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of the Social Sciences

Conspiracy Theories and Conspiracy Theorizing

Steve Clarke
Philosophy of the Social Sciences 2002 32: 131
DOI: 10.1177/004931032002001
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PHILOSOPHY
Clarke
/ CONSPIRACY
OF THE SOCIAL
THEORIES
SCIENCES
AND THEORIZING
/ June 2002

Conspiracy Theories and

Conspiracy Theorizing
STEVE CLARKE
Charles Sturt University

The dismissive attitude of intellectuals toward conspiracy theorists is considered and given some justification. It is argued that intellectuals are entitled to an
attitude of prima facie skepticism toward the theories propounded by conspiracy theorists, because conspiracy theorists have an irrational tendency to continue to believe in conspiracy theories, even when these take on the appearance
of forming the core of degenerating research program. It is further argued that
the pervasive effect of the fundamental attribution error can explain the
behavior of such conspiracy theorists. A rival approach due to Brian Keeley,
which involves the criticism of a subclass of conspiracy theories on epistemic
grounds, is considered and found to be inadequate.

Conspiracy theorists, like creation scientists and astrologers, are

advocates of ideas that are generally quite popular. There are large
numbers of people who believe that the United States military has
conspired to keep the public uninformed about visits by alien life
forms (Shermer 1997, 91-93). Others believe that Elvis Presley conspired to fake his own death (Brewer-Giorgio 1988). Some even
believe that Ludwig Wittgenstein led a secret double life as a Soviet
spymaster (Cornish 1997). Like the ideas promulgated by creation scientists and astrologers, the ideas promulgated by conspiracy theorists are very unpopular among intellectuals. Thats just a conspiracy theory, say the intellectuals, apparently feeling entitled to
dismiss such theories simply on the grounds that they involve conspiracies. No matter how hard conspiracy theorists have tried to
make their cases, they are not accorded the same hearing in intellectual circles that a proponent of a nonconspiratorial explanation
Received 11 April 2000
Thanks to an anonymous referee, an audience at Charles Sturt University, John
Bigelow, John Campbell, Dean Cocking, Neil Thomason, Robert Young, and particularly Jakob Hohwy for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.
Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Vol. 32 No. 2, June 2002 131-150
2002 Sage Publications

131

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would be accorded. This situation is more than slightly mystifying.

Unlike creation scientists and astrologers, conspiracy theorists have
epistemic runs on the board,1 and lots of them. Conspiracies have
consistently taken place throughout history. Elvis Presley may or may
not have faked his own death, but Richard Nixon really did conspire
to cover up his involvement in the Watergate burglary, and Cecil
Rhodes really did conspire to provoke conflict between the British
Empire and the Boer Republics.
No doubt history plays its part in explaining the hostility of intellectuals toward conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theorizing has long
been favored by Populists, who are almost invariably antielitist, and
therefore generally anti-intellectual as well. Some intellectuals may
dismiss conspiracy theories simply on the basis of guilt by association
with anti-intellectual Populism.2 American Populists of the late 19th
century were particularly noted for their propensity to indulge in conspiratorial reasoning, a feature of their thinking that the historian
Richard Hofstadter highlights, informing us that
There was something about the Populist imagination that loved the
secret plot and the conspiratorial meeting. (Hofstadter 1955, 70)

and
At the so-called grass roots of American politics there is a wide and pervasive tendency to believeI hasten to add that the majority of Americans do not habitually succumb to this tendencythat there is some
great but essentially very simple struggle going on, at the heart of
which there lies some single conspiratorial force. (Hofstadter 1955, 16)

Although guilt by association with anti-intellectual Populism can

go some way to explaining the contempt that intellectuals have
shown toward conspiracy theories, there are at least two reasons to
think that it cannot explain it all. First, guilt by association is a fallacious form of reasoning and intellectuals, generally being intelligent
people, can reasonably be expected to be somewhat resistant to the
lure of fallacious forms of reasoning. Second, many American intellectuals have shown a marked sympathy for the antielitist tendencies
of Populism that lead Populists to be anti-intellectuals. For such intellectuals, association with antielitist movements such as Populism,
would be a cause of virtue by association rather than guilt by association. Liberal intellectuals in America may be part of an elite culture,
however they are often self-consciously and somewhat reluctantly

