By Victoria Lawson
Science and its base epistemological position of scientific realism have long held a privileged position in our culture, politics, and philosophy. However, the recent proliferation of science-oriented conspiracy theories[1] and their peddling by higher authorities does appear, on initial inspection, to be a critique of science and scientific realism. In philosophy there are positions that are critical of scientific realism and science’s privileged position. Scepticism rejects science’s ability to access a mind-independent external world, seeing the subjective mind as inescapable. Thomas Spiegel’s quietism rejects science’s place to sensibly answer philosophical questions. Can science-oriented conspiracy theories transform into an anti-scientific-realist philosophical position, say as conspiratorial thinking? The answer is no, as science-oriented conspiracy theories are based in a wider political critique that is incomprehensive as a critical philosophical position. Conspiratorial thinking is a critique of who holds privileged access to the external world. A thought experiment can elucidate these differences:
A sceptic, a quietist, and a conspiracy theorist walk into a bar and begin talking to a scientist:
The sceptic says: ‘You cannot have knowledge about a mind-independent external world.’
The quietist says: ‘Science cannot answer philosophical questions.’
The conspiracy theorist says: ‘You are lying to me.’
This paper will begin with scientific realism, then move onto versions of scepticism, and finally quietism before describing how conspiratorial thinking does not fit within this philosophical ecosystem.
- Philosophical Positions
I.I. Scientific Realism
Scientific realism is a cluster of beliefs about the nature of truth and the external world as pursuable and made knowable by science. There is a wide variety of specific positions, but most allow for humans to have some access to accurate knowledge about a real, externally-existing world outside of our subjective minds. Scientists do not necessarily require realism to practice, but this is a widely accepted basis for science. For a scientist to be a realist, they must account, convincingly, for how to distinguish between the history of failed scientific theories once accepted as true (phlogiston), the currently accepted theories (evolution), and the ambiguity from the accepted but probably incomplete theories (special and general relativity). This is often the problem anti-realists point to, to argue the inadequacies of realist positions. A scientific realist must, therefore, explain how, or acknowledge to what extent,our current scientific theories accurately succeed “in uncovering the basic structure of the world.”[2] The wide variance in realist positions comes from the strength or weakness of its claim about the accuracy of current theories.
An overview of a few salient scientific realist positions is helpful, before assessing a particular position in detail. First, optimistic positions do see scientific theories giving accurate accounts of the world, as they argue, this is the only position which “does not make the success of science into a miracle.”[3] Michael Devitt takes this position,[4] seeing the world as described by our current widely accepted theories, adding the caveat that this does not include speculative theories.[5] Next, a less strong account can be seen in Richard Boyd,[6] who sees current theories as truer than discredited historical ones, because of testability, arguing replacement is similar in method to science testing theories “against the world.”[7] While current theories can be replaced, they will “retain at least approximate truth.”[8] As such, this progress forward towards truth (the actual mind independent reality) raises epistemological questions about the workability of theories versus their accuracy. Because a workable theory does not necessarily mean it is an accurate reflection of the world, only an approximation.[9] Peter Godfrey-Smith provides the example of Sadi Carnot, whose theory of heat as a fluid fit with some “basic ideas of thermodynamics’, but was in fact only approximately right in accounting for the ‘patterns in the transfer of kinetic energy between molecules.”[10] Finally, conjectural realists, based in Karl Popper’s concept of falsification,[11] do not claim theories are either “approximately true” or “have conclusively identified” aspects in the world, only that realism is “the aim of science.”[12] This wide variance reveals scientific realism is a cluster of beliefs, although, the base premise of an external world which could be knowable by science remains.
A more useful, nuanced, and philosophically minded account of scientific realism is put forward by Godfrey-Smith, who takes a more pessimistic view, acknowledging the epistemological difficulties of realism. He begins by defining realism, as there being a common reality “which has a structure that exists independently of what people think and say about it,” that is naturalised through accepting some dependent-reality in “thoughts, theories and other symbols in ways that might be uncovered by science.”[13] Scientific realism is therefore: “[o]ne actual and reasonable aim of science is to give us accurate descriptions (and other representations) of what reality is like. This project includes giving us accurate representations of aspects of reality that are unobservable.”[14] This acknowledges that some theories do not even aim for realism and that, while our current theories could be discredited, for some, this is unlikely. Godfrey-Smith accounts for falsification while maintaining that some theories are really likely to give accurate accounts of aspects of the world by maintaining a weak belief in the realism of current theories.
