The website of Associate Professor of Philosophy M R. X. Dentith
So, it is fair to say that my days as a non-doctor are nearly over.
My thesis has passed in at the oral and I only have to make a few revisions (fairly minor ones, too) before it can be lodged with the Board of Graduate Studies.
Doctor Dentith will soon arise.
So, at 2pm on Monday the 13th of February, I gave the following presentation in my oral/viva as part fulfilment of my PhD.
My interest, in this work, is analysing whether we have good grounds for a prima facie suspicion of explanations that appeal to the activities of conspirators.
Now, it’s normally accepted that the term “conspiracy theory” is pejorative: it refers to explanations that we normally consider to be prima facie suspicious. However, I argue that an analysis of the wider class of conspiratorial explanations} shows that the problem for conspiracy theories, in the pejorative sense, are actually problems which are shared with other explanations of social phenomena; the epistemic issues we normally associate with such conspiracy theories are epistemic issues for explanations in general.
I use the term “conspiracy theory” throughout my thesis to cover the wider set of conspiratorial explanations in order to emphasise the similarities between the ones that people are interested in (the pejorative sense of conspiracy theory) and all the other explanations that happen to invoke conspiratorial activity.
So, with that said, this is my stipulative definition of a conspiracy theory: an activity which is undertaken in secret by conspirators who desire to achieve some end
This definition has three features I take to be interesting in developing my analysis of conspiracy theories.
The first is that it includes any explanation of conspiratorial activity, including the organisation of a surprise party.
The second is that conspiracy theories, on my definition, do not need to be about sinister activities or states of affairs.
The third is that, by my definition, all of us should be conspiracy theorists of some stripe because we should accept as warranted some conspiratorial explanation of an event.
As noted, it might be argued that this definition does not conform to our ordinary usage, which has it that if something is a conspiracy theory it is a wacky and unwarranted explanation.
However, anyone with even a smidgen of imagination should be able to point to some conspiratorial explanation that they consider to be a warranted explanation of an event, whether it is an historical explanation of some Elizabethan treachery, the recent actions of a government hiding trade deals with a foreign nation, or a department trying to bamboozle the dean.
It is, I argue, easier to address the question of when it is rational, or irrational, to believe one of these explanations, if you take an interest in the broad class of explanations that are covered by my definition rather than when you operate with the pejorative reading of “conspiracy theory.”
If people want to continue using the term “conspiracy theory” as a pejorative, so be it, but we should not use that as a reason to dismiss belief in particular conspiratorial explanations out of hand.
Now, one of the reasons for thinking conspiracy theories are a suspicious kind of explanation is that a lot of the evidence in support of them is errant data — data which is contrary to or contradictory with other, rival, explanatory hypotheses. Certain philosophers, like Brian L. Keeley, have argued that in trying to provide an account as to how such errant data is not really errant, conspiracy theories engender a radical, and thus inappropriate, skepticism of public data in general. This, in turn, will lead to a global skepticism about just how open, and non-conspired our world is.
Now, even if belief in conspiracy theories engendered the kind of radical skepticism Keeley is worried about, and I argue it does not, we should not use that as an excuse to label belief in particular conspiracy theories as suspicious as we should always look at the evidence and ask “Is this particular conspiracy theory warranted?”
Another reason that is often put forward for being suspicious of conspiracy theories is that they exist in contrast to rival explanations with official status, and we should prefer such endorsed explanations. However, to make sense of that move we need to ask questions about what role official status actually plays with respect to such explanations. This is where my thesis, I believe, beings to provide a novel and unique contribution to the still young Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories.
It is not clear that having some attendant official status is a version of a legitimate appeal to authority. For example, whilst we can show there is a case for thinking that academic endorsements strongly suggest that such explanations are supported by the evidence, there is no similar argument in the case of political endorsements.
Whilst it is reasonable to explain away an agent’s preference for explanations with official status, because it is easy to assume that the availability of an endorsement implies that the explanation is supported by the evidence, such a preference can end up being a problem for the average person who simply does not have the time or expertise to analyse the evidence for each explanation she holds. This is just a consequence of how social our knowledge is: we defer to one another all the time and sometimes our trust is misplaced.
