A Graduate Workshop on Conspiracy Theories
Organisation: Veronika Lassl, Piet Fritz Pankratz, Irmena Tsankova, Eric Wallace (WFAP – Vienna Forum for Analytic Philosophy)
Schedule
| 15:50 – 16:30 | Melina Tsapos (Lund University) |
| 16:30 – 16:45 | Break |
| 16:45 – 17:25 | Keith Harris (University of Vienna) |
| 17:25 – 17:40 | Break |
| 17:40 – 18:20 | Julia Duetz (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) |
| 18:20 – 18:35 | Break |
| 18:35 – 19:15 | Evelina Lissoni (IUSS Pavia) |
Workshop Description:
The cheeky title of our workshop points to bring to attention a common pre-theoretical intuition about conspiracy theories, namely that their contents and the epistemic practices of those who subscribe to them are problematic. The question of how our sense of unease regarding conspiracy theories is to be accounted for philosophically has recently been subject to controversy. Are conspiracy theories problematic as such? Our everyday use of the word as a term of criticism certainly seems to suggest so. Or is such a wholesale rejection of conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorizing a sign of unfounded prejudice? While some conspiracy theories may be flawed, those who propound conspiracy theories often can provide reasons for believing in them and, moreover, some conspiracy theories have even turned out to be true. How one conceptualizes the phenomenon – as neutrally connotated or inherently flawed – is a decisive juncture that is of enormous consequence for one’s further philosophizing about conspiracy theories.
Our workshop aims to sharpen our philosophical view on the phenomenon of conspiracy theories. It brings together scholars whose work provides a variety of different perspectives on the issue. Melina Tsapos reconstructs the extant scholarly discussion of conspiracy theories and highlights how this can be influenced by norms and beliefs from the researcher’s own cultural context. Keith Harris’ talk expands on implications of his prior work defending a form of generalism, i.e., the view that there is something epistemically wrong about conspiracy theories as such. Julia Duetz argues in her talk that conspiracy theories are not unique examples of the epistemic problems identified by generalists and that our philosophical focus should be on anything bearing those epistemically problematic features rather than restricted to conspiracy theories. Evelina Lissoni’s talk critically engages with pejorative conceptions of conspiracy theories and puts forward an evaluatively unladen definition as an alternative.
Abstracts
Melina Tsapos
What is Interesting about Conspiracy Theories?
A central debate in conspiracy theory research concerns how to conceptualize conspiracy theories in a way that advances our understanding of the phenomena and those who believe in them. This debate remains unresolved, with researchers adopting widely different positions: while some argue for a purely descriptive understanding, others seem strongly committed to the view that conspiracy theories are, or can be shown to be, inherently irrational. This paper reconstructs the controversy, arguing that it stems from two distinct scholarly motives: to attain objective knowledge of the phenomena in question versus to defend beliefs and norms that are part of the researcher’s own cultural context. By examining the epistemological and methodological challenges in this field, I highlight how competing frameworks—normative cultural biases versus objective scientific inquiry—shape our understanding of rational belief. When cultural biases influence research, they risk narrowing its scope and undermining the development of a comprehensive understanding of conspiracy theories. Ultimately, even proponents of normative cultural approaches can acknowledge that such perspectives fail to capture the full complexity and significance of these phenomena. Finally, I consider the challenge of how we can study conspiracy theories without falling into the trap of prima facie judging them and relying on problematic definitions. I present the Dimensions framework—which accounts for motivations for believing in conspiracy theories and their content—as a possible way forward.
Keith Harris
The enemy of the good: Experts, laypersons, and allegations of conspiracy
Philosophers focused on conspiracy theories are roughly divided between particularists and generalists. I have previously argued for a form of generalism according to which there are general grounds for doubting the truth of conspiracy theories as a class. Here, I expand on previous work to consider the implications of generalism and related theses for (i) the rationality of belief in conspiracy theories and (ii) whether and if so how conspiracy theories should be investigated.
