ABSTRACT

I argue that ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘conspiracy theorist’ as commonly employed are ‘tonkish’ terms (as defined by Arthur Prior and Michael Dummett), licensing inferences from truths to falsehoods; indeed, that they are mega-tonkish terms, since their use is governed by different and competing sets of introduction and elimination rules, delivering different and inconsistent results. Thus ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘conspiracy theorist’ do not have determinate extensions, which means that generalizations about conspiracy theories or conspiracy theorists do not have determinate truth-values. Hence conspiracy theory theory – psychological or social scientific research into conspiracy theorists and what is wrong with them – is often about as intellectually respectable as an enquiry into bastards and what makes them so mean.

摘要

我认为，常用的“阴谋论”和“阴谋论者”是“愚蠢的”术语（由阿瑟·普赖尔和迈克尔·达米特定义），允许从真理到谎言的推论；事实上，它们是超级术语，因为它们的使用受到不同且相互竞争的引入和消除规则集的控制，从而产生不同且不一致的结果。因此，“阴谋论”和“阴谋论者”不具有确定的外延，这意味着关于阴谋论或阴谋论者的概括不具有确定的真值。因此阴谋论理论对阴谋论者以及他们的问题进行心理或社会科学研究，通常在智力上与对私生子以及他们为何如此卑鄙的调查一样值得尊敬。