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part of such a culture. Hofstadter (1955, 1971) paints an unflattering

portrait of 19th-century American Populism, stressing the continuities between it and 1950s McCarthyism. However, in the main, American historians have been quite sympathetic to 19th-century American Populism, emphasizing the extent to which Populist grievances
against the urban East Coast elites of America were legitimate and
portraying Populism as a progressive rather than reactionary
movement.3
However much we think that an historical association with antiintellectual movements can explain the antipathy of intellectuals to
conspiracy theories, it is hard to see how it could justify such an attitude. Given that we know that conspiracies have occurred, could
intellectuals really be justified in dismissing conspiracy theories
merely by pointing to the fact that these are just conspiracy theories? If
so, then surely we ought to be able to say why. This article is an
attempt to do so. Although I will not argue that intellectuals are entitled to arrogantly dismiss all conspiracy theories, I will argue that
there is an entitlement to an attitude of prima facie skepticism toward
the theories propounded by conspiracy theorists and I will identify a
reason that grounds this entitlement.
Conspiracy theories are not a common topic of philosophical discussion; however, I am not the only philosopher who has discussed
them. In a recent article, Brian Keeley has attempted to explain their
apparent popularity and identify their underlying deficiencies.4
Keeley has undertaken an important project but has gone about completing it in the wrong way. Keeley attempts to identify a subclass of
conspiracy theories that he describes as Unwarranted Conspiracy
Theories (UCTs). These have crucial epistemic deficiencies that go
unrecognized by conspiracy theorists according to Keeley. It will be
shown that Keeleys case against UCTs is exaggerated and confused.
He intends to attack a class of conspiracy theories but, through a slide
in his reasoning, ends up attacking the reasoning patterns of conspiracy theorists, arguing that they have a tendency to fail to recognize the
epistemic weaknesses of the conspiracy theories that they favor and
that they have a tendency to respond inappropriately to evidence that
conflicts with these theories.
Although Keeley has not identified an underlying failing common
to conspiracy theorists, it is perhaps no accident that he ends up
attacking the reasoning patterns of conspiracy theorists, because this
is where the real problem lies. I will argue that conspiracy theorists are
typically victims of a form of cognitive failure. They are unusually

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prone to committing what social psychologists refer to as the fundamental attribution error.5 I will describe this error and explain how it
leads conspiracy theorists to hold on to theories that they would otherwise abandon. I then conclude with a few words in favor of the conspiracy theorist. Although conspiracy theorists do commit a cognitive
error that leads them to prefer theories that are otherwise less plausible over theories that are otherwise more plausible, the activities of
the conspiracy theorists are not to be condemned outright. The prevalence of conspiracy theorizing is beneficial to us in several ways.
Before I go on, here are a couple of definitions. Charles Pigden
defines a conspiracy as
a secret plan on the part of a group to influence events partly by covert
action. (Pigden 1995, 5)

Keeley defines a conspiracy theory as

a proposed explanation of some historical event (or events) in terms of
the significant causal agency of a relatively small group of persons
the conspiratorsacting in secret. (Keeley 1999, 116)

Although one author offers a definition of a conspiracy and the

other a definition of a conspiracy theory, it is apparent that the two
authors are largely in agreement. Keeleys theories are effectively theories about Pigdens conspiracies. The only substantial difference
between them is that Keeley is more restrictive about the number of
conspirators acceptable in a genuine conspiracy. The reader may
accept either definition in the argument that follows.

EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS
Sometimes it is thought that conspiracy theorists are simply people
who are gripped by a desire to believe the truth of their pet theory,
and because of this desire they are not motivated to go and find evidence for the pet theory to the extent that they normally would be
motivated to find evidence for a given theory, before accepting that
theory. It is plausible to believe that people are initially attracted to
believe in conspiracies because of the emotions that these stir in them.
Hume made a similar claim on behalf of miracles when he wrote that
the passion of surprise and wonder, arising from miracles, being an

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agreeable emotion, gives a sensible tendency towards the belief of

those events, from which it is derived (Hume 1988, 150). Belief in the
ability of conspirers to carry out their plans, while duping others into
believing in a cover story, may inspire similar feelings. But while it is
plausible to hold that there are people who are emotionally attracted
to belief in conspiracy theories, anyone who concluded that because
of these feelings conspiracy theorists would go on believing in conspiracies theories on the basis of less evidence than they would otherwise require to substantiate belief, cannot have had much contact
with conspiracy theorists.
Because conspiracy theorists almost always wish to see conspiracies exposed, they are typically quite dedicated in their search for evidence relevant to their favorite conspiracy theory and are usually able
to overwhelm you with a deluge of evidence in favor of that theory.
Gail Brewer-Giorgio (1988), the author of Is Elvis Alive?, is one such
typical conspiracy theorist. Her argument for the conclusion that
Elvis Presley faked his own death brings together a vast array of evidence. The conventional explanation of the death of Elvis Presley, in
1977 at age 42, has a meager evidential base, referring to Elvis heart
condition, which is explained by appealing to facts about his lifestyle.6 The conspiratorial rival theory that Brewer-Giorgio mounts is
rich in detail, explaining, inter alia, why Elviss middle name is misspelled on his tombstone (Elvis was superstitious and wouldnt want
his name correctly spelled on a tombstone when he was in fact alive),
and why Elviss casket was unusually heavy (it contained a wax
dummy and an air conditioning unit to stop the wax dummy from
melting). Brewer-Giorgio can also explain away the apparent plausibility of the conventional explanation of Elviss death. Given that
Elvis wished to fake his own death, it would have suited him to
appear to be in poor health so as to add plausibility to his cover story.
Conspiracy theories invariably seem to be based on more evidence
than their immediate rival, the nonconspiratorial received view.
This is because they explain all that the nonconspiratorial received
view explainsthe apparent plausibility of the nonconspiratorial
received view is a consequence of the success of the cover story or
cover-up, according to conspiracy theoristsand then go on to
account for evidence that the received view is unable to explain. Once
a conspiracy theorist has become committed to a conspiracy theory,
she is able to account for almost any relevant evidence that is presented. It is either evidence of the cover-up, which the conspirers are
attempting, or it is evidence of discrepancies in the received explana-

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tion. Strictly, none of this can be described as ad hoc. A theory that

involves an attempt by some people to deceive other people is a theory that involves reasons both to expect a cover-up and flaws in the
cover-up.7
It is not hard to understand why conspiracy theorists are able to
accommodate new evidence in their theories. What is hard to understand is why conspiracy theorists continue to be motivated to do so.
Conspiracy theories often have the appearance of forming the core of
what Lakatos referred to as degenerating research programmes
(Lakatos 1970). Research programs are very roughly what Kuhn
refers to as paradigms, research traditions built around a core theory in which participants are dedicated to advancing the case for that
core theory and dedicated to protecting it from the effect of apparently contradictory evidence by making modifications to the protective belt of auxiliary hypotheses and initial conditions. Lakatos
urged us to make judgments regarding the success of research programs, distinguishing between progressive and degenerating
research programs according to the way in which these relate to new
evidence. A progressive research program is one in which novel predictions and retrodictions are made that are generally successful. In a
degenerating research program, successful novel predictions and
retrodictions are not made. Instead, auxiliary hypotheses and initial
conditions are successively modified in light of new evidence, to protect the original theory from apparent disconfirmation.
Social scientists and social commentators are not usually expected
to make exacting predictions and retrodictions. Nevertheless, it is
often possible to discern the expected consequences of a social theory.
For example, if classical Marxist social theory is true then we can reasonably expect heightened economic instability in capitalist countries
at some stage in the not-too-distant future. Because conspiracy theories typically involve an ongoing conspiracy, it is often particularly
clear what consequences can be expected to result from a conspiracy
theory being true. When Bernstein and Woodward formulated the
core of the Watergate conspiracy, they were led to reasonably expect
the complicity of a number of individuals in the conspiracy and to
make rough and ready predictions, as well as retrodictions, about the
behavior of these conspirators. These predictions and retrodictions
turned out, for the most part, to be true and the Watergate conspiracy
has gained acceptance as a successful conspiracy theory.8
In contrast, the theory that asserts that Elvis Presley faked his own
death is at the core of what appears to be a clear example of a degener-

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ating research program. If Elvis Presley really were alive now (more
than 20 years after his supposed death) then we would reasonably
expect to have some firm evidence of his activities at some time in the
past two decades. The behavior of his relatives, who Brewer-Giorgio
alleges are coconspirators and probably in continuing contact with
Elvis, would also be expected to be highly unusual in a number of
ways. But no reliable evidence of the Presley relatives attempting to
contact Elvis after 1977, or inadvertently revealing their complicity in
a conspiracy, is forthcoming. Lakatos did not say exactly when it
becomes irrational to cling to a degenerating research program, but
there clearly are cases where a research program has degenerated
beyond the point where it is reasonable to hold on to it. The problem
with conspiracy theorists is that they usually seem loath to give up
conspiracy theories when this occurs.
It might perhaps be thought that we do not need an explanation for
the tendency of people to continue to believe in conspiracy theories
even when these exhibit signs of having become degenerating
research programs. After all, significant numbers of scientists continue to remain committed to research programs when these show
signs of clear degeneration and are no longer dominant in their field.
However, there appears to be a relevant difference between these
elderly holdouts in science and conspiracy theorists. In the case of
scientists, there are compelling sociological explanations for their
continued commitment to unsuccessful ideas. A scientist who has
invested a career in a particular research program stands to lose much
of her credibility by renouncing past intellectual commitments. Furthermore, the scientists may work as part of a research team that is
committed to the degenerating research program. She may not be able
to join another research team that is participating in a different
research program. Even if she has doubts about the viability of the
degenerating research program, she may find it impolitic to make
these public. Renouncing her chosen research program could involve
ending her research career.9 In stark contrast, the conspiracy theorist
typically stands to make substantial social gains by abandoning commitment to a particular conspiracy theory. Abandoning conspiracy
theories means ending the ridicule of intellectuals, and this can allow
one the realistic prospect of a return to intellectual polite society.
It should be conceded that the thinking of some conspiracy theorists could be importantly affected by cultural factors that help to
explain their continued allegiance to degenerating research programs. In some cases, conspiracy theorists may belong to a subculture

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of fellow theorists that acts to significantly affect their judgment. It is

plausible to believe that some subcultures, such as the subcultures of
religious cults, can affect the reasoning of their members in such a
way as to make them believe things that they would otherwise not
believe. Religious cults expend much effort to indoctrinate or brainwash their members. However, such cultural explanations will not go
very far to explain the continuing popularity of degenerating research
programs with conspiracy theories at their core. Conspiracy theorizing is most popular among members of the general public who are
perhaps affected by, but not actively indoctrinated by, subcultures of
conspiracy theorists. Conspiracy theorizing may be culturally transmitted, but in most cases it is not strongly culturally maintained.

UNWARRANTED CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Keeley, as was already mentioned, attempts to identify a class of
conspiracy theories that are unwarranted because of their epistemic
deficiencies. In addition to satisfying his definition of conspiracy theories, Keeleys UCTs have the following characteristics:
1. A UCT is an explanation that runs counter to some received, official, or
obvious account.
2. The true intentions behind the conspiracy are invariably nefarious.10
3. UCTs typically seek to tie together seemingly unrelated events.
4. The truths behind events explained by conspiracy theories are typically well-guarded secrets, even if the ultimate perpetrators are sometimes well-known public figures. (Keeley 1999, 116-17)

A fifth characteristic is formulated around the activity of conspiracy

theorists:
5. The chief tool of the conspiracy theorists is what I shall call errant
data. (Keeley 1999, 117)

As used by Keeley, errant data is a relative term. Relative to a received

theory, data is errant if it is unaccounted for, or contradictory to, that
received theory.
Before we consider Keeleys arguments for the epistemic weaknesses of UCTs, we need to say a bit more about his list of characteristics for UCTs. Although the theories that have these characteristics are
meant to have the epistemic deficiencies that Keeley argues for, the

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list of characteristics is looser than a set of necessary and sufficient

conditions for a conspiracy theory being unwarranted. Some unwarranted conspiracies do not have all of the listed characteristics, and
some conspiracies that do have all of them are conspiracies that we are
warranted in believing in. Keeley mentions Watergate and the IranContra affair, as conspiracies that have all the characteristics of a UCT,
but that we are nevertheless warranted in believing in (Keeley 1999,
118). Perhaps the epistemic deficiencies common to UCTs are somehow overridden in these cases? Keeley does not address this question.
It is not clear whether Keeley believes that necessary and sufficient
conditions for an important class of UCTs could be articulated or not.
However, he clearly believes that he has articulated a characterization
of UCTs in sufficient detail to allow for these to be usefully criticized
as a class. I am concerned to attack these criticisms and I will set aside
questions about the worthiness of his characterization of UCTs.
Keeley considers the explanatory virtues of UCTs, which he claims
are subtly flawed. The explanatory virtues of UCTs are the very
sources of their epistemic deficiencies, and this is what makes it difficult for us to properly assess them; a situation that goes some way to
explaining their enduring popularity, or so he contends. The
epistemic virtues of conspiracy theories are that they provide unifying explanations and that they explain errant data. An epistemic
overreliance on the ability to explain errant data is the first flaw of
UCTs, according to Keeley. Keeley suggests that it is appropriate to
place great stress on explaining errant data in the natural sciences but
inappropriate in social explanation, because we ought to be modest
about our ability to gather reliable data about the human world.
Much of what we accept as the data to be explained in social theorizing will turn out to be false. Apparently, because of this consideration,
we respond appropriately to the conspiracy theorist who challenges
us to explain errant data by simply shrugging our shoulders.
The other flaw of UCTs, according to Keeley, is that these have an
inbuilt undermining feature. If we accept them then we will have reason to abandon our confidence in the trustworthiness of the people
and the institutions that are involved in the conspiracy. Keeley sees
this problem as very serious, as the following quote suggests:
These theories throw into doubt the various institutions that have been
set up to generate reliable data and evidence. In doing so, they reveal
just how large a role trustin both institutions and individualsplays
in the justification of our beliefs. (Keeley 1999, 121)

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Acceptance of UCTs threatens to put us in a position where our

confidence in authorities is so eroded that we are no longer warranted
in holding any beliefs that are socially produced, according to Keeley.
Thus, we are left in a position analogous to the lamentable position of
no longer being able to accept the legitimacy of the mechanisms that
warrant belief production in the sciences; no longer being justified in
believing that the platypus is a mammal and that gold is an atomic
element (Keeley 1999, 121). Such epistemic endpoints appear to
embody a degree of skepticism that is too high to be acceptable to
anyone.
Keeleys first charge against conspiracy theories is not at all telling.
Keeley is right that social data is generally less reliable than the data
that natural scientists locate, but he fails to inform us as to why this
consideration should tell particularly against the errant data that conspiracy theories explain. It appears to be a consideration that tells
equally against all social data. Furthermore, it is very hard to see how
this could be a consideration that tells against errant data more than
against nonerrant data. Errant data is only errant in relation to an
accepted theory, and to discount errant data on grounds that apply to
both errant and nonerrant data would be to prejudice oneself in favor
of data simply because it happens to be explained by the received
theory.
The second charge is slightly more telling, but only slightly more.
Keeley is surely right to argue that trust in institutions and individuals plays a crucial role in the justification of our beliefs, as a number of
philosophers have recently emphasized (Coady 1992; Lipton 1998).
One of the reasons against believing in the Watergate conspiracy,
when it was initially propounded, was that this would involve the
undermining of our warrant for the beliefs that we had accepted on
the basis of the testimony of Nixon, Mitchell, Ehrlichman, and others.
We might similarly hesitate to believe allegations that the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) conspired in the Oklahoma
City bombing because this would involve undermining our warrant
for beliefs that were accepted because of the testimony of representatives of the BATF. These sorts of considerations ought to be taken into
account when deciding whether or not to accept social theories, but it
is difficult to believe in the case of most UCTs that they are the very
serious considerations that Keeley takes them to be.
Potentially, conspiratorial thinking could lead us to doubt beliefs
as entrenched in our current thinking as the belief that the platypus is
a mammal. But this is a far cry from the usual degree of undermining

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that accepting a UCT involves. The Watergate conspiracy (which has

all of the characteristics of a UCT) involved the participation of government officials at the highest level and its acceptance ought to
undermine our confidence in the truth claims of those particular officials. However, it is unclear why it would erode our confidence in
other government officials and agencies, much less induce pervasive
and debilitating skepticism. Consider how the Watergate conspiracy
might be adapted to embrace skepticism as far reaching as skepticism
about the taxonomic status of the platypus: in his increasingly paranoid state of mind, Nixon became convinced that the platypuses taxonomic status disposed voters in favor of the Democratic Party, and
so he ordered Gordon Liddy to interfere with the documentation of
basic science so as to have the platypus falsely taxonomized. I take it
that it is clear that no actual version of the Watergate conspiracy
involves such allegations or allegations remotely like these. Indeed it
is hard to see that any of the conspiracy theories Keeley contemplates
have the effect of undermining very entrenched mundane beliefs.11
Keeley makes much more of the importance of the second flaw of
UCTs than he is entitled to because of a slide in his reasoning. He
observes that some contemporary conspiracy theorists have a tendency to react to criticism of their preferred theories by adapting these
theories and increasing the number of conspirators involved in the
alleged conspiracy. Apparently there are some conspiracy theorists
who began by alleging that the BATF was conspiratorially involved in
the Oklahoma City bombing and now allege a conspiracy involving
the collusion of the FBI and parts of the press. Keeley contends that
such a pattern of development in reasoning sets these conspiracy theorists down the slippery slope toward almost nihilistic degrees of
skepticism. This pattern may often be followed, but the fact that it is
often followed is an observation about the fallacious reasoning patterns of some contemporary conspiracy theorists and this is simply
not relevant to the epistemic evaluation of UCTs as a class.
In any case, a sophisticated conspiracy theorist could advance a
conspiracy theory with the reach that Keeley contemplates, and resist
Keeleys slippery slope to pervasive skepticism, by introducing the
following consideration. Due to the nature of conspiracy, we can generally expect conspiring agents to be more reliable than they would
otherwise be about matters that are not directly relevant to the conspiracy. Suppose that Nixon really did have Liddy interfere with all
scientific records so as to have the platypus falsely taxonomized. If
Nixons concern is to deceive us about platypuses and not about other

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animals, then this need not undermine our confidence that the wombat is a mammal and that the kookaburra is a bird. It is important to
conspirators that their conspiracies go undetected. Part of ones cover
as a conspirator is to ensure that one has a good reputation, and this
will typically involve maintaining high standards of honesty and
epistemic responsibility on all issues other than those directly relevant to the conspiracy.
It might be thought that I am making too much of the distinction
between conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists. Arent UCTs
just those theories that are propounded by the contemporary conspiracy theorists whom Keeley attacks? No. UCTs are a set of theories that
occupy a region of logical space that Keeley has roughly located
through his characterization of them. Contemporary conspiracy theorists may have persistently advocated the less warrantable of these,
but this tells us nothing about the warrant that more acceptable but
unfancied conspiracy theories, which Keeley counts as UCTs, might
actually deserve. Keeley has undertaken to say something important
about the warrantability of UCTs as a class, but he has failed to do this.
It might also be thought that I am being too strict about what
Keeley means by the term theory. I have accused conspiracy theorists
of remaining committed to research programs even when these
exhibit clear signs of degeneration. If Keeley was to be interpreted as
using the word theory to mean developmental series of views changing over time, then a theory in his sense would be something akin to
Lakatoss conception of a research program, and Keeley could be
understood as joining me in claiming that conspiracy theories are
unwarranted when they form the core of degenerating research programs. However, Keeley appears to rule out this charitable interpretation when he tells us that a conspiracy theory deserves the appellation theory, because it proffers an explanation of the event in question (Keeley 1999, 116). Theories are understood by Keeley as single
explanations and not as developmental sequences of explanations.
Keeley greatly overstates the strength of his case against UCTs, and
as I have shown, he conflates it with a case he develops against the
explanatory stratagems favored by some contemporary conspiracy
theorists. Neither of Keeleys arguments against UCTs establish that
UCTs are significantly less epistemically reputable than other social
theories. He does establish that, sometimes, the acceptance of UCTs
involves a degree of undermining of beliefs that had been warranted
by those who are alleged to be participating in the conspiracy. But it is
not even clear that this problem is something that ought to count par-

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ticularly against conspiracy theories. Consider the situation I am in

when I decide whether or not to accept a nonconspiratorial Marxist
social theory that involves the view that the beliefs of most, or all, of
those whose testimony I have hitherto relied on have been ideologically distorted. If I am to accept such a theory then I will undermine
the warrant for many of my current beliefs. The problem of beliefs
being undermined when theories are accepted is a problem that is
shared by some conspiratorial and some nonconspiratorial social
theories.

CONSPIRACY THEORISTS
Instead of attempting to home in on the epistemic flaws of a significant class of conspiracy theories, as Keeley has, I will focus my
attention on the cognitive failures of a significant class of conspiracy
theoriststhose conspiracy theorists who continue to hold on to conspiracy theories even when these take on the appearance of forming
the core of degenerating research programs. If we can identify a consistent form of cognitive failure among such conspiracy theorists then
we can go much of the way to justifying the attitude of intellectuals
who dismiss conspiracy theories out of hand. The intellectuals can be
shown to be entitled to assume (perhaps implicitly) that, like most
conspiracy theorists, the conspiracy theorist being ignored is likely to
be the proponent of a degenerating research program, and the continued advocacy of such a research program is likely to be the result of
cognitive failure on the part of the conspiracy theorist.
There may be many reasons why individual conspiracy theorists
remain committed to their favored conspiracy theories even when
these exhibit clear signs of degeneration. However, if we are to justify
the attitude of those who dismiss conspiracy theories on the grounds
that these are propounded by conspiracy theorists we need to identify
a factor that is present in the overwhelming majority of cases of such
conspiracy theorizing. The factor that I have identified as being common to the thinking of conspiracy theorists who hold on to degenerating research programs is that they commit what social psychologists
call the fundamental attribution error. This is a form of cognitive
error that is endemic to human thinking and that leads to a variety of
unfortunate consequences (Nisbett and Ross 1980, 1991; Ross and
Anderson 1982).

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Social psychologists studying our interpretation of the behavior of

others make a primary distinction between situational and
dispositional explanations of behavior. When I ask you to explain what
caused Manfreds motoring accident, you could provide a
dispositional explanation by citing what you take to be features of
Manfreds personality. For example, you could tell me that Manfred is
(disposed to being) careless. Alternatively you could appeal to relevant features of the situation that Manfred was in to explain the occurrence of the accident. You would be doing this if you told me that the
accident was caused by the difficult driving conditions presented by
the wet road that Manfreds car was on. Of course there is nothing
stopping you from appealing to both sorts of explanation when seeking to account for the events in question. Typically though, people
presenting causal explanations single out one explanatory factor as
the cause.
According to many social psychologists, humans systematically
make the error of severely overestimating the importance of
dispositional factors, as well as the concomitant error of severely
underestimating the importance of situational factors, when seeking
to understand and explain the behavior of others. This error is both
very widespread and of a significant magnitude. Social psychologists
have marshaled compelling evidence in favor of its existence.
In one experiment that provides strong evidence in favor of the
existence of the fundamental attribution error, research subjects were
given a set of essays and recorded speeches on controversial topics
and invited to make inferences about the beliefs of the authors of the
pieces. The subjects persistently inferred from the fact that a given
author had written an essay or presented a speech in favor of (for
example) the legalization of marijuana that she was in fact in favor of
the legalization of marijuana, even when they were specifically
informed that the authors and speakers were acting under instructions to argue for a particular side in a debate. A very strong situational factor was consistently ignored by research subjects who exhibited a high degree of confidence in their own ability to explain the
behavior of the authors and speakers in dispositional terms (Jones
and Harris 1967).
In another experiment, the Darley-Batson experiment, a large
group of research subjects who were students at the Princeton Theological Seminary were asked to prepare a presentation at a particular
time and location, which was to be recorded. The seminarians were
given directions to the location, which involved walking past a per-

