People constantly claim some things without being able to prove them properly. Not only in the election campaign where wish thinking has always ruled, and on social media, where wild theories celebrate their own pandemic. In Trump's tradition, more and more people seem to mean their "gut feeling" enough to put the world otherwise not to justify. Is that the new standard?
No, says philosopher Markus Kneer of the University of Zurich. In two experiments, he checked how a statement is measured and when it is found to be legitimate: Is one assumption enough? Do you need a reliable source? Or does a statement even have to prove to be true in order to be admissible?
In philosophy there are representatives for each of these positions. But Kneer wanted to know which yardstick is in real life. He therefore confronted around 500 test subjects from the USA, Germany and Japan with a classic case study from the teaching of knowledge: Bob has a friend, Jill, who drove a car for a long time. So Bob believes that Jill continues to do so, but it is not true. Nevertheless, he can say that, around 80 percent of the test subjects judged.
So a statement does not have to be true. However, one assumption alone is not enough, as a second survey of around 600 people showed. The case study here: A man is asked at the airport from which gate the flight to Paris departs. He looks in a list. In one variant of the case he finds the information there, in the other he does not, but he has a feeling ("a hunch") which gate it could be. In both cases, he gives the number. Is he doing the right thing?
Yes, said 96 percent of respondents in the US and Japan and 99 percent of Germans – if he relied on the list. If he based his statement only on a feeling, significantly fewer agreed: 12 percent of respondents in the US, 7 percent in Germany and 2 percent in Japan.
"Sure disregard" for the truth
A statement requires neither truth nor knowledge, summarizes author Markus Kneer. But "to be in a position to make statement X, you have to have good reasons to believe X." In view of the sample of three countries, the philosopher does not want to speak of a universal norm. But at least for Germany, the USA and Japan: "Strictly speaking, people are not bothered by false, but by unjustified claims, in which a certain disregard for the truth is shown."
