Abstract

Lee Basham examines recent arguments by philosopher Patrick Stokes for the resurrection of a general presumption that conspiracy theories, simply because they are conspiracy theories, are suspect. Stokes' position appears to be a form of "generalism" about conspiracy theories. It tells us what to think before we’ve thought about it. Generalism's mal-biasing can be epistemic, politically practical, moralizing or any combination of these. The opposite is “particularism”, where conspiracy theories are evaluated only on the basis of the evidence for or against each. This case-by-case evidence-based approach is now advocated by a number of social epistemologists. Basham examines Stokes' arguments for the resurrection of epistemic and practical generalism. Stokes labels his generalism, “reluctant particularism” and suggests we can infuse particularism with strong generalist themes. Basham argues that any generalist maneuver is epistemically untenable and that in practice particularism also enjoys a successful record of both revealing conspiracies and undermining faulty conspiracy theories.