Conspiracy theories as walt-fiction

Talk about fiction is pretty common in the literature on conspiracy theories. Many have argued that we live in a “post-truth age” in which the boundaries between fiction and reality get easily confused; conspiracy theories, on these views, are fictions that somehow take over our lives, coming to play a hypertrophic role in them. Even though this way of speaking is common, however, it has never been carefully scrutinised. The aim of this chapter is to do that, seeking to clarify whether and to what extents the characterisation of conspiracy theories in terms of fiction is appropriate, and what are its implications for the phenomenon of conspiracism more in general. The author argues that conspiracy theories do indeed qualify as fiction in at least one broad sense of the term—the one famously defined by Kendall Walton, based on the notion of make-believe. Many cases of conspiracy theories’ endorsement can indeed be described in terms of games of make-believe in which such theories are used as props, thereby qualifying as “walt-fictions”. Some important consequences of this view for the question of conspiracy theories’ epistemic rationality are discussed to conclude.