The Nature of Conspiracy Theories. Michael Butter

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Название The Nature of Conspiracy Theories
Автор произведения Michael Butter
Жанр Зарубежная публицистика
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Издательство Зарубежная публицистика
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isbn 9781509540839



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attitudes’ displaying a ‘one-sided fixation’. Furthermore, conspiracy theories do not ‘reflect on the appropriateness of their fundamental assumptions’ but take them to be an ‘unalterable dogma’. Therefore, he concludes that the term ‘conspiracy theory’ should only be used in quotation marks, and that it is better to speak of ‘conspiracy ideologies’.29

      Furthermore, although conspiracy theories differ from scientific theories in many respects, there are nonetheless certain similarities. The philosopher Karl Hepfer, for instance, insists that conspiracy theories, like scientific theories, provide answers to epistemological questions, thus allowing a ‘better understanding of the world’.30 While this understanding may be objectively false, in subjective terms conspiracy theories do what we expect of theories in general: they explain past events and allow predictions about the future. Thus, in her earlier-mentioned article on the ‘Great Replacement’, Eva Herman prophesies that the events unfolding in Europe, and especially Germany, will lead to a war between cultures and religions, native populations and migrants – a conclusion she derives from the logic of the evil plan and the conflicts it has allegedly already led to: ‘The unrest already occurring among the various religious cultures paints an ugly picture of the future.’ Churchill is less explicit on this point due to the brevity of his text. But his words, too, suggest an underlying fear that, having once secured Russia, the conspirators will turn to other countries, notably Britain.

      But even this behaviour is by no means so different from that of the proponents of many scientific theories. Inconsistent though it may be with the scientific ideal, in practice even serious academics sometimes have great difficulty in accepting the refutation of their ideas. They too can be positively irrational, clinging to their views even when they fly in the face of the facts. This phenomenon was demonstrated by Thomas Kuhn in the 1960s with reference to the great paradigm shifts in the history of Western science, but it also applies at a lower level, to scientific theories in the narrower sense. Many economists, for example, still hold fast to the notion that subjects behave entirely rationally – something psychologists claim to have disproved long ago. Similarly, social scientists operating along traditional Marxist lines persist in views that researchers subscribing to other schools of thought regard as obsolete. In these debates, each side accuses the other of mistaking reality, and since both parties reach their conclusions from very different positions, they are highly unlikely to be convinced by any argument proceeding from the theoretical foundation of the opposite point of view.

      What counts as refuted and what does not is thus – at least to a certain degree – also a matter of opinion. It depends on the underlying assumptions of the parties concerned, and here the divide between scientific disciplines is often as great as that between conspiracy theorists and non-conspiracy theorists. As far as the debate between the latter is concerned, we could say – drawing on Kuhn – that the opposing parties operate within different paradigms. What appears logical to one strikes the other as absurd, and vice versa. The problem with conspiracy theories is not, therefore, that they are wrongly described as theories. There are plenty of arguments in favour of such a description. What is problematic is the fact that these theories are based on assumptions regarding human agency and the dynamic of historical processes that are no longer shared by the modern sciences. This explains both the attraction and the stigma of conspiracy theories today.