I.II. Scepticism
Scepticism is a cluster of anti-realist positions against the realist belief that humans (as subjective minds) have access to the external world. Scepticism can be split into the categories of ancient, through the Pyrrhonic scepticism of the second-century CE Sextus Empiricus, and modern, inspired by Rene Descartes. Sextus’s scepticism can be articulated as an acceptance of the individual “sense-impressions”[15] of an appearance, say of the sweetness of honey. The questioning, and later rejection, of whether this “account given of that appearance” is connected to its “essence” as a judgement of the external world.[16] The sceptical questioning involves seeing an alternative claim to the original claim,[17] say of honey being sour (which also makes a judgement of an aspect of the external world), causing a state of inner turmoil in the perceiver to decide between contradicting sense-impressions. The sceptic chooses instead to suspend judgement on both claims and find mental peace in rejecting mental turmoil.[18] So, honey can be sweet as an experience, but not as a judgement of the external world. This acknowledgment of the limits of sense-impressions and internal peace is liveable, as one acts “in accordance with the normal rules of life,” but does not make judgements of the external world.[19]
By seeing the senses and mind as interconnected, Sextus argued that making judgements from appearances (as perceived through our mind) as accurate to the actual external world is an impossibility, apart from as dogmatic claims (by being unqualified in proof or criterion).[20] Take judgement of the external world X. X requires that a criterion Y is true, which must have proof, or if no proof then it is discredited. If proof of criterion Y, then “it will certainly be necessary for the proof to also to be true” or if not, it is discredited. [21] What makes a proof true? A judgement (or if no judgement then it is discredited) which itself requires a criterion, which itself needs proof, which itself needs a criterion, ad infinitum.[22] This is either a circular argument or a discredited one, neither of which proves the realness of a sense-impression, making such statements dogmatic. Inductive argumentation, present in much of science, uses sense-impressions to make universal claims, is therefore rejected, in this form of scepticism.[23] As many of the claims and theories science makes, when viewed as a sceptic, fall into dogmatic circularity, making scepticism decidedly anti-realist.
Modern scepticism is, largely, inspired by one route to scepticism given in Descartes’ first meditation where he considered the possibility that everything he knows is a deception controlled by an evil demon.[24] This sceptical consideration is soon solved by Descartes, but modern sceptics see the discovery of the located transcendental self, the “I think, therefore I am,” as fundamental.[25] Thomas Nagel takes an epistemological critique to scientific realism through the idea of a view from nowhere that is present in scientific thinking. This point originates from the definition of objectivity as knowledge gained outside the self, as a subjective being.[26] Nagel sees “to leave one’s own point of view [the I who thinks] behind entirely without ceasing to exist,” is “unintelligible.”[27] Yet, accepting the all-encompassing subjectivity (of Sextus) is undesirable, making objectivity desirable, if indeed untenable.[28] To resolve this problem Nagel suggests a weak scepticism that sees our own view being instrumental, not essential, “so that the form of our understanding would be specific to ourselves, but its content would not be.”[29] Nagel explains this through Einstein’s theory of relativity where “absolute space and time was revealed to be a mere appearance” as “events are objectively located in relativistic space-time, whose division into separate spatial and temporal dimensions depends on one’s point of view.”[30] The subjective space-time wins out over the objective space-time claim but its contents (there being space-time) escapes in a limited way from extreme scepticism. This does not mean Nagel’s position does away with scepticism, as all claims could be discovered to be false. Hence, scepticism is an anti-realist position in both modern and ancient varieties, because it rejects either in a strong (ancient) or weak (modern) way the realist claim of accurate access to an external world.
I.III. Quietism
Quietism is a particularly amorphous collection of critiques[31] against traditional philosophy, based in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s posthumous work Philosophical Investigations.[32] A very wide definition of the literature can be summarised, as “the disavowal or outright rejection of a certain object or element of philosophy.”[33] While there are quietists whose critiques focus on realism and anti-realism,[34] I will instead discuss a quietist critique of theory as it relates to the place of scientific theorising. I will take this reading from Thomas Spiegel,[35] who himself took inspiration from John McDowell’s[36] reading of Wittgenstein.[37] McDowell sees three phases of quietist critique: (1) A suspicion of substantive philosophy as “a practice of putting forward theses” to problems;[38] (2) A therapeutic response where progress “is not achieved by solution, but by dissolution of problems, qua diagnosis of misconceptions that give rise to the felt need for theory;”[39] (3) A philosophical peace and/or quiet from realising the problems presented in substantive philosophy are irrelevant, which, for McDowell, is “a distinctive kind of philosophical achievement.”[40] A quietist critique of theory presents a critique of the place of science rather than a critique of scientific realism.
