yeah I think we still will need to explain this to people over and over and over again. so i do think like I do think we're in a bit of a... I think we're in a bit of a rough spot in that regard, just just because this stuff is like... it It is so tangible, and there are so many examples out there. Like, like of course, yeah, I think you're right about thought experiments and philosophy. Like, you know, Parfit.
01:07:32
Speaker
Like, the the tell the teleporter stuff from Parfit is like... Yeah, yeah, like that gets at a bunch of like interesting theoretical stuff. But like what's what's interesting is like probably a lot of the epistemological a lot of the epistemological things that we're getting at with our conspiracy examples are probably easily gotten to by other examples and epistemology from before.
01:07:55
Speaker
That would be an interesting paper, right? Like, OK, we have these like these things in epistemology that we think in what way are these cases similar to these other things? And You know, maybe that might be the thing is to get away from examples altogether and go back to things that were in sort of moldy, oldy epistemology, because I would imagine that a lot of this stuff is represented in like Hume and Reed and, you know, Gettier stuff.
01:08:20
Speaker
Well, yeah, I can imagine someone writing a paper on Watergate going, well, look, was Woodward and Bernstein's hunch investigative justification or was it epistemic luck? Did they just happen to luck onto a story or was their institutional background as journalists sufficient to go, there's something fishy about the story that's been told there?
01:08:42
Speaker
So do a epistemic luck versus... and so institutionalized accreditation and thus generating justification or warrant that way. So yeah, there probably is some really interesting work there. And I do think we're seeing that in the literature now because the explosion of work we've seen in the last few years is a lot of people who are not necessarily interested in the epistemology of conspiracy theory theory, but interested in some other side debates going on in philosophy.
01:09:15
Speaker
And they go, oh, we can apply that to conspiracy theory. And sometimes it's a quite happy marriage. It matches quite nicely. And other times you read those papers going, my God, you had to stretch that example three different ways from Sunday to be able to make the point you wanted to make. And nobody's going to agree with you because of it.
01:09:37
Speaker
Talking about examples, are there little-known examples from either your experience or your part of the world that you think actually it would be useful for people to think about when talking or analyzing conspiracy theories? I, of course, have talked about the North Head example, so the hidden military base in a small suburb of...
01:10:01
Speaker
Tamaki Makoro, Auckland, back home, which is one of those examples which if someone mentions North Head in their paper, you can pretty much guarantee it's going to be me because I'm the only person who mentions it.
01:10:13
Speaker
But yeah examples that are little known to the world that you think would be interesting things for people to talk about or at least consider when talking about conspiracy theory theory. I have... Two that I think about.
01:10:27
Speaker
Okay. So the first one, I'm not sure how unknown it is, but the I do like to mention it a lot and I don't hear a lot of other people talking about it. But the North Stream pipeline sabotage that happened, because i mean, it was very local for us here. It was just, you know, if you take a boat straight out, that's where it happened.
01:10:45
Speaker
And it was just, you know, this fear of it being Russia. Like it it was the whole moment of of how it happened and how easy it was to catch on to that. accusation that it was Russia, even though it made no sense that Russia would do it to their own pipeline.
01:11:00
Speaker
um And people forgot that straight away. As soon as the the war started and we joined NATO and the whole thing, which was a big part of it, you know, this whole suspicion towards Russia. And then a year later, and the Germans made an investigation and now it was, you know, established that it was actually Ukrainians themselves that did it, that Ukrainians that sabotaged the pipeline.
01:11:20
Speaker
So anyway, I think that's a local one, but still just shows so much how according to conspiracy theory, and accusation could just, you know, I mean, but both of both of the versions are conspiracy because it was sabotage.
01:11:34
Speaker
and So somebody must have done it. and But I think it's a very good example of showing who you trust or don't trust ah it really makes you yeah pick a side that maybe is not always the true version or the true explanation of what happened. That's one. But then the second one, I don't know, this is maybe more quirky or weird or niche that I think that people don't talk about, but like guilts, how they really you know started as conspiracies in Europe.