The worry many conspiracy theorists have is the worst case scenario: the explanation in question, say, one with official status, has been endorsed insincerely by some influential institution and the evidence has been selected for or fabricated in such a way that it makes the explanation look warranted when it might otherwise not be.
Now, if we have the ability to inspect the pool of evidence for a given explanation, then we can, at least, check to see whether evidence has been selected for. The worry about fabricated evidence, however, is not so easily overcome, even if we can go and look at the evidence. Inspecting the propositions being put forward is one thing but being able to ascertain whether the propositions are actually true, which is to say they are pieces of evidence and not disinformation, is another thing entirely. In this respect, trust really is our only arbiter on subjects on which we know very little, or nothing about.
Many of these concerns about explanations in general hinge on the issue of trust: can we trust the sources of our explanations? To provide an account of how we might answer this question I contrast the transmission of conspiracy theories with the process of rumouring. It is fair to say that these two activities are often treated as being important and similar in the existing literature. It has been argued that as we seem to be rightfully suspicious of rumouring, because we should not trust rumourers to be sincere, we should also be suspicious of the spread of conspiracy theories.
Rumouring, I argue, is a form of fact-finding, where propositions we have heard and think are plausible are tested against the beliefs of others. If a rumour is implausible it is unlikely to spread far because hearers, presumably, are interested in auditing such propositions, whilst if a rumour is plausible, then the hearer might go and test it on someone else to see whether it is coherent with their beliefs. It is this set of facts about the testing, or teasing out, of the plausibility of rumours that leads me to think that rumouring is a reliable process, which is itself a novel contribution to the epistemic debate on rumours.
Rumour-mongering, however, is the insincere and pathological counterpart of rumouring. Rumour-mongerers may embellish or even fabricate the rumours they spread.
Now, I argue that the process of auditing rumours means that embellished and fabricated propositions will typically end up being implausible to hearers, but, in some cases, they will persist. This is a bullet we have to bite: because we are dealing with a reliable process we cannot guarantee that all rumours will be plausible.
The spread of conspiracy theories, however, is different. conspiracy theories are typically asserted as the explanation of an event. The conspiracy theorist does not merely believe their conspiracy theory is plausible; they believe it to be the explanation. Whereas rumouring is a kind of fact-finding, the assertion of a conspiracy theory is an attempt to persuade a hearer that the actual explanation of some event is due to the existence of a conspiracy.
This neatly brings me to the question of just when is it rational to believe a conspiracy theory?
My arguments, thus far, merely show that the kinds of explanations we seem to think are preferable to conspiracy theories are problematic in the same kinds of ways that conspiracy theories are, which means that our usual arguments for dismissing belief in conspiracy theories are a kind of modern superstition. However, I go further than my peers in advancing an argument as to when belief in a conspiracy theory is warranted.
To warrant a conspiracy theory there first must be a warranted inference to the existence of a conspiracy and, secondly, the aforementioned conspiratorial activity must be the best explanation of the event.
Warranting a claim that a conspiracy exists requires we show that there was a set of agents who planned, that they desired some end, that they undertook work towards that end and they took steps to minimise public awareness of their work.
Satisfying all four of these conditions can be difficult, but it is not impossible. However, satisfying such a claim does not tell us that the conspiracy itself is the best explanation of the event; conspiracies can occur and yet yield no result. To warrant belief in a conspiracy theory we need to show that there is a tight connection between the claim of conspiracy and the event in question, such that the conspiracy is the best explanation of the event.
This requirement that a conspiracy theory rest both on a warranted inference to the existence of a conspiracy and be the best available explanation makes the burden of proof on someone trying to show that a conspiracy theory is warranted a difficult one to discharge. Does this, then, amount to an argument that our prima facie suspicion about conspiracy theories is warranted?
I think not. A conspiracy theory is a candidate explanation of an event that cites a conspiracy as a salient cause. Like any explanation, we must have good grounds for believing it to be the best explanation. Whilst we might be worried about claims that conspiracies exist, because supporting such claims can be difficult, or because they might be vague with respect to who or how, this does not mean that we have a warranted prima facie suspicion about conspiracy theories in general. At best, it means we should be agnostic with respect to particular claims that a conspiracy is the explanation of an event unless we plan to investigate those claims properly.
