Conspiracism

...or the tendency to believe in a conspiracy as an explanation for some (usually undesirable) social phenomenon. A conspiracy is usually defined as a belief or set of beliefs promulgated by a small group of persons with nefarious motives.

Though the initial number of promulgators of the theory must be small, the number of believers in the theory may be very large. The promulgators must also be aware that what they are promulgating is false, otherwise they are not true conspirators but mistaken believers. However, the believers themselves may be many and sincere in their belief.

Thus,

• the number of conspirators must be small relative to the audience they intend to deceive,
• though the number of believers may be very large,
• the conspirators must be aware of the falseness or unlikelihood of their theory,
• while the believers need not be,
• the motivations of the conspirators must be dishonest and not just careless, and
• the most dangerous, because effective, conspiracies are the products of persons empowered to promulgate.

We are going to work toward spelling out criteria for evaluating supposed conspiracy theories. Can a conspiracy theory be true? Yes. Can what it is opposed to, the “official” theory, be a conspiracy, too – or instead? Yes and yes. What are we to believe? How can we tell if a conspiracy is well-founded? In some cases, it is easy. In others, the most philosophically interesting cases, not. We will explore why this is.

The social sciences – psychology, sociology, and political science – and much of lay opinion on conspiracy tend toward a knee-jerk negative assessment of the idea: "it's just a conspiracy." Philosophers have tended to be more neutral... We will look into the reasons.

This topic falls within epistemology, the philosophical study of knowledge, what it is and how it works, and, more specifically, doxastics, which concerns philosophical questions around “belief.” It also crosses into ethics, ideas about how we should interact with each other, since knowledge and belief can affect our actions.

Examples of conspiracies can range from the near ludicrous to the quite plausible: from why smoking was once touted a health benefit to Watergate; from Hilary Clinton’s association with a ring of sex-traffickers operating out of a pizza parlor (which some connected with a child slave colony on Mars) to the origin of – and so-called "science" involved in the response to – the recent pandemic; from whether Elvis is still alive or who killed Kennedy or who is responsible for 9/11 or the appeal to Iraq's WMDs as an excuse for a 3+ trillion dollar "forever" war or the chorus of voices asserting that Biden was mentally competent to be president or to why Jeffery Epstein’s alleged “client list” has not been made public...

Conspiracies can be ambitious and pervasive, global, because there are gradations of awareness. Large numbers of people may be dimly aware that the United States, for example, is a democracy “in name only,” yet still go to the polls “believing” their vote matters. Conspiracies may be local and targeted at certain individuals or small groups. To “gaslight,” as in the classic movie of that name, can focus on making one person feel they are losing their mind.

To the extent one’s own motives are disingenuousness, or we are barely aware of them, or seek to suppress them, it seems one may “conspire” even against oneself. But here we will address conspiracy as a social phenomena. Certain societal background conditions make appeal to conspiracy especially tempting. At the top of the list is loss of trust in public institutions... How and why does that happen?

Resources
The IEP entry on “Conspiracy Theories” by Marc Pauly is a particularly good and accessible introduction to the philosophical thinking on this subject. Among other considerations, the article brings up the question, when has a “degenerating research program” – that is, a once “official,” now obsolescing, desperate explanation – been mistaken for a conspiracy theory? Efforts to shore up established scientific thinking often share features with conspiracy theories. When does "established" become "sclerotic"? The transition must happen for science to progress. In that transition, there is and ought to be ample room for "thinking outside the box."

“Philosophy and conspiracy theories,” Mr Blakley offers a video survey of the philosophical controversies surrounding conspiracy theories: the trouble with defining conspiracy theory, generalist vs particularist evaluations, the demarcation problem between dismissible and plausible theories and the similarity to that between science and pseudo-science.

“The Covid ‘lab leak’ theory isn’t just a rightwing conspiracy – pretending that’s the case is bad for science,” Jane Qiu, The Guardian, June 2025.