Are Conspiracy Theories Politically Unreasonable?

This paper addresses under which conditions, if any, conspiracy theories can be included in democratic practices. Prior philosophical literature has largely focused on evaluating conspiracy theories as epistemic explanations of social phenomena. This paper builds on the literature by evaluating conspiratorial thinking as a political practice in the context of democratic erosion. In doing so, this paper conceptualizes a normative framework for the inclusion, as well as principled exclusion, of conspiracy theories from democratic discourse. This framework thus addresses the normatively ambivalent character of conspiratorial thinking by sorting democratically useful from destructive ones. Drawing on deliberative theories on public reason liberalism, the paper argues that conspiracy theories tend to be inaccessible as public reasons because they rely on inaccessible evidence and employ epistemically self-sealing reasoning. Conspiracy theories thus violate democratic reciprocity and respect, not due to their substantive or moral content, but procedurally, by being epistemically non-public. Consequently, the paper develops a principle of epistemic unreasonableness with three criteria: accessibility, i.e. not relying on secret or insider knowledge, revisability, i.e. being open to critique, and falsifiability, i.e. providing observable implications that would disprove the theory. Conspiracy theories failing to meet these criteria are thus unreasonable and principally anathema to the procedure of deliberative public reason. Crucially, however, there is nothing intrinsic to conspiratorial thinking that presupposes such failure. Consequently, despite their inherent narratives of secrecy, conspiracy theories can, in principle, be presented in an epistemically reasonable manner. The paper thus defends a particularist stance, arguing that conspiracy theories cannot be categorically excluded from public reason without evaluating them individually. The paper furthermore argues that conspiracy theories, when presented as reasons in democratic discourse, tend to voice democratic concerns, despite paradoxically contributing to the erosion of democratic norms and practices. In addition to this, in a non-ideal context of democratic erosion, conspiracies are more likely to be empirically true. A normative critique of the practice should therefore be presented as a “soft” or immanent critique, grounded in conspiracists’ own democratic principles and concerns. This approach has the additional pragmatic advantage of avoiding the retroactive reinforcement of conspiratorial narratives, which a strictly exclusionary and “strong” critique risks enabling. The paper thus concludes that while some conspiracy theories are strictly epistemically unreasonable, a communicative and tolerant approach is preferable when engaging with conspiracists. In sum, the paper argues that for conspiracy theories to be included in deliberative public reason, they must meet a principle of epistemic reasonableness. The paper thus distinguishes between reasonable and unreasonable conspiracy theories, enabling the former to be included as productive democratic input. While the latter are unreasonable, such conspiracists nevertheless tend to be democratically orientated and may be able to reformulate their theories in an epistemically reasonable manner.