Spiegel sees the suspicion and rejection of theory as crucial in quietism, clarifying that theory is quasi-scientific theory, based, for him, in Wittgenstein’s disavowal of scientism.[41] Wittgenstein states that “[p]hilosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does.”[42] Spiegel sees the natural sciences (astronomy, biology, chemistry, earth sciences and physics)[43] as “theoretical explanation” tools that are problematic in “philosophical practice.”[44] What counts as problematic scientising is not clearly defined by either Wittgenstein or Spiegel, as to do so would be to fall into the trap of substantive science-style theorizing.[45] Rather, Spiegel sees rejecting quasi-scientific theory as a lens through which one may assess new philosophical information using a McDowellian therapeutic approach.[46] So, reversing the question: what is not rejected as quasi-scientific theorising? Wittgenstein suggests through his own positive remark philosophy “must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place.”[47] This means that philosophy should bring “difficult subject matters in a form that makes them intelligible” through a conceptual overview of a field specifying “connections, exclusions, analogies and disanalogies.”[48] By interpreting Wittgenstein through McDowell, and focusing on the former’s critique of scientism, Spiegel describes a critique of quasi-scientific theorising.
- Conspiratorial Thinking
So far, we have reviewed science realism, scepticism, and quietism to explore what science is, and what a philosophical critique of it looks like. In summary, Spiegel’s quietism is a rejection of quasi-scientific theories in philosophy, advocating instead for a therapeutic response to philosophical problems. This is a critique of the place of science and its style of theorising. Scepticism is the rejection of our ability to access the external world, through our subjective experiences (strong), or a caveat that all knowledge is the view from subjective minds (weak). Scepticism, in both forms, is an anti-realist critique of scientific realism. Godfrey Smith’s scientific realism asserts that an “actual and reasonable aim of science is to give us accurate descriptions (and other representations) of what reality is like.”[49] Science is a discipline of study that seeks to provide an accurate account of the world through theorising from observation and experimentation. The critique of scientific realism (scepticism), and the critique of the place of science (quietism), both appear to be taken up by conspiracy theorising, however, the appearance is not the judgement, and science-oriented conspiracy theories are actually neither critique. The following section describes and assesses the critique actually given by conspiracy theories, to assess whether this critique is philosophical.
Q: What is a conspiracy theory?
The account I take, for science-oriented conspiracy theories, is based in Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s Merchants of Doubt (2010), and Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger (2023).[50] The description of conspiracy begins in the former, where doubt was mongered from the 1950s about specific scientific claims (whose political acceptance entailed regulatory and behavioural change), by a few physicists outside their expert fields (and outside the realm of science), in collaboration with “think tanks and private corporations” to maintain the status quo (of no regulation or change in behaviour).[51] They “denied the existence of scientific agreement, even though they, themselves, were pretty much the only ones who disagreed.”[52] Both, the United States government and the legacy media took them seriously, as if it was a side “in a scientific debate,” misunderstanding “these were not scientific debates.”[53] This doubt mongering occurred with tobacco and second-hand smoke causing cancer, pollution causing acid rain, the ozone layer, and global warming.[54] Then, in the 1990s, they realised it was easier to cast doubt on science in general,[55] which is the connection I draw between doubt mongering, and the current proliferation of science-oriented conspiracy theories. Once science in general has successfully been cast into doubt, doubting scientific consensus no longer requires lobbying by scientists or legitimising by legacy media. Klein explores a mirror world of conspiracy thinking where conspiracy peddlers, who do not need to be respected scientists, “rile up anger about the Davos elites, at Big Tech and Big Pharma,” but maintain the same goal, by directing this anger “away from the economic policies – deregulation, privatization, austerity.”[56] I see a political-style motivation behind science-oriented conspiracy theories to maintain the status quo, whether that be pro-smoking, pro-pollution, anti-climate change, and so on.