01:12:01
Speaker
and People, you know, the the trades people wanted to keep sort of the profession and the the work. So they they formed these guilds that were really conspiracies to kick out or to keep in or yeah act to try to regulate the the the business, basically. and and whatever that and And that just gave you know it gave rise to institutions like like universities and and all kinds of things in Europe. So the whole thing started with conspiracies. And people forget. I mean, the role of the Freemasons, particularly in the English-speaking world in the 1960s and 70s, and the fact that being a Freemason on the police force suddenly meant that when you encountered a fellow Freemason who may have engaged a little bit of light larceny or...
01:12:49
Speaker
or arson or you know me and maybe a bit of the old stabby stabby murder you go a little bit lighter on your fellow mason so the fact you know these guilds not only started as m-groups keeping secrets from others but then some of those guilds became actually quite powerful political forces in the 20th century so yeah pat do you have something similar i don't So I don't know if i I... So I don't have any, like... I don't have any local Canal Fulton, Ohio conspiracy theories. Well, at least that's what do you want us to think.
01:13:26
Speaker
They have plenty local run-of-the-mill Canal Fulton, you know, run-of-the-mill corruption stories. um You know, various football players receiving, you know, you know like lighter punishments than non-football players type situations.
01:13:39
Speaker
um But what one thing i do I like to do that's, like I think, sort of in line with this is I like to use, um to the extent possible, like old historical conspiracy theories that people don't have any intuitions about.
01:13:53
Speaker
So things like Oh, I always forget her name. Victoria Camille Pagan, I think her name is. She has a book. Yeah. So on that's the the Roman conspiracy. thing Yeah. Yeah. There's like she has ah she has a book called Conspiracy Theory in the Ancient World.
01:14:08
Speaker
and like so like Greek and Rome. So I like to use stuff like that because like, look, you might have intuitions about nine eleven or, you know, COVID, but you don't have intuitions about the Catalan conspiracy theory.
01:14:20
Speaker
And so I like to think about those sorts of things and trot those out. So if you ever encounter a paper where you're like, is this dude is this right author talking about a Syrian cons conspiracy? That's probably me.
01:14:31
Speaker
yeah I actually met her back at the Bilderberg Hotel when Michael Butter and Peter Knight held their conspiracy theory conference there. She was one of the attendees. An absolute delight to talk with.
01:14:49
Speaker
Yeah, her stuff's really great. I feel the same way. if The same thing is true. I got kind of got into this because I don't like using modern day political examples because I think they make your paper bad and they date it too much. And they like people have intuitions about Trump stuff and anti-Trump stuff or whatever.
01:15:05
Speaker
But nobody has intuitions about the Marian reforms. but but Can I ask you, like, just, a why don't you want to have, but why, why do you want to emphasize things that people don't have intuitions on?
01:15:18
Speaker
Oh, because like, I think because I have a lot of views that are, that run counter to people's intuitions. i think i think i mean may I think we all do, but I think maybe that's becoming less true.
01:15:30
Speaker
But i also just like I'm just very weary of people using Trumpian examples um and of people using political examples du jour. And so I try to use examples that show the things that I think are true that are not going to elicit a sort of immediate response.
01:15:47
Speaker
from reviewers or from readers, because that's not what I want. Because I think like that, I think that's noise in a lot of instances. and and i And to the extent that I can minimize that noise, I think that's that's worth doing. Because i think examples are really important. And I think actual examples are really important.
01:16:04
Speaker
But actual examples that people already have already made their mind up about, like those aren't going to do me any good, unless I'm saying the thing everybody's already saying, which I probably won't be. Okay. Yeah. I'm always jokingly saying, cause I enjoy that. I like ah triggering people's intuitions and then showing them why they're not, ah you know, as obvious as the intuition feels like. Right. And I always joke, like, I mean, it did get Socrates killed, right? Doing that thing. So maybe you're more wise to avoid those.
01:16:31
Speaker
i mean, I'm not trying to get that. Socrates was an asshole. What did you say? I mean, that's what am.
Research Reflections and Future Academic Plans
01:16:38
Speaker
I mean, I'm not trying to get killed. I'm not trying to not get killed. I'm just trying to get past reviewer two.
