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In today's post Quassim Cassam  (Warwick) is presenting his new book, Conspiracy Theories (Polity, 2019). See also his post on the Polity Books blog on why we should not ignore conspiracy theories, and the  interview on the New Books Network on conspiracy theories as a form of propaganda. In my book, I address four questions: What is a conspiracy theory? Why do people believe them? What is the problem with conspiracy theories? How should we respond to them? The take home message of the book is that conspiracy theories are a form of political propaganda. This is, in a technical sense, their function , and also what makes them dangerous. The deeper meaning of conspiracy theories is political, and these theories are as pernicious as the political causes they promote. In practice, these causes have often been extremist causes. Anti-Semitism is part of the DNA of conspiracy theories, and even seemingly apolitical theories are a gateway to more overtly political theories. H...

The Centre for Philosophical Psychology at the University of Antwerp held a workshop on the 27th November 2018 on the topic of belief and belief formation. Here’s a brief summary of the excellent talks given at the workshop, kindly written by Dan Williams . Neil Levy (Oxford/Macquarie) gave the first talk, entitled ‘Not so hypocritical after all: how we change our minds without noticing’. Levy focused on a phenomenon that many people assume to be a form of hypocrisy—namely, cases in which individuals come to change their beliefs about, say, politics when popular opinion (or the popular opinion within their relevant tribe or coalition) changes. (Levy gave the example of many ‘Never Trumpers’ who then apparently changed their opinion of Trump when he came to power). Levy argued that at least some examples of this phenomenon are in fact not best understood as a form of hypocrisy; rather, they arise from people forming beliefs “rationally”. Specifically, he drew attention to two important...

On 15th October at Hornton Grange Matthew Broome , director of the Institute for Mental Health  in Birmingham, chaired the book launch of Delusions in Context (Palgrave Pivot, 2018), a collection of four new papers on delusions. The book is truly interdisciplinary, featuring authors with a background in psychiatry, lived experience, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and philosophy, and is available open access on the Springer website . I edited the book. At the launch, I explained how the book fits with the work we have been doing as part of project PERFECT . In the project one of the objectives is to examine whether beliefs that we consider as epistemically irrational (either not supported by existing evidence, or resistant to new counter-evidence) can nonetheless have some benefits for the person who adopts such beliefs. Benefits could be cashed out in terms of increased wellbeing or reduced anxiety, enhanced motivation to pursue epistemic goals, or better performance in some ...

Today's post on conspiracy theories is by Colin Klein, Peter Clutton and Vince Polito. Colin Klein works on the philosophy of neuroscience at The Australian National University, and is interested in delusions and related phenomena. Colin Klein Peter Clutton is a graduate student in philosophy at The Australian National University, working on delusions and beliefs. is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Cognitive Science at Macquarie University, interested in belief formation, self representation, and altered states of consciousness.  Peter Clutton Vince Polito  is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Cognitive Science at Macquarie University, interested in belief formation, self representation, and altered states of consciousness. Vince Polito Conspiracy theorists are often thought to be distinctively irrational. When you picture a conspiracy theorist, you might imagine someone scouring the internet and joining dots between seemingly unrelated e...