So, what is a conspiracy theory? I will define it as: the rejection of scientific claims within the political and social sphere, so as to maintain the power of individuals to decide upon the health of their families, and the earth in general. This definition ties together the two main elements I perceive in most science-oriented conspiracy theories: (1) An inactivity for requested changes, despite a scientific-consensus claim; and (2) A focus on who has misguided or lied to us. These points, and the non-science-critical issues they bring up, render the critique given by conspiracy theories of science non-philosophical.
Q: Is it a critique of scientific realism?
Conspiratorial thinking is often argued for as someone just being sceptical, or asking questions.[57] This takes a colloquial understanding of scepticism, as part of philosophical-like personal inquiry.[58] Yet, this appears to place the decision-making capacity on the non-expert individual, ignoring the role of scepticism in “the scientific process, where findings must be tested by other researchers in order to discern—by systematically casting doubt on such findings—whether they are rejected or finally reach scientific consensus.”[59] As such, Lawrence Torcello labels this, “pseudoskepticism,” where scientific-consensus (based in ‘methodological scepticism’) is rejected, while, the conspiracist appropriates “the epistemological authority of science,” to make counter claims.[60] Conspiracists, not only ignore the methodical scepticism of science, but demand of it “absolute certainty, which constitutes an obsolete conception of science.”[61] As has been shown, there are variations to the claim of scientific realism, with few assuming the certainty of all current theories, and none which claim the absence of doubt in scientific research.[62]
The philosophical sceptical positions elucidate the pseudo-ness, of conspiratorial thinkings appropriation of scepticism. Conspiracists do not doubt the human mind’s access to an external world (ancient sceptic claim), as they are perfectly comfortable making counterclaims, and having alternative facts, which make judgements about the external world. For example, flat earthers do not just doubt the sphericity of the Earth, they claim it is flat.[63] Conspiracy thinking, is therefore, not a kind of Pyrrhonic scepticism, which accepts only the world of appearances, but a version of dogmatism, which counters the original sense-impression with its opposite, and accepts that. This analogy is helpful, as it describes the irrationality within the conspiracist’s doubt. If a conspiracist doubts the validity of global warming, say, they must assume an international conspiracy to deceive (I will return to this), and/or reject the methods of experimentation and observation within the consensus claim. As such, what methods exist to prove their claim?[64] One assumes, only those that could not survive methodological scepticism, which is only a critique of current scientific consensus, by way of dogmatism.
The methods often relied upon by conspiracists are those that require little expertise, can be performed personally, and are observable. This return to subjective first-person knowledge is pseudo-Cartesian and mis-represents what is required by scientific experimentation. Take vaccines, for example: MMR vaccines have been proven not to cause autism through what could be seen as the scientific method of scepticism, yet, the belief about the cause of autism remains strong in conspiratorial circles.[65] The vaccination age-recommendation is similar to the age that many children are diagnosed with autism, meaning this is a case of correlation, which has been disproven as causation, with the high profile retraction of the scientific publications that apparently demonstrated the causal link between the MMR vaccine and autism.[66] But subjectively, having your child or children you know be diagnosed with something after vaccination can feel like proof of causation. But this feeling of proof is incorrigible, as there is no evidence that can be given to disprove the first-person knowledge.[67] As Klein exclaims of this dogmatic reliance on feeling, “I am always struck by their sense that they have been cheated or wronged; that someone or something robbed them of what they were sure were their rightful, neurotypical kids and substituted them with ones who were different and defective; that their families had somehow been invaded.”[68] This feeling is connected to what it means to be lied to by science; however, this is a critique of the place of science to decide things and not of scientific realism, because it is a statement of realism to say vaccines caused my child’s autism, or that climate change is a hoax, or that the earth is flat.
Q: Is it a critique of the place of science?
If conspiratorial thinking is not a critique of scientific realism, maybe it is a critique of the place of science, against scientific consensus requiring regulation and change in behaviour (changing the status quo). The short answer is yes, but it is not through a philosophical critique of what counts as a political reason, instead it is through a political worldview of denialism. Take Spiegel’s quietism, which critiques science-style theories within philosophy. He is saying that this sort of theory (whatever it says), cannot be the sort of practice required in philosophy; this is a critique of form not content. Conspiracists critique the current practice of science as deceptive, meaning it should not affect politics, which is not making the argument that science is not the sort of truth-finding method capable of affecting politics. This is a critique of content, not form; it appears the critique allows for the possibility that non-deceptive scientific claims could affect politics because conspiracists form claims, which, if accepted, “would reveal a lie of utmost importance,” and would require those who lied to be exposed.[69] If Covid-19 is a hoax, then those medical experts who communicate it to the public, and liaise with politicians for policies to change social behaviour, require exposing.[70] This is about conspiracy, and the place of lying scientists, not about the place of science.
