Conspiracy Theories According to Mandik

According to Mandik, in his article “Shit Happens” the definition of a conspiracy theory is:

  1. Explanation of
  2. Historical events in terms of
  3. Intentional states of multiple agents (the conspirators), who among other things,
  4. Intent the historical events to occur and
  5. Keep their intentions and actions secret.

In his definition, Mandik omits certain elements from Coady and Keeley’s definitions. This is not on account of him having any opposition to these proposed elements of the definitions, but being neutral and reserving judgment on these elements. Specifically, he omits the need for a conspiracy to run counter to any official story, as postulated by Coady.
Mandik only seeks to defend the idea that these conditions are the ones necessary for something to be considered a conspiracy, and that anything which satisfies all these conditions is a conspiracy.
It should be clarified that in the second point, a historical event does not refer to a type of historical events, but one specifical event that occurred in the past. For example, the 1973 CIA-backed coup d'etat of Augusto Pinochet, not coup d'etat in general.
Mandik also puts a lot of emphasis in the last three points on the intentional states of the conspirators, where we wish to discover the agent's believes in desires. Which means they are subject to “entanglement” and “holism”. Entanglement is changing one's actions based on the perception of what others will do. Holism is a difficulty that arises from trying to explain someone's actions based on their beliefs and desires when it is impossible to know what they truly are. It is important to note that these issues can usually be resolved by asking the agent, but in this case, because secrecy is a necessary condition this is not the case.
Mandik also presents the idea that conspiracy theories are never more likely to be true than any theory that presents that it is a coincidence, they are at least equally likely.

Bibliography
1. Pete Mandik (2007). Shit Happens. Episteme, 4, pp 205-218 doi:10.3366/epi.2007.4.2.205
_c
Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License