Hostname: page-component-6587cd75c8-gglxz Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2025-04-24T04:37:32.750Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Radically Socialized Knowledge and Conspiracy Theories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2012

Neil Levy
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The typical explanation of an event or process which attracts the label ‘conspiracy theory’ is an explanation that conflicts with the account advanced by the relevant epistemic authorities. I argue that both for the layperson and for the intellectual, it is almost never rational to accept such a conspiracy theory. Knowledge is not merely shallowly social, in the manner recognized by social epistemology, it is also constitutively social: many kinds of knowledge only become accessible thanks to the agent's embedding in an environment that includes other epistemic agents. Moreover, advances in knowledge typically require ongoing immersion in this social environment. But the intellectual who embraces a conspiracy theory risks cutting herself off from this environment, and therefore epistemically disabling herself. Embracing a conspiracy theory therefore places at risk the ability to engage in genuine enquiry, including the enquiry needed properly to evaluate the conspiracy theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , June 2007 , pp. 181 - 192
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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Bloch, A. 1980. Murphy's Law Book Two: More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong! Los Angeles: Price Stern Sloan.Google Scholar
Borger, J. 2005. “Ex-oil lobbyist watered down US climate research.” The Guardian June 9. Retrieved September 19, 2007 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,1502486,00.htmlGoogle Scholar
Clark, A. 1997. Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Clarke, S. 2006. “Conspiracy Theories and Conspiracy Theorizing.” In Coady, D. (ed.), Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate, pp. 77–92. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Coady, D. 2006. “Conspiracy Theories and Official Stories.” In Coady, D. (ed.), Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate, pp. 115–28. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Goldman, A. I. 1999. Knowledge in a Social World. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keeley, B. L. 2006. “Of Conspiracy Theories”. In Coady, D. (ed.), Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate, pp. 45–60. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Levy, N. 2006. “Open-Mindedness and the Duty to Gather Evidence.” Public Affairs Quarterly 20(1): 55–66.Google Scholar
Rayner, K. 1998. “Eye Movements in Reading and Information Processing: 20 Years of Research.” Psychological Bulletin 124(3): 372–422.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rowlands, M. 1999. The Body in Mind: Understanding Cognitive Processes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rozenblit, L. and Keil, F.. 2002. “The Misunderstood Limits of Folk Science: An Illusion of Explanatory Depth.” Cognitive Science 26(5): 521–62.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schmitt, F. E. (ed.) 1994. Socializing Epistemology: The Social Dimensions of Knowledge. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.Google Scholar
Simons, D. J., and Levin, D. T.. 1998. “Failure to Detect Changes to People During a Real-World Interaction.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 5(4): 644–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, R. K., Oden, D. L. and Boysen, S. T.. 1997. “Language-Naive Chimpanzees (Pantroglodytes) Judge Relations Between Relations in a Conceptual Matching-to-Sample Task.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 23(1): 31–43.Google Scholar
Wilson, R. A. 2004. Boundaries of the Mind: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wynn, K. 1998. “Psychological Foundations Of Number: Numerical Competence In Human Infants.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2(8): 296–303.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed