Journal Article

Are conspiracy beliefs epistemically innocent?

Bortolotti, Lisa

2023

Overview

When people share a nonmainstream explanation of a significant event and the explanation involves a plot, that explanation is often called a conspiracy theory. As Karen Douglas and her collaborators have persuasively argued, conspiracy theories respond to people’s need for a causal explanation of the significant event, and also address their needs for closure, control, and uniqueness. Conspiracy theories do not always lead to social exclusion and stigmatisation, because they are often shared in well-defined social groups, and are not typically responsible for disrupting people’s lives. However, beliefs in conspiracy theories are considered as implausible and unshakeable by those who endorse the mainstream explanation of the significant event. So, conspiracy theories attract epistemic disapproval. In this paper I ask whether beliefs in conspiracy theories potentially meet the conditions for epistemic innocence. An epistemically innocent belief is thought to be epistemically irrational but also carries an epistemic benefit that could not be easily attained otherwise. By comparing beliefs in conspiracy theories with other beliefs that have a potential for epistemic innocence, such as distorted memory beliefs, motivated delusions, confabulatory explanations, and optimistically biased beliefs, I make a case for the epistemic innocence potential of conspiracy beliefs. In the end, I defend the view that there are some advantages in asking whether beliefs in conspiracy theories are epistemically innocent even though there is no satisfactory answer to that question that applies to all cases of conspiracy belief.

• Publisher: University of Arkansas Press