01:16:45
Speaker
Ah, reviewer two. Reviewer two. We're all sometimes reviewer two. Probably so. There's a little reviewer two in all of us. Unfortunately, that is true.
01:16:55
Speaker
And that, I think, brings us quite happily to the end of our discussion, which has been wide-ranging and not particularly contentious, but an exciting discussion.
01:17:07
Speaker
So I guess the question now is, what happens next? Well, that face is exactly how I feel. I mean, i mean it is it is a cruel question to ask people, having just finished a PhD in this day and age. I get it you on a weekly on a daily basis. yeah but so so i So I am currently ah in a postdoc at the National Institutes of Health, which is pretty cool, in bioethics.
01:17:32
Speaker
I'm not a bioethicist, which is what's cool about this postdoc is they they only hire people who aren't bioethicists because they want to teach you how to be a bioethicist. So that's fun. I like it here. It's good. The government shut down as of October 18th, 2025.
01:17:46
Speaker
twenty twenty five So that means I just can't go to work. I just hang out at the house. So it feels a lot like grad school. um But so after this, and this is two years. So after this, you know, i would like to get a tenure track job. That would be good. I'd like that pretty, pretty well. I'm applying to jobs again this year.
01:18:03
Speaker
This is sort of like the under the hood stuff for all the people thinking about grad school. this is what you need to, this is what you get to contend with. But yeah, just writing some papers on misinformation and other related things. Some friends of mine and I are responding to ah Keith Harris's book, which has been fun.
01:18:17
Speaker
And yeah, I'll just apply for jobs again this year and just keep applying for jobs. We'll see what happens. Keep writing stuff. I'll keep thinking about stuff and sometimes writing that stuff down. And Melina, how about you?
01:18:31
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I'm still trying to finish things that I'm really excited about to finish, like the research handbook on conspiracy theories that I'm co-editing with David Cody, and which both of you guys have a chapter in. Em even has two chapters.
01:18:45
Speaker
so um i mean I managed to swing not one, but two sites for that one. yeah But I'm really happy about it. Yeah, because they're both interdisciplinary as well, which is awesome. So I'm really excited and happy about getting that out.
01:18:59
Speaker
And then i have like little little trips, organized workshops and stuff that I'm still attending and going to. And in Sweden, we have something called ah prolongation. ah So if you've been teaching a lot and stuff like that, then you get prolongation time after you finish your approach PhD. So I still have, I'm still employed technically until June.
01:19:19
Speaker
ah So i have time to apply for new things. And I guess what I'm thinking about right now is if I should even like, I hate that I'm even saying this, but it's, if I'm going to be honest, I'm wondering if the best choice for me is to keep going in academia.
01:19:34
Speaker
So I really want to, and I can't see myself doing anything else. i think and that's what I will be doing, but I think I need a moment of like ah existential crisis right now. That I think it will be healthy and good for me in the end, but to just really know, to figure out what I want to do and continue with. and But what I will be applying for is we have ah the Swedish Research Council have like a three year postdoc.
01:19:54
Speaker
And I feel like if I can make up a good enough project that I'm really burning for, or what like I'm really passionate about, then I will apply for that. Yeah.
01:20:05
Speaker
And I have like four times that I can play for it, I think. Four years. ah Two years, but it's twice a year. Oh, okay. Yeah. yeah That's it. But I'm yeah i'm really hating that question right now. Sorry.
01:20:17
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, it's not a good time for academia in general, whether you are a philosopher or not. Even the hard sciences, which historically were kind of protected by governments, particularly in the West, are seeing their dominance being challenged by governments, not just the US. We're seeing it in New Zealand and Australia, the yeah UK as well.
01:20:44
Speaker
the entire academic system as we knew it in the course of the 20th century is changing and might be changing in a fairly permanent and drastic way so whatever the academy looks like in a generation's time we have come through a very tumultuous part And yet, out of the chaos, excellent work has been produced by both of you.
01:21:12
Speaker
And I really hope there is going to be a there's going there's going to be a legacy of Pat Brooks and Melina Sarpos publications coming out well after I've retired in writing in this particular field.
