The Routledge Handbook of Applied Epistemology by David Coady James Chase

Author:David Coady,James Chase
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

These definitions vary in some significant ways, and arguably pick out quite different phenomena. However, they have one thing in common; on each of these definitions, some, indeed many, conspiracy theories are true. Precisely how many are true will depend on how we understand the word “malevolent” which occurs in each of them. Nonetheless, it’s perfectly clear that there are and always have been people, many of them powerful, who do join forces secretly, and that many of them are reasonably understood to be malevolent. At any rate it’s not an essential feature of most definitions of “conspiracy theory” outside the psychological literature that the alleged conspirators be malevolent or even that they are perceived to be malevolent or otherwise immoral (see Coady 2012: 114). Furthermore, at least one neutral definition exists in the psychology literature, according to which a conspiracy theory can simply be defined as “a set of beliefs that are used to explain how a group of individuals is covertly seeking to influence or cause certain events” (Leman and Cinnirella 2013). This definition leaves open the possibility that the alleged conspirators of a conspiracy theory are not malevolent or perceived to be malevolent or in any other way morally objectionable.8

Although many conspiracy theories, on all these definitions, are true, the examples of conspiracy theories cited in the four articles in which these definitions occur are clearly all believed to be false by the authors. What’s more, they clearly expect their readers to agree. As it happens, most of the conspiracy theories they mention do appear to be false. It is not my place to adjudicate which if any may be true since philosophers in general are not much better equipped than psychologists at determining matters of historical fact. However, one example mentioned in all four articles, the theory according to which some form of conspiracy was responsible for President John F. Kennedy’s death, is worth some consideration. Reasonable opinion seems to be divided over whether this theory is true. One thing is clear, however; the fact that it is, according to these definitions, a conspiracy theory, is no reason at all for thinking that it is not true, or for thinking that those who believe it do so as a result of some irrational (or non-rational) process. Many conspiracy theories, on the above definitions, are both true and well-known to be true. It may or may not be true that there was a conspiracy behind John F. Kennedy’s assassination, but it is certainly true that there were conspiracies behind the assassinations of Julius Caesar, Abraham Lincoln, Tsar Alexander II, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and Anwar Sadat. Charles Pigden (2006: 161) has reviewed high-profile assassinations of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Europe and found that about half of them were the products of conspiracy. There seems to be no reason to think that conspiracies in general, and conspiratorial assassinations in particular, are less common now than they were then.

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