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son slumped in a doorway coughing and groaninga person who

was obviously in need of assistance. The purpose of the experiment
was to find out who among the research subjects would offer assistance. As it turned out, 63% of the research subjects who were unhurried offered some form of assistance. These research subjects were
examined on a number of dispositional criteria, none of which was
found to significantly correlate with their behavior. However, one
apparently trivial situational factor that was introduced was found to
make an extremely significant difference. When seminarians who
walked past the person in need of assistance were told beforehand
that they were late and needed to hurry, the assistance rate dropped
from 63% to 10%. This level of difference between hurried and unhurried subjects is a far cry from the expectations of psychologists and
members of the public who were asked to predict the outcome of the
experiment (Darley and Batson 1973).
Not only did people not expect that this situational factor would be
important, it appears that they had extreme difficulty in adjusting
their beliefs in light of such results. Pietromonaco and Nisbett (1982)
asked research subjects who had read about the Darley-Batson experiment to predict the rate at which people would help others in a similar situation. Despite the strong evidence of the Darley-Batson experiment in favor of the situational factor of being in a hurry being very
explanatorily significant, the subjects made only insignificant adjustments to their predictions about the importance of being in a hurry
and no adjustments at all to their assessment of the importance of
dispositional factors. Of course, this result is just what we should
expect if the fundamental attribution error really is as generic as social
psychologists suggest.
As explanations, conspiracy theories are highly dispositional.
When conspiracies occur it is because conspirators intend them to
occur and act on their intentions. The conspiratorial dispositions of
the conspirators play the role of the cause in a typical explanation that
involves a conspiracy. In most cases, the received view, the conventionally accepted nonconspiratorial alternative to a particular conspiracy theory, is a situational explanation. If you accept the received
view that Elvis Presleys funeral occurred because he died, as a result
of a heart condition, you would explain his death by appealing to the
situational factor of the state of his health. However, if you believe
that Elvis Presley faked his own death, you would account for the
occurrence of the funeral by appealing to a dispositional explanation,
because you presumably hold that he and his fellow conspirators

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went out of their way to deceive the public as to the fact that he
remains alive. If you believe that the U.S. military leadership are
reluctant to discuss the Roswell Incident because there is no such incident to discuss, you are basing your belief on a situational factor. By
contrast, if you believe that the U.S. military leadership are conspiring
to keep the public unaware of contact with alien species, which
occurred at Roswell, New Mexico, you would presumably explain the
U.S. military leaderships persistent denials of knowledge of the incident by appealing to their disposition toward conspiratorial paternalistic behavior.
To be able to explain why conspiracy theorists remain committed
to degenerating research programs with conspiracy theories at their
core, in the face of the degeneration of these research programs, we
have to appreciate what is typically involved in the giving up of a conspiracy theory. To give up a conspiracy theory in favor of a nonconspiratorial alternative is typically to abandon a dispositional explanation in favor of a situational explanation. But this involves
overcoming the fundamental attribution error, which is to go against
our cognitive instincts. This can be done, but it is psychologically difficult for us to do. Those who continue to believe in conspiracy theories, when it is intuitively clear to the majority that the time to abandon such theories is well overdue, may simply be people who are
more in the grip of the fundamental attribution error than most.
Of course, the proponents of a conspiracy theory will not simply
feel that a dispositional conspiracy theory is better than its
nonconspiratorial situational alternative despite its degeneration;
they will make efforts to rationalize their preference. One way they
can do this is by appealing to the unifying power of conspiracy theories. Dispositional explanations, such as conspiratorial explanations,
can appear to exhibit more unifying power than situational explanations, because dispositional explanations can relate the occurrence of
events within the context of an intended plan. Because conspiracy
theories typically involve highly elaborate plans, they will usually
exhibit great unificatory power. Situations, by contrast, can appear to
be one off events, and explanations appealing to them can appear to
lack unificatory power. But this contrast is fallacious. If you examine
the circumstances of Elvis Presleys natural death closely enough you
will be able to relate it to other natural events, and with sufficient persistence you will be able to relate all of these within the scope of physics, thereby furnishing yourself with an explanation with more
unificatory power than any dispositional explanation can provide.