What does this denialism, and focus on the who which conspired to lie, entail? One cannot reject all claims which entail a science-oriented conspiracy of deception because there simply are cases where it is true. While denialists do, “create an enemy,” sometimes these “specific power groups” really are deceptive.[71] Take vaccination conspiracies that see profit collected from Covid-19 vaccines by private pharmaceutical companies as evidence of deception. Well, private pharmaceutical companies did conspire to deceive the public for profit in the case of marketed non-additive pain medication (oxycodone).[72] Respected physicists Frederick Seitz and Fred Singer did dedicate themselves, in retirement, to mislead politicians and the media about tobacco smoking, which will have caused people to make the choice to continue smoking, believing there was no scientific-consensus about smoking’s link to cancer.[73] They did so because they “viewed regulation as the slippery slope to Socialism,” taking action to not “admit the truth about the impacts of industrial capitalism.”[74] Profit and political motives drove these pharmaceutical companies and retired physicists to deception.
Science-oriented conspiracies should give us pause to consider what it means to have believed those who we feel should have told the truth, but who instead lied and deceived us. Klein gives us some elucidation, in this respect, clarifying the distinction of our deceptors, between individualistic villain narratives, and capitalism; “[t]here is, of course, a difference between a system doing what it was designed to do, no matter the human costs, and secret cabals of nefarious individuals interfering with an otherwise fair and just democracy.”[75] What the conspiracies do get right is the feeling, the feeling of living in this world, “the feeling that every human misery is someone else’s profit, the feeling of being exhausted by predation and extraction, the feeling that important truths are being hidden,” but, instead of critiquing the system, conspiracies wrap up this immense feeling in neat conspiratorial stories.[76] The sublimation, of our fears and frustrations, present in conspiratorial thinking, is neither a critique of scientific realism nor of the place of science, but of a system that has failed to look after us, which is a wider and distinctly political-style critique.
- Conclusion
Throughout this piece, through the discussion of philosophical critiques of science and its premise of scientific realism, I have argued that conspiracy theories are fundamentally unintelligible within the philosophical conceptual field. They are, rather, a political critique of lying in modern politics, the system of capital, and, possibly, science communication. So, finally, returning to the bar, and the conversation with the scientist, we can see exactly why the conspiracy theorist says, ‘you are lying to me.’ This accusation entails, not a criticism of scientific realism (scepticism), or the place of science (quietism) in politics, but rather, a denial that a scientist is communicating to us an accurate account of a world that we feel unsettled by.
Victoria is a recent graduate of a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in philosophy, completing a thesis on Val Plumwood’s counter-centric solution to anthropocentrism as transformative through the home-dwelling spider encounter. Her academic interests include critical theory, aesthetics, feminist philosophy, environmentalism, and ancient history. After reading this piece, if you are interested in collaborating on any of these topics, please reach out.
Featured image: Colin Hobson via Unsplash.
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[1] Sometimes a theory is clearly conspiratorial (flat earthers), but other times it is not (the origins of Covid-19). With complicated boundary cases, I will not provide a definition of what makes a theory conspiratorial. Rather, I will focus on clearly conspiratorial theories that showcase common conspiratorial beliefs. This decision is based in Naomi Klein’s elucidation of conspiracy theories: Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (Penguin Press, 2023), 228.
[2] Peter Godfrey-Smith, “Scientific Realism,” in Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (The University of Chicago Press, 2021), 177.
[3] Godfrey Smith, “Scientific Realism,” 178; Jack Smart, Between Science and Philosophy (Random House, 1968); Hilary Putnam, Meaning and the Moral Sciences (Routledge and Kegan Paul).
[4] Michael Devitt, Realism and Truth (Princeton University Press, 1997); Godfrey Smith, “Scientific Realism,” 175.
[5] Godfrey-Smith, “Scientific Realism,” 175.
[6] Richard Boyd, “On the Current Status of the Issue of Scientific Realism,” Erkenntnis (1975-) 19, no. 1/3 (1983): 41-82, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20010835; Alan Chalmers, What Is This Thing Called Science? (University of Queensland Press, 2013), 219.