Evelina Lissoni
Against a pejorative engineering of ‘conspiracy theory’
The conceptual question of how to appropriately define the term ‘conspiracy theory’ (CT) is still open. A central disagreement concerns advocates of a neutral definition and those who claim that this notion should be conceptually engineered to carry an intrinsically pejorative connotation. The main motivation for proposing a pejorative engineering of CT comes from ordinary language, in which the predominant use of the expression is derogatory. In this talk, I will argue that folk intuitions of ordinary speakers are not a reliable basis for settling the conceptual question of how the term CT should be defined, as they are affected by two layers of bias: (i) a survivorship bias and (ii) a media-induced bias.
The first bias stems from the way in which the set of CTs evolves over time. While there are CTs (e.g., Watergate, Iran-Contra affair) that undergo an epistemic shift that allows for their reclassification as historical facts – where this epistemic shift can be accounted for in different ways, such as CTs ‘becoming official’, ‘getting verified’, ‘being proven’, etc. – the set of CTs continues to expand as novel CTs emerge, with epistemically indeterminate or implausible theories becoming increasingly dominant in number. This fosters the emergence of a survivorship bias, a logical error in which attention is paid only to those entities that have passed through (or “survived”) a selective filter. In this case, folk intuitions are disproportionately influenced by the ever-growing (sub)set of epistemically indeterminate CTs that “survive’” within the category – many of which are so far-fetched that they have no realistic chance of ever leaving the set of CTs – while neglecting those that get filtered out upon becoming historical facts (but were nonetheless CTs once).
The second bias arises from how CTs are portrayed in mainstream media. Outlandish CTs are overrepresented in media coverage, thus contributing to the reinforcement of a pejorative stereotype about the notion of CT. Media stereotypes are mediated messages that communicate overgeneralized information about social groups, affecting the beliefs, attitudes and emotions of audience members. Mass media may be especially influential when individuals lack personal experience with the stereotyped group. Given that, typically, laypeople’s only epistemic access to conspiracy theorists is filtered through media outlets, they are more likely to passively adopt stereotypical (i.e., inaccurate) views of conspiracy theorists and, by extension, of CTs.
Since some CTs might ultimately prove to be correct, I contend that the definition of CT should be neutral rather than pejorative. In particular, I defend a family of views that I call ‘Restricted Minimalism’, which combines the minimalist definition for which CTs are, roughly, “theories about conspiracies” with a restricting condition that (1) specifies the epistemic status of CTs without conveying a prejudice of unwarrantedness and (2) aims to identify the necessary and sufficient condition that sets CTs apart from historical facts. One of the views falling under ‘Restricted Minimalism’ is David Coady’s account of CTs as “unofficial theories about conspiracies”, but I will argue that a better alternative is available.
Julia Duetz
Uniqueness Claims About Conspiracy Theories: Conspiracism and MLM Belief Systems
Generalists maintain that prima facie dismissal of conspiracy theories is epistemically warranted because there is reason to believe that there is some feature inherent in conspiracy theories that exposes them to “unique epistemic criticism” (Harris, 2018). The idea is that conspiracy theories, but not other kinds of explanations or sets of propositions, present special epistemic challenges. That is, because they are, for example, disproportionally (i) contrarian, (ii) unfalsifiable, or (iii) evidentially self-insulated, as a class. In this paper, I argue that even on a pejorative understanding, the class of “conspiracy theories” does not do worse with regards to these epistemic challenges than other kinds of possible objects for belief. In particular, I argue that similar problems arise (even worse) for the explanations circling in the networks of distributors of Multi-Level Marketing companies. This means that generalism has not only failed to put forward a plausible contender that all conspiracy theories have in common, but also that the contenders they have suggested are not unique to conspiracy theories. I argue that it is the features themselves that should be of epistemic interest, not the host that carries them.
We are grateful for financial support from the Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie (GAP) and the ÖH StV IG Philosophie.
Time: September 4th, 2025
Location: tbd
SOPhiA 2026 