I am currently using what little spare time I have at the moment to work on the coursebooklet for the next Continuing Education lecture series. I have, thus, been ironing out a few of niggling bits of conceptual work, not just for my sake but also for that of my future students. Whilst I have a fairly clear idea of where the thesis is going, and how to pull bits out of it for public consumption, actually turning these ideas into cogent and coherent English sentences is another matter entirely. I mean, I can say such things like: ‘Basically, my PhD dissertation will advance a novel thesis that explains why we find contemporary Conspiracy Theories prima facie implausible (which is not to say that all Conspiracy Theories are implausible but that we can explain why our initial reaction to them is ‘Yeah, right…’) based somewhat around such theories being examples of the ‘Just So’ Fallacy.’
Now that is helpful and I could, therefore, produce a one page handout for the six lectures I will be taking. However, I suspect the students will consider that a little cheap. Anyway, the coursebooklet (is this compound word extant elsewhere?) gives me a chance to start writing up some of the ideas that have been fermenting in the old cranial glands. Such as the following:
It occurred to me (on Thursday) that an important sub-class of Conspiracy Theories are not complete explanations in their own right but rather partial explanations. I’ll let the first draft of the coursebooklet explain further.
One further reason why we might treat the concept ‘Conspiracy Theory’ as perjorative term should also be touched upon. Some Conspiracy Theories focus not on the whole explanatory story of the event under consideration but rather on one particular part of it, a part, it is perceived, that the official explanation either does not account for or does not adequately properly explain. As an example, someone might question the official explanation of the destruction of the Twin Towers on September 11th by arguing that one aspect of the explanation, the description of how the towers were felled, is implausible. Such an argument might not put forward the existence of a shadowy cabal masterminding the event but simply argue that the official explanation, as it stands, does not withstand scrutiny. These partial explanations are then usually meant to cast doubt on the official explanation as a whole. Of course, one reply to this would be to claim that we agree that in many cases the official explanation is not as complete as it could be but that it does not necessarily show that the official explanation is, in fact, wrong. It might just be inadequate. We might also want to claim that such partial explanations are not, in themselves, Conspiracy Theories because they do not (necessarily) imply the existence of a cabal working towards some goal. It does seem clear, however, that such partial explanations are important to Conspiracy Theorists, as has been seen in the literature dealing with the September 11th attacks and the so-called ‘Magic Bullet Hypothesis’ in respect to the assassination of JFK.
This is very much ‘new ground’ (in that I’m still working out what exactly I mean; others have surely touched on this before) but it certainly seems to be something that should be addressed in the course of the PhD. What role do these partial explanations play? Do they act as defeaters for what are otherwise considered to be justified beliefs? Surely some good critiques of official views are being lumped into the perjorative ‘Conspiracy Theory’ simply by Conspiracy Theorists making use of them.
And, perhaps most importantly, what colour are they?
Enquiring mind(s) want to know.
The Old Oil Chestnut
I seem to be delivering content to this blog at the moment and I have the horrible feeling that you (on meagre readership) might think this to be a) a good thing and b) a sign of further good things to come. I had hoped to dissuade you of this today with a filler post followed by a fortnight of silence but, as it happens, I have more content which needs promulgation. In fact, the next post (dateline: Thursday) was meant to be this one, but the next post is ‘timeless’ whilst today’s diatribe is fixed into place by the vagrancies of another’s blog.Anyway, on with the show.Aardvark Daily seems to have joined, albeit tentatively, the Power Corporates Conspiracy. It’s a popular Conspiracy Theory and it has a certain plausibility (just like the claim that the Milk Board runs New Zealand and that the reason why there is so much sugar in British food is that… Well, I think that’s just northern stupidity, really). Some of our largest corporations have a lot invested in their continued existence and some of our politicians recognise that fact and appreciate the monies that come from helping out.Does that mean that such companies will actively seek to suppress a technological revolution in power generation? Maybe, maybe not. It is true that a lot of large corporates engage in activities we consider harmful to the public good (and, like a lot of the population, I don’t think that the free market (whatever that is) will ultimately provide what is best for everyone; I think this assumotion is one of the root causes for conspiracy hypothesising in cases like these); look at Microsoft and the famous antitrust actions against it. Still, that doesn’t mean such companies deliberate set out to cause harm to consumers. Not all things that look like Conspiracies are conspiratorial activities. Sometimes they are just features (and you can read ‘features’ as ambiguously as you like in this case) of the system.Noam Chomsky, philosopher of language and of politics, runs a line of critique called Institutional Analysis (which I am sure I have mentioned before) in which he argues that some conspiratorial activity is actually just the result of, for want of a better term, normal business practice. Take Fox News, owned by Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch is a supporter of a fairly strong extreme-right view and his news corporation certainly treats the Republican Party fair more nicely than the Democrats. Still, has Murdoch, at any point, ever told his news editors and journalists to go soft on Republicans? Possibly not. Instead what you might have is a situation where a cub reporter, knowing that his ultimate boss is a Republican, portrays Republics favourably because they assume that is what Murdoch wants. If a significant number of people in the organisation think that way then you get a noticeable bias towards the Republicans without there ever having been explicit instruction to act in that way.I am fairly sympathetic to this account of conspiratorial-like activity, although I think it is very open to abuse. For example; one of Microsoft’s strategies in the antitrust case was to argue that the company hadn’t deliberately set out to lock out third-party access to the Window’s API set but rather that it was simply symptomatic of the culture at Microsoft that third-party vendors found getting the needed information difficult. If I were a board member I’d be using the exact same excuse to hide my conspiratorial behaviour.So, are Power Companies suppressing clean, green energy? Well, possibly. Is it a Conspiracy? Well, once again, possibly. Or maybe it isn’t. That’s the wonderful thing about Conspiracy Theories. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t and most of the time we only find out the truth of the matter well after the fact.Also. a tip. Energy saving bulbs are a good idea, except in rooms where the light is only on for a short amount of time. In those situations, like bathrooms, the pallid illumination they provide before they really get incandescent is of no use whatsoever to me when I need to go and have a piss.Just saying.
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06/11/2007