On the occasion of #PhiloFortnight2025, a period of two weeks in the UK dedicated to promoting philosophy, a webinar took place to address the role of philosophy in our understanding of conspiracy theories.
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| Poster of the event |
Panelists included:
- U-Wen Low, an Assistant Professor of Public Religion at the University of Birmingham, interested in ways of applying religious studies to daily life in practical, meaningful ways. U-Wen is an expert on the Book of Revelations and on the interplay between postcolonial thinking and Pentecostalism.
- Joseph Pierre, a Health Sciences Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) with clinical experience working with people diagnosed with psychotic disorders, substance use disorders. His research interests include schizophrenia, delusions and delusion-like beliefs, auditory hallucinations and voice-hearing. Joe recently published a book, False.
- Kathleen Murphy-Hollies, a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham who is interested in rationality across everyday and psychiatric cases. She co-leads a project on conspiracy theories and storytelling.
- Nele Van de Mosselaer, an Assistant Professor at the Philosophy Department, Tilburg University. She is interested in how the boundaries between reality and fiction are blurred in digital game experiences. She is part of the Game Philosophy Network. A videogame Nele co-designed based on her research is available to play. It is about opening doors!
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| U-Wen Low |
U-Wen Low discussed how many conspiracy theories take inspiration from religious texts, including the Bible. And there are some conspiracy theories in the Bible: one example is the theory that Jesus was not resurrected but his body was stolen and a plot was organised to make it look like Jesus was alive (this theory was so prominent that it is addressed in the gospel of Matthew).
The Bible also contains many stories characterised by threats, oppression, and persecution. The use of coded language can be used in this context by oppressed groups to encourage resistance or make people hopeful. An effect of the use of coded language is that a strong in-group is created -- the early Christians can be seen as a cult group attacked both by the Jewish and the Romans. They protected themselves by claiming that God was on their side and their enemies were evil.
This coded language has been used by contemporary defenders of conspiracy theories: an example is the mark of the beast, or the Anti-Christ, phrases that come up again and again in references to contemporary plots. Most recently, the COVID-19 vaccine was called "the mark of the beast" during the pandemic.
What can be done to avoid the spreading of conspiracy theories inspired by the Bible? If conspiracy theories emerge from a lack of meaning and purpose, then in faith communities other sources of meaning and purpose can be found.
Moreover, instead of singling out people as having weird ideas, we can think about improving their epistemic environment so their understanding of evidence and their interpretation of the scriptures can be supported. Promoting literacy of the sacred texts is a way to avoid misinterpretations.
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| Joe Pierre |
Joe Pierre first asked: "What is a conspiracy theory?" For Pierre, it is a theory that rejects authoritative accounts of reality in favour of some plot involving people with malevolent intent that is deliberately kept secret from the public.
Second, Pierre asked why people believe conspiracy theories. Psychologists have identified various cognitive quirks that are associated with endorsing conspiracy theory beliefs. But these quirks are features of all human cognition, and they are not unique to people who endorse conspiracy theories, so they should not be a reason to think that believing conspiracy theories is a pathology.
Pierre proposes three components to a model for the endorsement of conspiracy theory beliefs:
- Mistrust (rejecting the authoritative narrative)
- Misinformation (proposing an alternative narrative)
- Motivated reasoning (evaluating the available information in a biased way)
- Delusions seem to be held with unassailable convictions, whereas conspiracy theories can be entertained in less fixed way.
- Delusions are false, but conspiracy theories can be true.
- Delusions have a self-referential component whereas conspiracy theories are about the world.
- Delusions are not shared but conspiracy theories are shared within sub-cultures.
- Delusions have their bases in the person's subjectivity whereas for conspiracy theories the rationale is misinformation.
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| Nele Van de Mosselaer |
Kathleen Murphy-Hollies and Nele Van de Mosselaer discussed the similarities between conspiratorial theorising and the construction of game communities, a topic that emerged at the intersection of their research interests. One characteristic they notice is the focus on intentionality: people who believe in conspiracy theories tend to see every significant event as something that has been willed by someone for some purpose. This idea that there are patterns to be found gives people a sense of control and meaning.
In games as well, almost nothing is seen as random: in the virtual world of a videogame, everything has been designed by someone for some purpose. So, videogame players are very likely to ascribe special meaning to features of the environment in the game and do not accept that something can be a coincidence.
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| Kathleen Murphy-Hollies |
Another feature of conspiracy theories is that they are fun and have entertainment value. They are engaging and intriguing stories, often more fun than the official explanations. Videogames also have entertainment value: they can be seen as puzzles with solutions. For instance, if there is a key in the room, then the key must be used at some point and contribute to the player making progress with the game.
Everything in the game has a meaning and a purpose and sometimes it is the whole community of players who works together to arrive at a solution. This sense of belonging to a community with shared objectives is also important to conspiratorial thinking: people who endorse the same conspiracy theories meet in fora to analyse what they take to be evidence for their theories and "compare notes".
Each presentation was a lot richer than the brief summaries above. If you want to know more about the presentations in this webinar, you can watch them on YouTube and also check out the answers panelists gave to the questions from the audience.