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Some will object to the idea that there are cognitive errors at all,
appealing to conceptual arguments that aim to rule out the possibility
that we could be systematically irrational.12 Others will attempt to
base objections on evolutionary theory and ask how it is that we could
possibly have evolved to make systematic cognitive errors. Unfortunately, there is good evidence to show that we are disposed to make a
variety of such systematic cognitive errors (Kahneman, Slovic, and
Tversky 1982). For example, it is well established that we frequently
make systematic errors about the extent to which small samples are
representative of larger populations (Tversky and Kahneman 1982).
It may seem hard to believe that humans have evolved to make a
systematic error about something as important to us as the interpretation of the behavior of other people. Nevertheless, this is possible. The
fundamental attribution error primarily occurs when we make judgments about the behavior of people outside contexts of familiarity
(Nisbett and Ross 1991). For the most part, human evolution probably
occurred when early humans were members of close-knit tribal
groups, in which members would have been highly familiar with
other members of the group and in which they were not often exposed
to their behavior outside of familiar contexts. It may also be that a
heightened awareness of dispositional factors in the understanding
of the behavior of others was to our evolutionary advantage, even if
this came at a cost to our understanding of the importance of situational factors. If another person, with whom I am in close contact, is
disposed to conspire against me then it is very important that I am
aware of this. If I commit the error of mistaking their hostile dispositions for a situational factor then I potentially expose myself to much
danger by continuing to interact with them. In general, it may be
better to err on the side of caution and mistake situational factors
for dispositional factors rather than take the chance of misreading
peoples possibly hostile dispositions.

CONSPIRACY THEORIZING
I have suggested that the fundamental attribution error may have
survived in the human population because in most cases it was not
particularly harmful and because the opposite error of overestimating situational factors to the exclusion of dispositional factors was
potentially very harmful indeed. Perhaps this asymmetry should be
taken into account when we consider our attitude toward the activity

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of contemporary conspiracy theorists. Most conspiracy theorists who

manage to make the headlines these days produce theories that are
harebrained and lacking in warrant. But few are actually harmful.
Furthermore, there are several things that can be said in favor of conspiracy theorizing. First, the conspiracy theorist challenges us to
improve our social explanations. If a nonconspiratorial social explanation is better articulated as a result of the challenge of a conspiracy
theory then that is all to the good. Second, the conspiracy theorist
occasionally identifies a genuine conspiracy. Giving a thousand conspiracy theories some consideration is a small price for us to pay to
have one actual nefarious conspiracy, such as the Watergate conspiracy, uncovered sooner rather than later.
The prevalence of conspiracy theories confers a third benefit upon
us, which is that it helps to maintain openness in society. Government
agencies have a tendency to be less than forthcoming with information that might prove embarrassing to them but that the public would
prefer to have made available. The information gathering activities of
conspiracy theorists can help to prevent such secretiveness. The conspiracy theorist may be a victim of cognitive error, but it is perhaps to
our advantage that they remain in error. Although we would not wish
to fall victim to the fundamental attribution error, it can sometimes be
to our advantage that others do. Perhaps we should thank the conspiracy theorist for remaining vigilant on our behalf. They may still be
out there.

NOTES
1. A measure of success in the game of cricket.
2. Opposition to perceived elites and to elite cultures, such as the culture of intellectuals, is endemic in Populist thought. Lazer offers a working definition of Populism
as the belief that the majority opinion of the people is checked by an elitist minority
(Lazer 1976, 259). Although Populist movements are almost invariably antielitist, they
are not invariably anti-intellectual, for the simple reason that intellectuals are not
always perceived as being part of an elite. The Russian Populist Narodnik movement of
the 1870s was a political grouping predominantly consisting of antielitist intellectuals.
3. Canovan (1981, 46-51) describes the development of debate about the status of
nineteenth-century American Populism among historians.
4. Others are Pigden (1995) and, somewhat elliptically, Popper ([1945] 1966).
5. The fundamental attribution error has recently become a hot topic in moral philosophy. See, for example, Campbell (1999), Doris (1998, 2002), and Flanagan (1991).
6. Proponents of the received nonconspiratorial view about Elviss death could presumably acquire more evidence for their view.

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7. Keeley (1999, 121) makes this point quite forcefully.

8. The story of the uncovering of the Watergate conspiracy is recounted in Bernstein
and Woodward (1974).
9. There is a wealth of recent literature in science studies that provides sociological
explanations for the intellectual commitments of scientists. Biagioli (1999) contains the
best of most of it.
10. Nefarious seems overly strong. If Elvis Presley really did conspire to fake his
death is it hard to see his intentions as actually being nefarious. This is certainly not how
Brewer-Giorgio (1988) portrays him.
11. Keeley does make an attempt to show that acceptance of one particular conspiracy theory, the theory that the Holocaust was faked, leads to an unacceptably general
level of skepticism. He informs us that belief that the Holocaust was faked is akin to
belief that World War II did not happen as well as to various other unlikely beliefs
(Keeley 1999, 123). The case is made too swiftly to be convincing.
12. Stein (1997) contains a discussion of such conceptual arguments, focusing particularly on one form of these arguments for the conclusion that claims of human irrationality are self-undermining.

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Steve Clarke is a research fellow in the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics
and a lecturer in philosophy in the School of Humanities at Charles Sturt University. He
is the author of a book, Metaphysics and the Disunity of Scientific Knowledge
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), as well as a number of articles on topics in applied ethics,
metaphysics, and the philosophy of science. These have appeared in such journals as the
American Philosophical Quarterly and the Australasian Journal of Philosophy.

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