This is why I think we should be conspiracy theory agnostics, admittedly agnostics with a duty to check, when presented with a conspiratorial explanation, whether the inference to the existence of a conspiracy is warranted and whether the right kind of connection has been made between the conspiracy and the event to generate a good explanation.
I think that many of the suspicions we have about conspiracy theories really are part of the set of worries we should have about explanations in general: most of the arguments traditionally put forward for the suspiciousness of conspiracy theories point towards us needing to be suspicious, to a certain extent, about any explanation.
Or, at least, that is what my studies conspire to make me think.
On the 18th of February I board a flight to Kuching, Sarawak, to join my masters in the military-industrial complex in a workshop designed to help me not only continue my vapid yet humourous debunking of conspiracy theories but also to aid in the development of processes which will aid the US Airforce and other arms of the Establishment work out ways to control, subjugate and eliminate people and groups who refuse to believe in our status quo.
…
I wrote the previous paragraph as a joke based upon a truth, and yet I can’t help but think that the joke is the truth here. Yes, on the 18th of this month I travel to Kuching to attend a three-day workshop entitled “Interdisciplinary Workshop on Influence and Persuasion in the Formation and Sustainment of Social?Fringe Groups.” It is a workshop organised by Damai Sciences and the US Airforce and my airfare, accommodation and living costs whilst in Malaysia are being covered by my hosts.
I am being paid, by an arm of the American Empire, to attend a conference on how we deal with fringe groups.
I might as well give up any chance of ever being able to persuade a mere conspiracy theorist that I’m sympathetic to the kind of issues their beliefs entail ever again.
Mere conspiracy theorists (who, for the purpose of this post and probably only this post) I will claim are simply people who believe in some conspired world hypothesis, will often point to lists of people who have been invited to attend meetings or functions with Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission and so forth and say “These people cannot be trust: they are compromised.” It is guilt by association, but it is understandable guilt by association. A lot of mere conspiracy theories are about just how deeply conspired our world is, and once you start to associate with “them” (the rulers of the shadow government which is the real system of control), then, like it or not, you are doing their work.
My attendance at the Interdisciplinary Workshop on Influence and Persuasion in the Formation and Sustainment of Social?Fringe Groups basically seals my fate: if certain people find out about it, then my words of warning about belief in any conspiracy theory will be considered suspect.
To be honest, I almost considered refusing the invitation (because I was asked to attend) for that reason alone: I would like to turn my thesis into a book and I would like someone to read it and go “Hold on, that makes sense now I think about.” ((I’d quite like it if both conspiracy theorists and conspiracy theory skeptics had that reaction: my thesis is called “In defence of conspiracy theories,” after all.)) If my reputation is tarred by my attendance at the workshop, that would be terrible.
Yet.
Yes, yet …
I am already treated with some suspicion. As one commenter on this blog wrote:
The most bothering aspect of your programming, whether, you realise it or not, is that in effect it is an indoctrination campaign to reinforce an existing *informal public norm* by an *authority figure*. In your case, the informal public norm is that it is idiotic to believe in conspiracy theories, while your authority is academia. This is a classic textbook propaganda device whether it’s used by the governments or the individuals.
I also saw an example of this in the middle of last year, when Russell Brown introduced me to one of the documentarians behind “Deep in the Forest,” which details the defendant’s case in the infamous “October Raids” of 2007. When Russell told her that I was writing a thesis on conspiracy theories and was planning to write about the documentary in my thesis I could tell, from her body language, that she was suspicious of me (and presumably my views) due to the nature of the introduction and who it was I knew (for the record, Russell and I disagree very substantially about the merit of the October Raids), which was a pity, because I wanted to congratulate her on a job well done (there are issues in the documentary, but I think it provides a much-needed salve to the theory endorsed by the Crown and the police).
And (and I’m told you should never start a sentence with “and”), the fact that I wrote an academic treatise on conspiracy theories probably rules me out anyway: if some of the conspiracy theories I know about are true, the Ivory Tower is just another arm of the Establishment and its system of control. Any thesis from a “reputable” university will be bogus.
So, yes, I am going to Kuching, to be wined and dined by the US Airforce and to talk about how to persuade social fringe groups. Nothing I say will likely change the minds of anyone who thinks this means I am now (or always have been) part of the system of control.
