Living with the conspiracy

Philosophical Forum

Volumn 32, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 265-280

  Basham, Lee ^a  

^a OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33748652583     PISSN: 0031806X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/0031-806X.00065     Document Type: Article

References (11)

1. Jim Marrs's Rule by Secrecy (New York: Harper-Collins, 2000) presents a vast and engaging synthesis of conspiracy theory stretching from the present day back to a bizarre speculation about the real nature of Sumerian proto-civilization
2. The times may be changing: the conspiracy theory plunge is something many are now willing to take in restricted domains (no pun intended). A 1997 Scripps-Howard News Service poll suggests that over 50% of Americans believe that Federal agents aided and abetted John F. Kennedy's assassination. The same poll suggests that after the U.S. Air Force released its recent finding that the "aliens' bodies" allegedly discovered near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 were "crash test dummies," popular confidence that aliens were recovered and are now interned in "Area 51" actually increased. Marrs, Rule by Secrecy, p. 8
3. Brian Keeley, "Of Conspiracy Theories," Journal of Philosophy 56 (1999): 109-26. This paper is a remarkably enjoyable, lucid, and insightful analysis of the issues involved in gauging the importance of conspiracy theory, even if we find ourselves ultimately unsatisfied with its resolution of these issues
4. Keeley, "Of Conspiracy Theories," p. 126
5. Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing (New York: Regan Books, 2001). The text lives up to its egocentric title by being a biographical and ideological sketch of Timothy McVeigh in which he appears sane, intelligent, and deeply committed to the overthrow of the United States federal government, an edifice he regards as the accumulation of hundreds of years of treason against the anti-statist vision of the founders. Lest there be any misconception of a "death bed confessional," American Terrorist dispels any hope that McVeigh regrets the bombing or feels remorse for his involvement. His dominant emotional response is pride
6. Sissela Bok, Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation (New York: Vintage Books, 1984), pp. 47-48
7. Bok, Secrets, p. 50
8. The point is general. For instance, it applies to the competing contentions that "most records can't be faked" and that "virtually all records can be faked." It's an issue of degree which any attempt to resolve returns us to our dilemma: the reliability and stability of records mainly depends on the larger question of the level of conspiratorial activity in the surrounding institutions. This problem is all the more blatant in the digital age where many records take the form of highly malleable digital encodings. Of course, there is also the proven, time-honored technique of losing things
9. Albert Camus' The Stranger is the masterpiece of this vision
10. Recall that throughout World War II, Nazi diplomacy denounced the Allies' accusations of genocide against the Jews as propaganda lies
11. David Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 159-60