ONLINE Gastvortrag von M. Giulia Napolitano (Univ. of California, Irvine): „Conspiracy Theories and Propaganda“ [Plakat]

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In a recent book, Quassim Cassam argues that we should understand conspiracy theories primarily as a political phenomenon. Conspiracy theories, for him, are forms of political propaganda. In this talk, I offer an epistemological account of conspiracy theories in order to spell out the relation between conspiracy theories, ideology, and political propaganda. On my view, conspiracy theorists hold their conspiratorial beliefs in a way that is completely immune to revision by counterevidence. The particular form of irrationality that conspiracy theories instantiate can explain why spreading conspiracy theories — spreading self-insulated beliefs — works so successfully as a way of promoting harmful political ideologies.

Giulia Napolitano is a PhD student at the University of California, Irvine, where she is currently working on her dissertation on the philosophy of conspiracy theories. Before that, she was a PhD student at CONCEPT, University of Cologne, and she studied philosophy at the University of Padua and at Utrecht University. Her interests lie mainly in epistemology, philosophy of language, and political philosophy.