Dr. Dr. Lee Basham

Basham argues that the mutually reinforcing effects of the political pieties characteristic of Western-style democracies, and a concomitant conspiracy theory phobia, distort social science concerning the evaluation of conspiracy theorizing. A pathologizing project emerges to minimize such theorizing. The resultant pathologizing project has discernable stages based on a medical model; disease, causal diagnosis and mass-eradication. Influential social scientists lobby for the development of society-wide cures for reflecting on and seeking evidence for potentially warranted conspiracy theories. Most philosophers in social epistemology, a significant number of other social scientists and cultural theorists, and the public at large, are skeptical of any such project. Conspiracy theorizing is a thoughtful, normal and democratically necessary activity. There is scarce acknowledgement of this in mainstream social science, but a disturbing omission. Conspiracy theorizing is assumed to be a personal and social disease. Studies are designed, results interpreted, around this assumption. With other social epistemologists, Basham argues that in each of the pathologizing project’s stages, it is neither empirically well-founded nor politically wise. In fact, history teaches otherwise.

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.

Basham and Dentith argue that the danger of condemning both conspiracy theorists and their conspiracy theories in a democracy has grave consequences. They argue that we should encourage research into public concerns about influential institutions, especially in cases where a conspiracy has been alleged. Rather than dismiss conspiracy theorising, we should, encourage the politically crucial, historically proven gift of watchfulness in the citizen, and its sometimes necessary, proper and correct expression, conspiracy theory.