[7] Chalmers, Science, 219.
[8] Chalmers, Science, 219.
[9] Godfrey-Smith, “Scientific Realism,” 177.
[10] Godfrey-Smith, “Scientific Realism,” 178-9.
[11] See further in Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969); Karl Popper, Realism and the Aim of Science (Hutchinson, 1983).
[12] Chalmers, Science, 221.
[13] Godfrey-Smith, “Scientific Realism,” 176.
[14] Godfrey-Smith, “Scientific Realism,” 176.
[15] Sextus Empiricus, “Outlines of Pyrrhonism,” in Philosophical Skepticism, ed. Charles Landesman and Roblin Meeks (Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 38, https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470693476.ch4.
[16] Empiricus, “Outlines of Pyrrhonism,” 37.
[17] Empiricus, “Outlines of Pyrrhonism,” 36.
[18] Empiricus, “Outlines of Pyrrhonism,” 36; Katja Vogt, “Ancient Skepticism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Zalta and Uri Nodelman, published Winter 2022, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/skepticism-ancient/.
[19] Empiricus, “Outlines of Pyrrhonism,” 38.
[20] Empiricus, “Outlines of Pyrrhonism,” 40-1.
[21] Empiricus, “Outlines of Pyrrhonism,” 40-1.
[22] Empiricus, “Outlines of Pyrrhonism,” 41.
[23] Empiricus, “Outlines of Pyrrhonism,” 44.
[24] René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (Ryerson University, 2022), 1.1-12.
[25] René Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy (Hackett Publishing Company, 1999), xvii-44.
[26] Thomas Nagel, “The View from Nowhere,” in Philosophical Skepticism, ed. Charles Landesman and Roblin Meeks (Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 79-89, https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470693476.ch7.
[27] Nagel, “The View from Nowhere,” 79.
[28] Nagel, “The View from Nowhere,” 79.
[29] Nagel, “The View from Nowhere,” 86.
[30] Italics added; Nagel, “The View from Nowhere,” 87.
[31] See further explanation of amorphous-ness in: Stelios Virvidakis, “Varieties of Quietism,” Philosophical Inquiry 30, no. 1/2 (2008): 157-175.
[32] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 4th Edition (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2010).
[33] Thomas Spiegel. Naturalism, Quietism, and the Threat to Philosophy (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, 2021), 110.
[34] For further reading see: Kit Fine, “The Question of Realism,” Philosophers’ Imprint 1 (2001): 1-30; Jakob Hohwy, “Quietism and Cognitive Command,” The Philosophical Quarterly 47, no. 189 (1997): 495–500. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9213.00073; for scientific realism see: Crispin Wright, Truth and objectivity (Harvard University Press, 1992).
[35] Spiegel, Naturalism, Quietism; Thomas Spiegel, “What Is Philosophical Quietism (Wittgensteinian and Otherwise)?” in Quietism, Agnosticism and Mysticism, ed. Krishna Mani Pathak (Springer, 2021), , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3223-5_1.
[36] John McDowell, “Wittgensteinian ‘QUIETISM,’” Common Knowledge (New York, N.Y.) 15, no. 3 (2009): 365–72. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-2009-018; John McDowell, Mind and World (Harvard University Press, 1996).
[37] Spiegel, “Philosophical Quietism,” 20.
[38] Spiegel, “Philosophical Quietism,” 20; McDowell, “”Quietism,”” 370-1; Spiegel, Naturalism, Quietism, 123-4.
[39] Charles Larmore, “Attending to Reasons,” in Reading McDowell: On Mind and World, ed. Nicholas Smith (Routledge, 2002), 194; Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §255; McDowell, “”Quietism,”” 371; Spiegel, “Philosophical Quietism,” 20; Spiegel, Naturalism, Quietism, 124.
[40] McDowell, “”Quietism,”” 371; Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §133; Spiegel, “Philosophical Quietism,” 21; Spiegel, Naturalism, Quietism, 124.
[41] Further reading on Wittgenstein’s disavowal of scientism: Warren Goldfarb, “Wittgenstein, mind, and scientism,” The Journal of Philosophy, 86(11), 637; Han-Johann Glock, A Wittgenstein Dictionary (Blackwell, 1996), 345; Jonathan Beale and Ian Kidd, Wittgenstein and Scientism (Routledge, 2017), 73; Bernard Williams, “Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline,” in Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline (Princeton University Press, 2006), 196.
