Afterthoughts on Conspiracy Theory: Resilience and Ubiquity, Lee Basham
Basham, Lee, Afterthoughts on Conspiracy Theory: Resilience and Ubiquity in ‘Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate,’ (Editor: David Coady), Ashgate, Hampshire, England, 2006
p. 134 - ‘The answer: So one can do it, and get away with it, in the open. Which returns us to the critical point: Were such open acts nevertheless the expression of a prior conspiracy? In all the obvious cases-the genocides against indigenous North and South Americans, the Jewish holocaust, the Stalinist ‘wrecker’ show trials, and many others, the evolving plans came first, and they were hidden from their intended victims and those who would have successfully intervened on the behalf of the victims. The early stages of putting these plans into public action were disguised, or rationalized as the product of other considerations. Only these plans’ end-game moves and ultimate results were publicly manifest, long after there was nothing ordinary people could do to stop them. In every case, it began with a conspiracy. It had to.’
[Every open plot starts as a conspiracy]
p. 136 - ‘Steve Clarke is concerned to justify the dismissive attitude of ‘intellectuals” to conspiracy theory, without first asking if this attitude is an intellectual one.7 Redeploying Imre Lakatos’ work in philosophy of science, particularly his distinction between ‘progressive’ and ‘degenerate’ research programs, Clarke’s claim is that conspiracy theorists have a special penchant for pursuing degenerate programs. They persevere when they ought not. Whether this is true or not I cannot say, for as Clarke admits, he offers no usable standard of when a research program has become truly ‘degenerate’. This is not his fault. It is a limitation of Lakatos’ general approach. But even if we can accept Lakatos’ distinction as useful and important in the philosophy of science, the real problem with appealing to it in the context of conspiracy theory is that while nature does not, presumably, fake the data essential to our physical theories, in the case of our social theories, people do. The apparent ‘degenerate’ status of a conspiracy theory-failure to be able to generate a great many new, successful predictions, and reliance on auxiliary hypothesis to maintain the theory-is exactly what a fairly well-constructed conspiracy would eventually leave investigators with: A closed door to additional investigation, and a wealth of false-leads and disinformation produced by the conspirators and those they influence, in order to obscure the conspiracy. So we’ve only returned to the question: How do we distinguish good from bad conspiracy theories?’
[Research Programmes/Falsificationism]
p. 136-7 - ‘We also need to be cautious about unduly limiting the notion of a ‘conspiracy theory’, perhaps in the service of our own political expectations. It is perfectly general. It is a functional term, a term that identifies a phenomenon in terms of how it works. Conspiracy theory works to explain various events in particular ways. Whatever does this, regardless of who offers it to us, is a conspiracy theory. For this reason conspiracy theories can be both obscure and utterly mainstream. The current popular and official understanding of the attack on the United State’s World Trade Center is a conspiracy theory; its main explanatory elements are conspirators and their conspiracies. It is hard to imagine any explanation of this event that isn’t.8’
[Conflict as to whether CT is a pejorative term]
