Flickr/Lettuce. Some rights reserved.There have been many studies in psychology and sociology about who believes in conspiracy theories, and why one may believe them. Which features of the human mind, and human societies, make these beliefs possible? Studies range from the detection and measure of those beliefs, to the political and psychological predictors of those beliefs, and the cognitive biases (regarding causal or intentional attribution) that make us prone to adopt conspiracy theories, including the social mechanisms that support their diffusion, in the real world, or online.
But conspiracy theories raise a simple but difficult philosophical question: why should we not believe in them? When we hear someone who claims that the moon landing was faked, or that Princess Diana was killed by the Mossad, we know that these are silly fantasies. But what is the general principle according to which those theories are, indeed, wrong, or irrational? This is much less intuitive or obvious, and actually it’s very hard to make such a principle explicit.