Which brings me to the issue of how I feel about going. I’m not on record of being America’s biggest fan (I could here make a joke about the band “America,” I will not) and as I radicalise with age, I am less and less a fan of powerful institutions like the police, the military and scuba divers (I jest, somewhat). I will admit to being somewhat wary of going. Yes, it’s an academic conference, but it’s one with obvious ties to this thing often labelled the “military-industrial complex.” I’m wary of attending left-wing events because I don’t like being inadvertently associated with some of the elements of the Left I find troubling: this is somewhat bigger.
Yet … It’s not as if my views on matters political and social are not known. My hosts will have failed at due diligence if they have invited me, thinking I am a cheerleader for their cause. I also know several other people who are going, who, if not exactly in line with me politically, are people whose views I respect and are the kind of people who will subject their opinions to argued analysis rather than repetition of dogma.
Also, I wrote a thesis (conditionally) defending belief in (some) conspiracy theories.
And (there it is again), I want to see what such a conference is like. Will there be military personnel standing awkwardly in doorways. Will a plainly dressed man in an off-the-rack suit ask me weird questions and then give me a business card with a number that, when rung, turns out to be a pizza joint in Soho?
More importantly/seriously, I want to know what fringe-social groups are? How are we defining them? What groups do we rule out? What principles, suitably expressed, make sense of such a definition? Are the CIA and MI5 fringe groups with respect to their beliefs about WMDs in Iraq, for example? When do such groups stop being fringe and become mainstream? Is the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt fringe or main? If they slipped from one to the other, when did that happen? Was it before or after the uprising? These are all good questions, and an interdisciplinary workshop seems the right place to ask them.
A final point: no one I’ve spoken to, in an academic sense, in Aotearoa me Te Wai Pounamu (New Zealand) seems to think this workshop is cause for concern or celebration. People I’ve spoken to in the business community think its great (“What wonderful networking opportunities!”), but academics just seem to think “Oh, that Matthew and his weird research interests…” You’d almost think that finding a way to make philosophy somehow useful to wider debates is the kind of thing we’d prefer other people do.
Anyway… Off to Kuching I go. If I come back and am all “Conspiracy theories are bunk: America is great!” then either I’ve been turned or the arguments presented at the workshop were really, really, really good. If I come back singing the same tune, well, that probably doesn’t mean much at all, really.
I should probably mention this more often: I am an official Civil Union celebrant in Aotearoa me Te Wai Pounamu (New Zealand), registered until the end of January, 2013. So, if you want civilising or cupping, and you are in the Auckland region (or are willing to get me to wherever you are in the country), then please, get in contact. You’ll find me and my almost completely non-existent rates, most pleasing, and if you really want me to, I can give a seminar on some skeptical issue afterwards. #smiley
I realise “errata” really isn’t the right term to describe the following snippets of Icke-related material below, but given how error-laden Icke’s thesis is, I think it’s appropriate-cum-metaphorical.
Which is also not the right term to describe this.
Oh well. Here it is.
On the Jews…
In the second part of Icke’s talk he discusses an interesting fact about the Jewish people (not Zionists in general): they apparently put cubes on their heads to protect their pineal glands. I say “apparently” here because it seems prima facie false.
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The Rothschild symbol turns into the Hammer and Sickle, which is a Satanist symbol. Indeed, the Star of David is actually a symbol of Saturn (and thus the Star of David is a Satanist symbol). Does he not realise that he’s moved away from talk of Rothschild-Zionism to talk which is tarring Jewish people as vassels of Satan? ((Icke’s claim that the Nike swash is a symbol of the ring around Saturn is a bit of a stretch, I must say.))
On beliefs and science…
Icke claims that if everyone believes it, it is almost certain to be false.
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A frequent fallacy in Icke’s thesis is to do with correlation and accident. Icke points out that crystals make excellent receivers and that stone circles are made of crystalline rock: ipso facto henges are giant crystal radio sets.
Firstly, a lot of rock is crystalline, so a lot of ancient structures are going to be crystalline in nature.
