Conspiratorial Beliefs and Epistemic Agency: The Limits of ‘Rational Debunking’

Catarina Dutilh Novaes (VU University Amsterdam)

ABSTRACT: In recent years, so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ dictating the political and practical choices of a significant portion of citizens in various countries have gained traction (or at least more visibility). What is remarkable about those under the grip of conspiratorial beliefs is that they seem immune to rational (counter)arguments; attempts to ‘debunk’ conspiratorial beliefs with facts, evidence and rational arguments usually fail. The Italian writer Roberto Bui, under his penname Wu Ming 1, views such attempts to rationally debunk conspiratorial beliefs as instances of what he calls reason supremacism: “the belief in the supremacy of rationality at all times, no matter the issue and context. If you’re rational enough, you will always win.” Thus seen, conspiratorial beliefs seem to represent limits to rational argumentation: a type of discourse/belief where the ‘force of the better argument’ seems powerless, thus undermining reason supremacism.

In my talk, I will argue for an alternative interpretation of the apparent ‘evidential self-insulation’ of conspiratorial belief systems. I discuss Wu Ming 1’s concept of conspiracy fantasies, the dimension of enchantment involved in these narratives, the role of epistemic environments in belief formation, and the game-like structure of many conspiratorial belief systems. Adopters of conspiratorial beliefs are not simply ‘irrationally’ resisting counter-evidence. Rather, they are balancing the counter-evidence against higher-order evidence provided by their epistemic environments and looking not only for ‘cold facts’ but also for enchanting narratives to make sense of their experiences. Finally, I argue that what this analysis tells us about the epistemic agency of adopters of conspiratorial beliefs can be extended to other (human) epistemic agents, leading to a more nuanced account of epistemic agency that eschews ‘reason supremacism’.