[42] Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and the Brown Books (Blackwell, 1969), 18; Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, (University of Chicago Press, 1980), 69; Spiegel, Naturalism, Quietism, 23.
[43] Stephen Barr, A Students Guide to Natural Science (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006), 1.
[44] Spiegel, Naturalism, Quietism, 47; Spiegel, “Philosophical Quietism,” 23, 25.
[45] Spiegel, “Philosophical Quietism,” 25.
[46] For examples of possible examples see Spiegel, “Philosophical Quietism,” 25-6.
[47] Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §109; Spiegel, “Philosophical Quietism,” 27.
[48] Gordon Baker and Peter Hacker, “Surveyability and Surveyable Representations,” in Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning (Blackwell, 2005), 307; Spiegel, “Philosophical Quietism,” 27.
[49] Godfrey-Smith, “Scientific Realism,” 176.
[50] Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (Bloomsbury Press, 2010); Klein, Doppelganger.
[51] Conway and Oreskes, Merchants of Doubt, 4-5.
[52] Conway and Oreskes, Merchants of Doubt, 7.
[53] Conway and Oreskes, Merchants of Doubt, 7.
[54] Conway and Oreskes, Merchants of Doubt, 8.
[55] Conway and Oreskes, Merchants of Doubt, 217.
[56] Klein, Doppelganger, 285.
[57] Jose Maria Ariso, “What Do Science and Historical Denialists Deny – If Any – When Addressing Certainties in Wittgenstein’s Sense?” Open Philosophy 8, no. 1 (2025): 1-2. https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2025-0060; Matthew Slater, Joanna K. Huxster, Julia E. Bresticker, and Victor LoPiccolo, “Denialism as Applied Skepticism: Philosophical and Empirical Considerations,” Erkenntnis 85 (2020), 871–90.
[58] Ariso, “What do Science and Historical Denialists Deny,” 1.
[59] Ariso, “What do Science and Historical Denialists Deny,” 1; Robert Merton, “The Normative Structure of Science,” in The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, ed. Robert Merton (University of Chicago Press, 1973), 267–78; Robert Merton, “Science and Technology in a Democratic Order,” Journal of Legal and Political Sociology 1, (1942), 115–26.
[60] Lawrence Torcello, “The Ethics of Belief, Cognition, and Climate Change Pseudoskepticism: Implications for Public Discourse,” Topics in Cognitive Science 8, no.1 (2016), 24; Ariso, “What do Science and Historical Denialists Deny,” 2.
[61] Ariso, “What do Science and Historical Denialists Deny,” 4; David Peat, From Certainty to Uncertainty: The Story of Science and Ideas in the Twentieth Century (Henry Joseph Press, 2002).
[62] Conway and Oreskes, Merchants of Doubt, 31.
[63] Ariso, “What do Science and Historical Denialists Deny,” 5-6.
[64] Ariso, “What do Science and Historical Denialists Deny,” 6.
[65] Klein, Doppelganger, 196; Thomas Aechtner, Antivaccination and Vaccine Hesitancy: A Professional Guide to Foster Trust and Tackle Misinformation (Routledge, 2024), 141, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003312550.
[66] Sathyanarayana Rao and Chittaranjan Andrade, “The MMR Vaccine and Autism: Sensation, Refutation, Retraction, and Fraud,” Indian journal of psychiatry, 53(2), 95–96. https://doi.org/10.4103/0019-5545.82529.
[67] Torcello, “The Ethics of Belief,” 22; Ariso, “What do Science and Historical Denialists Deny,” 9.
[68] Klein, Doppelganger, 196.
[69] Ariso, “What do Science and Historical Denialists Deny,” 8.
[70] Ariso, “What do Science and Historical Denialists Deny,” 8.
[71] Ariso, “What do Science and Historical Denialists Deny,” 9.
[72] Barry Meier, “Origins of an Epidemic: Purdue Pharma Knew Its Opioids Were Widely Abused,” The New York Times, May 29, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-oxycontin.html.
[73] Conway and Oreskes, Merchants of Doubt, 4-5.
[74] Conway and Oreskes, Merchants of Doubt, 249-50.
[75] Klein, Doppelganger, 229.
[76] Klein, Doppelganger, 242.
EXORDIUM 