All Embracing But Underwhelming…

David Coady, An Introduction to the Philosophical Debate about Conspiracy Theories in ‘Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate,’ (Editor: David Coady), Ashgate, Hampshire, England, 2006

p. 1 - ‘Two things seem to be essential to a conspiracy. First, a conspiracy necessarily involves a group of agents acting together. It is impossible to conspire alone. Second, a conspiracy is necessarily secretive. There is no such thing as an open conspiracy. These two features are suggested by the etymology of the word, which comes from the latin con (with) and spirare (to breathe). Breathing together is suggestive of whispering, and hence of secrecy. So a conspiracy is a group of agents acting together in secret.
‘Conspiracies are usually thought of as sinister. This characteristic does not seem, however, to be essential, and several authors in this collection cite examples of conspiracies that seem to be benign or at least harmless. It may be that we only think of conspiracies as sinister if and to the extent that we think of secrecy itself in this way.’
(Definition)

p. 2-3 - ‘Sometimes all the competing explanations of an event will concur in postulating a group of agents working together in secret. In such cases it is perfectly clear that a conspiracy has taken place, though it may be unclear precisely who the conspirators are. Presumably all explanations of September 1 1th 2001, for example, will postulate agents working together in secret. Hence, when we label some, but not all, of these explanations ‘conspiracy theories’, we must be using a different concept. This concept seems to be captured in the following definition: a conspiracy theory is an explanation that is contrary to an explanation that has official status at the time and place in question.
‘Now this may seem a bad definition, since it makes no direct reference to conspiracy at all. Nor does it refer to any related notions, such as plots or secrecy. Nonetheless, to the extent that it is the job of a definition to report actual usage, it works better than the previous definition. Much of the debate about conspiracy theories assumes that a conspiracy theory will always be in competition with an official, non-conspiratorial version of events. When an official version of events itself invokes a conspiracy, it is unlikely to be thought of as a conspiracy theory.
‘I will not attempt to decide which of the above definitions is ‘correct’. That would require too much of a detour into the issue of whether definitions should be entirely descriptive, or whether they have legitimate prescriptive function. It is enough to note here that there seem to be (at least) two concepts of a conspiracy theory.’
(Definition: this one notes a difference between what appears to be two types of conspiracy theory.)

p. 4 - ‘At least since Karl Marx, much Leftist political thought has downplayed conspiratorial, and more broadly intentional, explanations, and has emphasised explanations framed in terms of impersonal, usually economic, forces in their place. In chapter 2 of this collection, drawn from Conjectures and Refutations, Karl Popper gives Marx credit for being one of the first critics of the conspiracy theory. Ironically, Adam Smith, who is a hero to many of those who sneer at Leftist conspiracy theorists, postulates a conspiratorial hypothesis at the heart of his economic theory, namely that people ‘of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public’.’
(Status of intentional explanations)

p. 5 - ‘First, as Pigden points out, it is not strictly inconsistent with the conspiracy theorist’s position. A failed conspiracy can play an important explanatory role, and an explanation in terms of such a failed conspiracy is still a conspiracy theory, on either of the definitions I have considered in this introduction, and on other definitions in the literature (see for example Brian L. Keeley’s definition in chapter 4). The success of a conspiracy is one thing, the success of a theory which postulates it is another.’
(Success criteria for CTs…)

p. 5 - ‘The problem with this position [conspiracies, historically, don’t ever seem to work out] is that there is an inevitable selection effect operating on the available data. Consider an analogy. Proponents of IQ testing have sometimes claimed that there is a correlation between being a criminal and having a low IQ. The data on which this claim is based is, however, inevitably drawn from an unrepresentative subset of criminals-the ones who get caught, i.e., the unsuccessful ones. Similarly, since secrecy is essential to the success of conspiracies, the ones that we know about will tend to be the unsuccessful ones.’

p. 8 - ‘Putting aside the issue of how widespread the fundamental attribution error is, it is not clear that there really is a tendency for conspiracy theories to be more dispositional than rival theories. Although Clarke cites examples in support of his position, other examples seem to cast doubt on it. The official explanation of John F. Kennedy’s murder, for example, seems just as dispositional as its conspiratorial rivals. All explanations agree that someone or some group of people intended the murder to occur and acted on their intentions. A disposition to murder the president seems to play an equally fundamental explanatory role in all accounts of that event, whether they are conspiratorial or not.’
(Attribution Error)

p. 10 - ‘Conspiracy theorizing seems to be more warranted in non-democratic societies than it is in democracies. But not all democracies are alike. The extent to which it is rational to be sceptical of conspiracy theories in a democracy depends on a variety of factors, including the effectiveness of freedom of information legislation, the diversity of media ownership, the independence of the public service from the government, and the independence of the branches of government from one another.’
(Public Trust issues)