AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

M. Giulia Napolitano describes belief in many conspiracy theories as exhibiting ‘extreme stickiness’. Advocates of these conspiracy theories can seem impervious to the influence of evidence that tells against their favoured theory. They fail to abandon belief when an impartial party would. Napolitano describes conspiracy theories as ‘self-insulated’ to help explain their stickiness. As she points out, many conspiracy theorists dismiss opponents of their favoured theory either as having been taken in by a ‘cover-up’ designed to mislead or as being participants in the conspiracy. A major concern about this explanation for stickiness is that the conspiracy theorists who appeal to either cover-up or participation to defend their favoured theory from refutation are appealing to auxiliary hypotheses to account for a discrepancy between theory and evidence and it is widely accepted – per the Duhem-Quine thesis – that theories are never straightforwardly refuted by evidence and that the process of adding auxiliary hypotheses to theories can go on indefinitely. If this explanation is to succeed, we need to identify relevant differences between appeals to cover-ups and participation in conspiracies on the one hand and appeals to regular auxiliary hypotheses on the other. Here I explore prospects for the identification of such differences.

There is an ongoing debate in the philosophy of conspiracy theories between “particularists” and their “generalists” critics. Particularists express concern that the label “conspiracy theory” is used to dismiss theories prematurely. In response, generalists often frame their position as merely indicating a defeasible “prima facie skepticism” toward conspiracy theories, that is, a view about what to think about a conspiracy theory prior to considering its particular merits. Keith Harris, for example, argues for this type of generalist attitude regarding “counter-authority” conspiracy theories. We argue that this framing of generalism is misleading because it is considerably weaker than it presents itself as being. It can’t be this weak and also justify the dismissive attitude that generalists encourage, as Harris does explicitly. Indeed, an analysis of Harris’s own distinction between “Strong Particularism” and “Weak Particularism” can help us see that generalists accounts cannot be both true and telling. For true versions are not telling, and telling versions are not true. 

When analysing social and political beliefs we often do so from their relationship to the truth. We evaluate the claims made by figures like Donald Trump based on whether or not they're accurate, and in doing so assume that relation to the truth is central to their power. Hidden within these practices is the assumption that the way people relate to the world around them is empirical in nature. That in disproving them, we strip them of some credence or believability. However, if previous US elections are anything to go by, this simply isn't true.
 This talk proposes the idea of a degenerating myth; the narrative epistemological counterpart to Lakatos's degenerating research program. Following the line of Bruno Latour and Mary Midgley, I argue that much of the way humans understand the world is narrative in nature, rather empirical or rational. Consequently, when analysing these narratives we should assess them according to their own function, rather than equating them to the function of scientific research programs, which as I argue, we often do.
To account for this difference in epistemological function, I propose a criteria for identifying degenerating myths, an evaluative framework not reliant on truth or external accuracy.

Epistemic bubbles present an interesting challenge for epistemologists. On the one hand, there seems to be something troubling about epistemic bubbles such that, were we to find ourselves in one, then we should leave the bubble as it will likely have bad epistemic consequences. On the other hand, the structure of an epistemic bubble does not necessitate that they have bad epistemic consequences and, sometimes, they can have good epistemic consequences when they increase the inhabitants’ access to true information. The question that this paper pursues is how, if at all, can we access the epistemic benefits of a good epistemic bubble?
To address this question, I advance three arguments. First, I argue that a recent impossibility argument claiming that one can never be justified in remaining in a good epistemic bubble (Sheeks 2023), fails. Second, I outline the conditions required to harness a good epistemic bubble in simplified circumstances. Third, while necessarily speculative, I argue that these conditions could be practically realised with the assistance of institutional supports. Collectively, these arguments provide a schema that could enable agents to access the epistemic benefits of good bubbles. 

This paper challenges a familiar diagnosis of online misinformation: that citizens are misled because they are gullible, irrational, or insufficiently vigilant. Drawing on Mercier and Sperber’s argumentative theory of reason and Mercier’s account of epistemic vigilance, I argue that human beings possess real capacities for suspicion, source evaluation, coherence checking, and resistance to deception. In the age of AI-assisted disinformation, however, the problem is not the absence of vigilance, but its social and infrastructural vulnerability. Vigilance depends on socially supplied cues of trustworthiness, expertise, reputation, salience, and credibility.
I call the resulting failure captured vigilance. In AI-assisted and platform-mediated environments, users may become more suspicious, investigative, and committed to “doing their own research,” while their suspicion is redirected toward reliable institutions and their trust is routed toward pseudo-experts, in-group authorities, and identity-confirming sources. Conspiracy thinking illustrates the problem: vigilance is present, but organized within self-sealing trust environments where warrant is inverted, correction is absorbed as confirmation, and standing is redistributed according to loyalty and distrust.
The paper’s social-epistemological contribution is to show that vigilance is not merely an individual epistemic capacity, but an environmentally scaffolded practice vulnerable to capture under AI-assisted, platform-mediated conditions.