1 INTRODUCTION

“Conspiracy theory” is widely used as a pejorative term. An effect of this usage, however, is to discourage certain kinds of legitimate critical inquiry. In a world where conspiracies happen, it is reasonable to seek to formulate good theories of what exactly is happening; and through competent investigation, hypotheses of conspiracy can sometimes be verified. Thus, the general denigration of “conspiracy theory” tends to discourage a kind of practice that there is reason, in fact, to encourage. Of course, this kind of serious inquiry is not necessarily typical of conspiracy theories more generally. Some researchers regard its instances as exceptions to a more general rule whereby conspiracy theories involve unwarranted assumptions and misleading speculation;¹ others maintain—instead or as well—that such investigations as happen to identify a verifiable conspiracy should be exempted from the designation “conspiracy theory” and called something else.² However, such suggestions presuppose not only that the grounds of exception or exemption can be clearly specified but also that the specification will be generally understood and applied. But what if neither presupposition turns out to be warranted?

That concern is at the heart of this paper: when the pejorative understanding of “conspiracy theory” is allowed to influence policy-making it can serve to legitimate policies whose effect is to impede or even outlaw the kind of civic vigilance that aims to uncover malfeasance on the part of powerful actors. If all kinds of critical and unorthodox inquiry that challenge “official narratives” or institutionally recognized epistemic authorities are potentially liable to be dismissed as “conspiracy theory,” then in the event of corruption or capture of institutions this may not only go undetected but could even be protected from detection. The concern is by no means purely hypothetical, and this paper will cite troubling evidence of such an inquiry being not only denigrated and marginalized but actively censored, with those pursuing it being vilified and even persecuted. Accordingly, a central claim here is that the public interest is not well served by general compliance with a default assumption that conspiracy theory should be understood in a pejorative sense.

Of course, the public interest is also not well served by the flooding of information channels by the kind of unfounded speculations and misleading claims that are commonly associated with conspiracism. And this countervailing concern has driven the extensive and growing literature across several disciplines that seeks to understand it as a cognitive and epistemic problem. Conspiracism—the elicit presumption that hypotheses of conspiracy explain every undesirable event, regardless of what reason or evidence suggest—involves, as Muirhead and Rosenblum (2019) put it, the positing of “conspiracy without the theory.” A proper theory—of a conspiracy as of anything else—treats reason and evidence with methodological rigour. Some theories about conspiracies will be rigorous, and others will not; some will succeed in explaining what they aim to, and others will fail. So although much of the literature does not clearly observe a clear distinction between the concept of conspiracy theory and that of conspiracism, there are good reasons why we should (Dentith 2017).

Accordingly, this paper shows that what can be problematic about conspiracy theories can be discussed, and more incisively, by excising prejudicial framings of the matter. As to be shown in Section 2, there is no particular difficulty in operationalizing a conceptual distinction between conspiracy theories that are methodologically rigorous and speculations about conspiracies that are not. This simple and robust approach has in fact already been developed by a number of philosophers who engage in applied epistemology. The approach allows that the term conspiracy theory—when not appended by an evaluative qualifier—can and should be used in a neutral sense. Any specific conspiracy theory may or may not be problematic, but this can only be known when it is evaluated. What makes a conspiracy theory problematic is the kind of fallaciousness in assumptions or methods that would make a theory about anything problematic, not the fact that it features conspiratorial hypotheses. This approach assumes that there is no inherent general defect that a respectable theory needs to prove itself exempt from. Hence any given conspiracy theory should be assessed on its particular merits.³

Nonetheless, because the opposite assumption is operative in some of the literature, the possibility to be canvassed in Section 3 is that there could be a particular kind of problem about conspiratorial hypotheses that is distinctive and inherent to them. When seeking to specify what may be inherently problematic about conspiratorial hypotheses, critics draw attention particularly to the degree of suspicion, or scepticism they depend on. Granting reasonable assumptions about limits to how sceptical it is rational to be, a general objection to conspiracy theories would be that they quite routinely exceed these limits. An important consideration that can be appealed to in this argument is the essentially collaborative nature of knowledge in general and the fact that we must all depend on others virtually all of the time for knowledge that we cannot immediately access individually. This is why it is generally rational to defer to established epistemic authorities and not to suppose that an individual who from their own narrow perspective identifies some anomaly in received wisdom has necessarily gained an enlightened insight rather than merely a “little knowledge” of the kind that is a “dangerous thing.” However, the response commended in this paper is recognize that just as scepticism should not be unbounded, nor should deference. The collective production of reliable knowledge is by no means the sole preserve of accredited institutions of epistemic authority.

Section 4 highlights the practical significance of the critically receptive approach with a case study of a group of citizen investigators who have been very publicly stigmatized as conspiracy theorists. They have challenged an institution with clear epistemic authority in its field and thus their challenge would qualify, on several of the other approaches discussed in this paper, for being considered prima facie unwarranted. However, on the approach advocated, the salient question is whether the group has engaged in rigorous and competent investigation. As it transpires, the study reveals that the group's investigation has been endorsed by scientists of the institution in question, who complain of corruption and intimidation on the part of its management. The case thus illustrates the reality that even institutions with seemingly unimpeachable claims to epistemic authority do not necessarily stand above and immune from political contestations over knowledge and truth claims. For this reason, skepticism about them cannot always or necessarily be condemned as irrational. The argument of this paper is that when trust in institutions diminishes, the answer does not lie in suppressing questions about their trustworthiness or seeking to deter potential questioners, but in taking steps to make them worthy of trust. Meanwhile, the fact that malfeasance by powerful actors can and does occur is ultimately itself sufficient reason to take an attitude of critical receptiveness to conspiracy theories.

