Hostname: page-component-cd4964975-96cn4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2023-04-01T22:46:11.264Z Has data issue: true Feature Flags: { "useRatesEcommerce": false } hasContentIssue true
  • English

Conspiracy Theories and the Conventional Wisdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2012

Charles Pigden
Get access Rights & Permissions[Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Conspiracy theories should be neither believed nor investigated - that is the conventional wisdom. I argue that it is sometimes permissible both to investigate and to believe. Hence this is a dispute in the ethics of belief. I defend epistemic “oughts” that apply in the first instance to belief-forming strategies that are partly under our control. But the belief-forming strategy of not believing conspiracy theories would be a political disaster and the epistemic equivalent of self-mutilation. I discuss several variations of this strategy, interpreting “conspiracy theory” in different ways but conclude that on all these readings, the conventional wisdom is deeply unwise.

Type
Research Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , June 2007 , pp. 219 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Arendt, Hannah. 2000. “What Remains? The Language Remains.” In Baehr, P. (ed.), The Portable Hannah Arendt, pp. 3–22. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
BBC News. Tuesday, 22 November 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4459296.stmGoogle Scholar
Carroll, Lewis. 1871. Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, Adelaide etext version, http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/c/carroll_1/looking/looking.htmlGoogle Scholar
Chang, Jung and Jon, Halliday. 2005. Mao: the Unknown Story, London: Jonathan Cape.Google Scholar
Coady, David. (ed.) 2006. Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate, London: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Fenby, Jonathan. 2003. Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-Shek and the China He Lost. London: Free Press.Google Scholar
Husting, Ginna and Martin, Orr. 2007. “Dangerous Machinery: ‘Conspiracy Theorist’ as a Transpersonal Strategy of Exclusion.” Symbolic Interaction 30(2): 127–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keeley, Brian L. 1999. “Of Conspiracy Theories.” The Journal of Philosophy 96(3): 109–26, reprinted in Coady (2006, 45–60).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackie, J. L. 1981. The Miracle of Theism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pigden, Charles. 1990. “Ought-Implies-Can: Luther, Erasmus and R.M. Hare.” Sophia 29(1): 2–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pigden, Charles. 2006. “Complots of Mischief.” In Coady, D. (ed.), Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate, pp. 139–66. London: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Shawcross, William. 1986. Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia. London: Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1981. An Inquiry into the Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. 1. Edited by Campbell, Skinner and Todd., Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
Summers, Anthony. 2000. The Arrogance of Power: the Secret World of Richard Nixon. London: Gollancz.Google Scholar