Secondly, assuming that what we know now has to to be something people knew then is the fallacy of assumed knowledge. Now, once again, Icke has an out: he can claim that we knew more then than we know now (because we weren’t imprisoned in those days of yore and thus could know all reality), so those stone circles were built as receivers, but such an answer assumes a lot of Icke’s thesis, which in turn drives his explanation. There is a lot of question-begging going on.
He also treats any account of history as being plausible: he talks about the creation stories of many religions as if they are meant to be taken as being literally true. So, when a culture has a story about the Great Python and his bag of eggs, that is proof positive that the story is about the reptilians. Let’s hope he doesn’t find out about Tangaroa…
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Icke says the Moon Landings were faked but he also claims we have been to the Moon…
On the Masters…
Did you know that one of the many genetic manipulations our masters have performed on our species is the removal of a vertebrae in the neck so we are permanently looking up (and thus look up to power)? I didn’t think you did, and I wouldn’t think about it too much, or you’ll go “How does that even work?” given that the removal of a vertebrae would just make us slightly shorter, rather than always looking up, and then you’ll begin to think “Did they do that to all the other species that we are related to, since we all share the same number of vertebrae?”
On those damned Fabians…
The Fabian Society was a secret (and terrible) society, according to Icke. Admittedly, not a very good one when it came to being secret. I get the impression that Icke doesn’t appreciate that the motto “A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” and the adoption of Fabius Maximus (the Cunctator) as their hero was all about them trying to change society by using its rules against them. He’d rather believe that they were all about ushering in a hidden state. Still, he does make an interesting point when he talks about how George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, who were both Fabians, ended up writing dystopic fictions when they became disillusioned by their former fellows (however, I suspect we might explain some of this by reference to “grumpy man” syndrome).
On 2012, again…
I went to Icke’s talk thinking that he was a collector, a mere aggregator, of conspiracy theories. I’m wrong about that. Icke, in a surprising turn of events, did not think much of the 2012 apocalypse hypotheses, mostly because they do not fit with his overarching theory.
Icke is not a collector but rather a synthesiser of of conspiracy theories. His theory about vampires and shape-shifters is the synthesis of two schools of thoughts about who rules the world, the supernatural and the alien (or, if you will, the Satanic and the technological). He can claim they are both true because, as hypotheses suitably interpreted, they are not contrary but rather complementary (especially if, like Icke, you believe that at the very basic level of reality there is no real difference in kind).
However, the 2012 story, one about a predicted and terrible apocalypse cannot be integrated, as a whole, into Icke’s overarching theory. The 2012 material comes from an apocalyptic (and largely Christian) worldview to which Icke does not subscribe.
Whilst Icke thinks that the world in which we are imprisoned will get worse, he also thinks that it will also get better. The Illuminati are battening down the hatches because the shift is near (the Illuminati, recall, can see the future and thus know their time is coming to an end. The 2012 story, however, is not one of hope but of mere survival: the world as we know it will end, terribly, and only the good will survive to rebuild the world from scratch. This is not the future Icke has been shown: in his future we, the people, will overcome the 4% ((Icke was very dismissive of the Occupy Wall Street people.)) who control us and come to live in the abundant paradise that is an unimprisoned Earth.
So, here we are at the end of my account of the day spent listening to David Icke.
What to say?
Section four of his presentation was about changing the world or, to be precise, about preparing yourself for the change that is coming.
Recall that Icke thinks we are currently being controlled by a very particular harmonic vibrational energy, one that imprisons us in five-sense reality. However, this is a temporary state of affairs: as we move out of one age and into another a new frequency will emerge and shift us out of our lethargy and imprisonment. This is the truth vibration. All we need to do is wait.
Icke’s message is interesting insofar that he doesn’t really advocate people doing anything to change the world themselves. For example, the changes that are being advocated by environmentalists and the like are, to Icke, just more symptoms of our imprisonment. Icke thinks anthropogenic climate change is a scam, energy efficient lightbulbs are part of the system of control (he believes that they are amplifiers and transmitters of the vibration that currently imprisons us) and smart meters bathe us in malign radiation. Icke doesn’t require that we do anything other than continue to believe that we can be free: we can help the revolution not through action but rather by subscribing to his particular groupthink. Once again, I can’t help but think, if we grant some of his claims, that maybe Icke is part of the system of control he rales against, given that he advocates inaction and just wants his followers to hold on long enough to see the truth. It is as if he is proposing inaction as a covert way of letting the Illuminati keep their control over us.
