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UID:2202@ub.edu
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Madrid:20260422T150000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Madrid:20260422T170000
DTSTAMP:20260325T102336Z
URL:https://www.ub.edu/grc_logos/activities/conspiracy-theories-are-not-fi
 ctions-2/
SUMMARY:Conspiracy Theories Are Not Fictions
DESCRIPTION:Abstract: On September 10\, 2024\, during the Harris-Trump ABC
  presidential debate\, Donald Trump uttered (i):\n\n(i) In Springfield\, 
 they are eating the dogs. The people that came in\, they are eating the ca
 ts. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live 
 there\n\nThe current US Vice President JD Vance had made these allegations
  about Haitian legal immigrants living in Springfield on the social netw
 ork X before Trump\, although the Republican city manager of Springfield
  had told his staff that they were “baseless”. US National Security C
 ouncil spokesman John Kirby called Vance’s comments “dangerous” and 
 a “conspiracy theory... based on an element of racism”. Now\, admittin
 g in a CNN interview on September 15 that the claim was false (a “cat me
 me”)\, Vice President Vance said that “If I have to create stories so 
 that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the Am
 erican people\, then that’s what I’m going to do”. Vance suggests he
 re that both Trump’s and his own utterances about Springfield’s immig
 rants lacked assertoric commitment: they were just fictions (created “st
 ories”)\, even if\, as such\, they were meant to convey assertoric commi
 tment to some general claims (say\, that immigrants cause much suffering t
 o US citizens).\n\nVance is not alone in characterizing his “conspiracy 
 theory” as just a fiction. Some philosophers working on the topic argue
  that this is indeed what conspiracy theories (the term understood pejorat
 ively\, so that they don’t just posit an explanatory conspiracy like the
  official explanation of 9/11 but are manifestly epistemically deficient) 
 in general are. Thus\, Ichino (2022\, forthcoming) defends that they are f
 ictions in the somehow revisionary sense articulated by Kendall Walton\; w
 hile Munro &amp\; Rini (forthcoming) argue that “conspiracy theorizing i
 s a form of shared\, participatory storytelling”. While Munro &amp\; Rin
 i accept that some storytelling is done with assertoric commitment\, they 
 emphasize cases in which it is meant as just fiction. In support of their
  views\, these authors point out that conspiracy theorists don’t show a 
 very strong belief attachment to their views – sometimes accepting incon
 sistent theories – and fail to act on the basis of their conspiracy the
 ories\, among other considerations. In my talk I’ll argue that the data 
 is compatible with a straightforward assertoric commitment to their theori
 es by conspiracy theories\, and that the fictionalist accounts have unacc
 eptable normative implications.\n
CATEGORIES:Seminar
LOCATION:Seminari de Filosofia (UB\, Faculty of Philosophy\, 4th floor)
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 ;X-TITLE=Seminari de Filosofia (UB\, Faculty of Philosophy\, 4th floor):ge
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