01:21:28
Speaker
Well, thank you for that. I appreciate that. You you have to carry my flame.
01:21:34
Speaker
well Well, yeah, I mean, you know, I think that there's, I think there will, you know, there will remain things to be said about this. And I do think that given the way the wind is blowing politically across the West, really, it does seem like a pretty good time to be a particularist.
01:21:57
Speaker
You know, I think that, you know, for good or ill, I think people are going to be like, well, look, you know, the philosophers say that we're not always crazy. And I think it's not a bad time to be one such philosopher cynically, even if I do think that, you know, particularism is true.
01:22:10
Speaker
But like I even said it in my acknowledgements and like, sometimes I feel like because you've written so much on every single topic. ah When I think that I've thought about something original or new, then I'm sure you have rec already written 10 articles on it.
01:22:23
Speaker
and But I think that's also i'm I'm appreciating that so much because it's really awesome to have that as a reference catalog and go back to. But yeah, I, I am, so it's, it's a big flame to to keep carrying, but, um, it is, is it's, um, interesting time still, like you said, to be a particularist, but I think for, it's an interesting time to stick true to what you know is the right thing to do as well. Because I find one thing that was surprising for me was how many people sort of play the game rather than are honest and truthful. And I think already from the beginning, the reason why particularism now is successful is because you did that, you and, you know, a few others. But yeah, and so I'm really happy and I appreciate that so much. Thank you.
01:23:09
Speaker
Thank you. So with those lovely words, I shall bring this conversation to a close. Pat and Melina, it has been an absolute pleasure. Yeah, likewise. Thank you for having us. Yeah, thank you.
01:23:20
Speaker
Until next time.
01:23:27
Speaker
And there you go. that that That's an interview. There were three of you speaking, no doubt about it. I really don't have anything. I have nothing to say. those Is anything you want to take from that interview and draw attention to I mean, no, to be honest, it was just a fun listen, and it's always good hearing new voices.
01:23:50
Speaker
I wish I could say something substantive, but I have nothing. ah just it's it's one of i just You just listen and you nod, and I go, hmm, hmm, yeah, hmm. So you didn't work out what the reference to My Beautiful Face is and the picture of a cat then?
01:24:04
Speaker
That, no. And in my defense, I listened to the interview two weeks ago, so I remember the gist of it, but specific references are taxing my memory a little too much.
01:24:14
Speaker
Then we must listen to the interview again! Fine. But another time, because now we have to go and record a bonus episode to go along with this actual episode.
01:24:27
Speaker
and What are we going to talk about? Are talk about the Louvre? I think we have to talk about the Louvre.
Bonus Content and Podcast Sign-off
01:24:31
Speaker
Now i should point out, when Josh wrote the notes for the bonus episode, the criminals had not been caught. And of course now the criminals have been caught. So the mystery of the Louvre burglary is nowhere near as interesting as it was when we first thought this would be a great thing to talk about for the bonus episode for this.
01:24:50
Speaker
So we have another little treat. We won't say what that treat is because it might entreat some of you to find out what that treat is by becoming patrons of the podcast by going to patreon.com looking up the podcast's guide to the conspiracy and just flicking a little bit of money our way now that's a digital flick as opposed to a physical flick you can't use patreon to actually transfer physical money from one location to another that's called money laundering and we're not engaged in that process no you'll be doing
01:25:23
Speaker
digital flicks, and those flicks will entreat you to traits. and um And that's all we have to say, really. This has been a remarkably easy episode for me, considerably more work on your end, but you're not me, I think is the lesson we all need to take from this.
01:25:42
Speaker
i is a super gen from i am yeah I think that's a moral worthy of going out on. Goodbye. i am the Eggman. ah you're not. You're the walrus. Cuckoo, cachoo.
01:25:53
Speaker
More like it.
01:26:01
Speaker
The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy features Josh Addison and Associate Professor M.R. Extenteth. Our producers are a mysterious cabal of conspirators known as Tom, Philip and another who was so mysterious that they remain anonymous.
01:26:15
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 your mum.
01:26:42
Speaker
And remember, groove is in the heart.