Of course, Icke’s regime of doing nothing fits his theory: the world only looks ravaged by industrialisation and filled with starving, impoverished billions because we are trapped in one, limited, form of sense-reality. If we could see past five-sense reality we would know the world is still environmentally pristine and that there is food enough for everyone. We could move beyond nation states and partisan disagreements (He talked about Israel specifically in the past tense during this part of the talk) to equality, harmony and love.
Classic Western-style, based on Western views of Eastern, mysticism, which is fine for people in the developed world to believe, but is cold comfort to those in the undeveloped world (“It’s not that there is no food for you: you just can’t see it!”).
That is his message: hope for the best and see it realised in your lifetime. Icke’s magical thinking, the notion that if enough people know the truth then the truth will set the whole world free, reminds me a lot of the notion of the nousphere, an idea that had a lot of traction in the 50s and 60s and can be traced back to the work of such thinkers as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (on whom I wrote my MA). Teilhard’s work focused on the sphere of human thought being the next big evolutionary change for our species: when we finally learn to think in unison we will change the world for the better. In many ways Icke is a relic of the mid-twentieth Century. He is a reminder of what conspiracy theories used to look like.
By the end I felt like I was back where Icke began, with that that classic Wogan interview. Icke likes to look like he’s changed and learnt over the years: he claims to have moved past that messianic stage and embraced a bigger world picture, and yet the message he was trying to impart (quite successfully too, given the audience of over six hundred attentive people) wasn’t any different from the one he started out with. Then, as now, he wants us to embrace a spirituality that will bring us together in some earthly paradise, free from the sins of those who would have control over us. Sure, he’s added touches of science fiction to it, and dabbles in a little, light anti-Semiticism to get in the crowds, but it’s still the same story. It is still platitudes and false hopes which will make you feel good about doing nothing in particular.
David Icke is not a stupid man. Indeed, he has a dogged determination to get to the bottom of things which is admirable and, if it had been expressed and nurtured properly, probably would have led to him being an excellent science reporter for the BBC (given that he was, I am told, a perfectly good sports journalist). He has the charisma and presentation skills to keep an audience captivated for eleven hours, let us not forget. Even true believers get leg cramps, the urge to eat and the like, but this crowd stayed the duration.
As did I.
So, what happened? Why is David Icke a promoter of weird mysticism rather than a rationalist? I cannot say for certain, but he did tell a story which kind of explains it.
He was in his twenties, back when he had a sporting career, and he made a poor financial decision which was sufficient to make his life uncomfortable. He said that, at the time, he was conflicted about what to do: his head said to do one thing and his heart another. He followed his head because, well, that was what he (and the rest of us) have always been taught to do. Unfortunately, that turned out to be the wrong decision and so he decided, from that day forward, that he would follow this heart in all things.
Because of this he has been able to survive all the ridicule and infamy that has come from being David Icke, promoter of weird and wacky views. He does not, in his own words, “give a shit” about what other people say because he knows, in his heart, he is right.
The kind of belief formation process Icke uses (which he calls “synchroncity”) may well have come out of that conscious decision (was it his head or his heart who decided this, I wonder?) to follow his heart but I can’t help but think that there is a possible world where Icke, burnt by that bad financial decision, decided to ask “So why didn’t that work out?”
It’s a world in which he investigated why decisions which seemed good on paper don’t always work out, a world in which he looked into why even the best epistemic practices don’t always lead you to performing the best action.
It’s a world in which David Icke became a skeptic rather than a believer.
I thought that in writing this account of Icke’s talk and my thoughts upon it, that it would help me sort through his theory. To an extent, it has. For one thing, I now think his view is nowhere near as novel as it perhaps appears. Yet I’ve also gained a greater respect for Icke the person. He seems to really believe what he says… Which is tragic. I think he doesn’t quite realise just what his ideas lead to and who his fellow travellers are.
In truth, I don’t know how to end this account. I plan to go back to the beginning and rewrite it into something more succinct and less reliant on what one commentator called “prison paragraphs.” Perhaps on the third go round I’ll come to some conclusion.
Perhaps.
Next time: Errata.