中文翻译：

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“阴谋论”：批判性接受的案例

1 简介

“阴谋论”被广泛用作贬义词。然而，这种用法的一个效果是阻止某些类型的合法批判性调查。在一个阴谋发生的世界里，寻求制定关于到底发生了什么的好理论是合理的。通过有效的调查，有时可以验证阴谋的假设。因此，对“阴谋论”的普遍诋毁往往会阻碍一种实际上有理由鼓励的做法。当然，这种严肃的调查不一定是更普遍的阴谋论的典型。一些研究人员将其实例视为更一般规则的例外，即阴谋论涉及无根据的假设和误导性推测。¹其他人则坚持认为，碰巧发现可核实的阴谋的此类调查应免除“阴谋论”的名称，并称为其他东西。²然而，这些建议的前提是不仅可以明确规定例外或豁免的理由，而且该规定将被普遍理解和适用。但是，如果结果证明这两个前提都不成立怎么办？

这种担忧是本文的核心：当允许对“阴谋论”的贬义理解影响政策制定时，它可以服务于合法政策，其效果是阻碍甚至取缔旨在揭露渎职行为的公民警惕在强大的演员方面。如果各种挑战“官方叙述”或机构认可的认知权威的批判性和非正统调查都可能被视为“阴谋论”，那么在腐败或机构被俘的情况下，这不仅可能未被发现，甚至可能免受检测。这种担忧绝不是纯粹的假设，本文将引用令人不安的证据，证明这种调查不仅被诋毁和边缘化，而且受到积极审查，那些追求它的人受到诽谤甚至迫害。因此，这里的一个核心主张是，公共利益并不能通过普遍遵守一个默认假设来很好地服务于阴谋论应该被理解为贬义。

当然，通常与阴谋论相关的那种毫无根据的猜测和误导性声明充斥着信息渠道，这也不能很好地满足公众利益。这种反补贴的关注推动了跨多个学科的广泛且不断增长的文献，这些文献试图将其理解为一个认知和认知问题。正如 Muirhead 和 Rosenblum ( 2019) 说，“没有理论的阴谋”的假设。一个恰当的理论——关于阴谋的理论——以方法论严谨的态度对待理性和证据。一些关于阴谋的理论会很严谨，而另一些则不会；有些人会成功地解释他们的目标，而另一些人会失败。因此，尽管许多文献没有明确区分阴谋论和阴谋论的概念，但我们有充分的理由应该这样做（Dentith 2017）。

因此，本文表明，通过消除对此事的偏见框架，可以更深入地讨论阴谋论可能存在的问题。如第 2 节所示，在方法论上严谨的阴谋论和不严谨的阴谋论之间进行概念区分并不难。这种简单而稳健的方法实际上已经被许多从事应用认识论的哲学家开发出来。该方法允许阴谋论这个术语——当没有附加一个评估限定词时——可以而且应该在中立的情况下使用感觉。任何具体的阴谋论都可能有问题，也可能没有问题，但这只有在评估时才能知道。使阴谋论有问题的原因是假设或方法中的谬误会使关于任何事情的理论都有问题，而不是它具有阴谋假设的事实。这种方法假设一个受人尊敬的理论不需要证明自己可以免除的固有的普遍缺陷。因此，任何给定的阴谋论都应根据其特定优点进行评估。³

尽管如此，因为相反的假设在某些文献中是有效的，所以在第 3 节中讨论的可能性是，关于阴谋假设可能存在一种特殊的和固有的问题。在试图说明阴谋假设可能存在的内在问题时，批评者特别提请注意他们所依赖的怀疑程度或怀疑态度。对合理的怀疑程度给予合理的假设，对阴谋论的普遍反对意见是它们经常超过这些限制。在这个论点中可以诉诸的一个重要考虑因素是一般知识本质上的协作性质，以及我们几乎所有时间都必须依赖他人来获取我们无法立即单独获取的知识这一事实。这就是为什么顺从既定的认知权威，而不是假设一个从自己狭隘的角度识别出公认智慧中的一些异常的个人必然获得了开明的洞察力，而不仅仅是那种“小知识”是“危险的事情”。然而，本文所赞扬的回应是认识到，正如怀疑不应该是无限的，也不应该服从。可靠知识的集体生产绝不是经过认可的认识权威机构的唯一保留。

第 4 节强调了批判性接受方法的实际意义，并以一组公民调查员的案例研究，这些调查员被公开污名为阴谋论者。他们挑战了一个在其领域具有明确认识权威的机构，因此，根据本文讨论的其他几种方法，他们的挑战将有资格被视为初步证据没有根据的。然而，就所倡导的方法而言，突出的问题是该小组是否进行了严格和称职的调查。事实证明，该研究表明，该组织的调查得到了该机构的科学家的支持，他们抱怨其管理层存在腐败和恐吓行为。因此，该案例说明了这样一个现实，即即使是对认知权威看似无可指责的机构，也不一定能超越并免受关于知识和真理主张的政治争论。出于这个原因，对它们的怀疑不能总是或必然被谴责为不合理的。本文的论点是，当对机构的信任减少时，答案不在于压制有关其可信度的问题或试图阻止潜在的提问者，而在于采取措施使他们值得信任。同时，强大的行为者的渎职行为可以而且确实发生的事实本身最终足以成为对阴谋论采取批判性接受态度的充分理由。