We have broad agreement that conspiracism is irrational as far as the type of explanations it is willing to entertain and that it is strongly anti-authoritarian.

The first is the epistemological component and the second one is a psychological component of C.

But this is precisely the intellectual posture of much of postmodernist thought but with an edition of a meta level: it has become self conscious by developing meta -narrative that describes and rationalizes its posture.

So it can deploy theory to characterize itself and its competition and to defend and promote itself.

Postmodernism in other words is conpiracism that has become an ideology.

This I guess is why pseudo-philosophers like Derrida and Baudrillard come across in their work like cons and their work feels like a con-game :
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/magazine/20wwln_q4.html?ex=1290142800&en=98fd0b1b0e7f8c58&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

An argument could be made which says that the criticism made by these people ( Modernity and co. ) of conspiracism is a priori and hence unscientific .

That is to say they use a priori reasoning to justify ignoring empirical evidence but this is unscientific the critic goes. So it is *they* who are unscientific and not the conspiracists. Does this work ?

No because the type of reasoning used to dismiss conspiracism is not alien to science at all. To see this consider an example : I am a working astronomer and one day I receive a manuscript proving that the earth is flat and I throw it in the dustbin am I being unscientific ?

No because although I am acting on law-grade procedure I am acting on lifetime of experience that tells me that earth is not flat. But is this a priori ? No it is inductive essentially and hence is not anti-empirical.

It is a priori only in an uninteresting sense that it does not involve collecting any *new * evidence.

Seriously to see what passes for ‘thought ‘ in continental philosophy these days see this interview with the pseudo-philosopher : http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/magazine/20wwln_q4.html?ex=1290142800&en=98fd0b1b0e7f8c58&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

I am not sure that global warming skepticism really belongs in a conjunction with racism like that. And I really hope that the segue into the next sentence was not any sort of insinuation – but given some of the foregoing it would be nice of you to clarify that point for me.

Aaaargh!
Seriously I have been through this before – but the editors blog did in fact appear on the BBC masthead and did in fact pander to Conspiracy theories, and the editor who posted was involved with the making of the show.

Or am I wrong on any of those points?

I did not harbour an innate suspicion that the BBC would engage in such pandering on the contrary from the very first I said that:
It is incredible that the BBC has started to actively propagate 911 conspiracies.
And I meant incredible in the sense that I found it scarcely believable. That is why I later asked whether the producers comments had in fact been indicative of the show.

I am glad that the BBC show solidly debunked the conspiracy theorists, but remain confused as to why the pre-show publicity gave such a different impression, but then I suppose it may well be for the same reason that TV Drama’s and soaps regularly mislead their viewers about the contents of forthcoming episodes – promising deaths or marriages or resolution to unresolved sexual tensions that all never materialise. Or maybe the theory that it was done to draw in those most susceptible to believing such theories, and might be accounted a public service, even if it was accomplished by a slightly disreputable tactic.

Anyway sorry to the BBC for doubting them, but damned if I will offer an apology to the likes of Herman and Paul. And Paul I actually do watch a good portion of the BBC’s output and in the many debates over BBC licenses here etc have praised what I really like – and precisely because of that was shocked at Mike Rudin’s piece appearing on the BBC site. You and others have consistently misrepresented me and not one of you have actually given any sort of response on the actual Rudin piece at all.

you expressed it so well

I think the question of how a particular conspiracy theory gains momentum or critical mass is interesting, and how with some political groupings there is a greater propensity to express their beliefs in this context, is interesting

on the ME, if you have the time, and the demands of academia are probably high at the moment, why not consider a short post outlining more questions than answers (as clearly anything could happen, and we don’t know how things might evolve, even if we wish them to turn out for the best)

Firstly, apologies to modernity for not having answered him earlier: it was either this or saving the fate of human scholarship and the future of science, and the latter won. Yet, in short order, I would be delighted to comment on the current ME situation, except that it is off-topic on this thread and, anyway, a comprehensive piece is probably too long for a post on a thread.

Next, to the “conspirational mind”. As a matter of principle, I don’t mind assigning the worst-possible characteristicts to right-wingers and to postmodernists. Yet, I believe that the origins of the conspitarional mind go much deeper and reach the bedrock of human psyche, rather than a specific ideology.

“I don’t know” is among the most difficult phrases known. To accept the limits of our (current) knowledge is tough. It shatters our belief in order of things, a belief whch serves as a psychological crutch to all of us. We find it difficult to accept the basic stochasticity (if this is the right phrase) and randomness of life, of it being a sum-total of events that often have no immediate rhyme and reason, which don’t add up to joined-up chain of consequences. Thus, we embrace theories that provide illusory order in a disordered universe: religion, Marxism etc. Thus, we embrace conspiracy theories.

The point of conspiracy theories is that they provide faux-logical chain of consequences. Events at the “micro” level are not a sequence of fuck-ups, misunderstandings and action in a fog of uncertainty. Oh, no: there is a superior intelligence hiding behind all “that”, a deliberate, yet invisible hand.

Of course, all this is based on deliberate suspension of disbelief. Thus the US government, an outfit that can’t organise a piss-up in an Iraqi brewery, can secretly engineer 9/11… Thus NASA, an outfit whose sheer incompetence brings tears to the eyes of every scientifically-competent individual, could fake for the last 39 years the moon landings. But suspension of disbelief is something that our species needs.

Well into the BBC’s reality anyway. Not sure that’s the same as mine :-)

we will still need to say something about the fact that anti-authoritarianism is essential component of this mindset.

Excellent point, after I wrote the above I thought how I’d left out that scepticism of the rule and the ruled, which is common in that way of thinking.

Your point on “trust” hits the nail on the head, also how some people disregard the most plausible and evidential conclusion only to pick up on the most absurd.

And thinking of 911 and planes crashing into the towers (which I watched on television life), then for the 911 conspiracy theorists to concoct that explosives must have been placed in the buildings for them to collapse as they did, or that planes were remotely flown, etc. is it hard to argue with, because it is blatantly so absurd.

In terms of numbers I am not sure “most” is correct, I think “some” is more applicable although I suspect that irrationality and scepticism is an aspect of human evolution, just how much each person has varies?

More broadly I think that we are all probably superstitious, to one degree or the other, even the most ardent rationalists probably have some minor superstitious belief.

I think the question becomes: how dominant is that irrational thinking in us? minor feature or a major component of a character? naturally it varies from individual to individual, but I think we could accept that for some people it is a major element of their existence, with conspiracy theorists and the immature that irrationality is a large chunk of their life.

My impression is that as humans we are somewhat pre-programmed by evolution to accept some things on “faith”, to believe in what we haven’t seen or probably cannot prove definitively at that moment, I was reading an article some time ago on the benefits of some “nonrational” thinking, taking things on “faith”

For example, a caveman wishes to cross the river, but he doesn’t know really what is on the other side, it may be worse than his existing conditions, so to cross over he has to take certain actions even if he’s not sure of the consequences or what he might meet (a nasty animal), thus placing “faith” in events yet to come, whose outcome he cannot precisely predict or guarantee.

That being the case, I think we should expect such behaviour, but not condone it and try wherever possible to force people to investigate the issues based on facts, rationality and evidence rather than the mumbo-jumbo which is increasingly common nowadays, however, with some 911 folks I doubt that no end of discussion would suffice