Trust & The Public Sphere

Workshop

August 26-27, 2021

You can reach us at:

Kerstin Reibold - reibold@uni-potsdam.de

University of Potsdam poli sci buildings.jpg

Trust is a basic requirement for the creation and maintenance of fundamental social and political institutions, values and beliefs. Indeed, some have gone as far as arguing that cooperation, a necessary component of all of these social projects, is impossible without trust. It is perhaps not all that surprising, then, that trust and its corresponding conceptual correlates (e.g., the absence of trust; distrust/mistrust; trustworthiness; etc.) are important foci for both normative and empirical scholars.

The work on these trust-related concepts reveals a wealth of new and interrelated approaches among scholars along multiple dimensions of interest. For example, scholars disagree about how to describe what trust is and on what it is fundamentally based – is it the assumption of good will, a risk assessment, reliance on shared norms or something else? As a result, views also differ on how trust can be repaired and when trust is justified – what role do historic injustices, different institutional designs, and the respective standpoints of groups within a society play when citizens decide whether to trust or distrust the state and each other? Lastly, there has been increased attention to the normative desirability of trust in circumstances of continued injustice and the duties that are associated with becoming trustworthy.

Along the same lines, even though the scholarship illustrates that these trust-related concepts are connected to numerous fundamental social and political phenomena (e.g., social cohesion; the public good; rights and duties; historic injustice; risk; coercion; inter and intra group relations; etc.), there is significant debate about the nature and scope of these connections, as well as the causal mechanisms at play.

By bringing together philosophers, political theorists and political scientists this workshop aims to identify some of the most recent developments in the literature and highlight numerous challenges associated with the theorization and application of trust-related concepts.

Speakers

Gloria Origgi

Institut Nicod
Directrice de Recherche

Gloria Origgi’s research project draws on social epistemology, philosophy of social science and the study of social cognition and emotions in order to better understand how people create, store and use social information to make sense of themselves and of the social world. She has also worked on situated social cognition, especially on Internet-mediated epistemic practices and on gendered cognition.

She is a member of the PeriTia European project on policy and trust in science. She and her Epistemic Norms team are working on the social bases of trust in science and the role of values and emotions in coming to trust experts.

In the last 5 years her research has focused on the mechanisms of trust that underlie epistemic practices such as choosing a doctor, evaluating the accuracy of an information and deferring to experts.The complex bundle of reasons, affective reactions, emotional attachments and dependencies that make people trust others and acquire new beliefs are at the core of her research on the epistemology of trust.

Carolyn McLeod

Western University
Professor and Chair, Dept of Philosophy

My research focuses on issues in applied ethics that concern parenthood, procreation, professional relationships, or health care; issues in feminist philosophy, especially feminist moral psychology; and questions in moral philosophy about the nature of moral concepts such as trust, autonomy, and conscience.

Hale Doguoglu

Western University
PhD Candidate, Dept of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies

2018 M.A. Philosophy, Western University
2014 B.A. Economics and Philosophy, The University of Nottingham (UK)

Areas of Interest: Feminist ethics; feminist epistemology; feminist moral psychology; institutional (dis)trust within the context of marginalization; collective trauma and trust

Dimitrios Panagos

Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador
Associate Professor, Dept of Political Science

Professor Panagos is a specialist in the study of contemporary political philosophy and Aboriginal rights, with research contributions combining both normative and empirical concerns. He has published work on aboriginality, Aboriginal rights, Aboriginal voting behaviour and resource governance. He is currently working on a monograph on settler states, Aboriginal peoples and the problem of political obligation. he is also engaged in a number of collaborative research projects focused on, first, First Nations and the governance of mineral resources in Canada, and, second, the participation of Aboriginal peoples in elections in Canada and the United States.

Nikolas Kirby

Harvard University
Democracy Visiting Fellow

Nikolas Kirby is Democracy Visiting Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School. He was most recently Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Philosophy and Public Policy, and Director of the Building Integrity Programme, at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University. His research focusses on the philosophy of governance, the executive branch, public trust and institutional integrity.

He was educated at the University of Sydney (BA (Hons), LLB (Hons)) and the University of Oxford (BPhil, DPhil). He is Co-Convenor of the ECPR, Standing Group on Political Theory and trustee of two charities Aurora UK and Beyond Equality. He has authored commissioned reports for the Australian Government and the British Council..He has published in the British Journal of Political Science, Law and Philosophy, Journal of the British Academy and the Oxford Handbook on Quality of Government. institutional integrity.

Kerstin Reibold

University of Potsdam
Postdoctoral fellow at the Chair for Political Theory

Dr. Kerstin Reibold studied philosophy, political science and German language and literature at the University of Mannheim, Queen's University (Kingston, CA), Princeton University and the Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø.
Her research interests include territorial rights, indigenous rights, historic injustice, reconciliation, and trust.

Christian Budnik

University of Zurich
Research fellow at the Chair for Applied Ethics

Christian Budnik is currently working as the chair for applied ethics at the University of Zurich. Before that, he has researched and taught at the Ludwig-Maximillians Universität in Munich, the University of Fribourg, the University of Vienna, and the University of Bern.

Christian Budnik is also one of the researchers within the project Trust and Trustworthiness in Digital Spheres at the Ethics Centre Zurich. The project asks what role trust plays in the context of the increased digitalization of our societies. One central question here is what we mean when we say that we trust a digital process or algorithm. Do we only refer to the reliability of the digital tool or process in question or is there also a distinct normative notion involved? Second, the project analyzes how personal, social, and political relationships are transformed through digitalization and inquires how relations of trust can be secured in a digital environment. Apart from this project, Christian Budnik is also interested in questions of action theory, personal identity, and autonomy.

Program

Day One - August 26th, 2021

Welcome

Hale Doguoglu and Carolyn McLeod

A Feminist Critique of the Commitment Account of Trust

Discussant: Rebecca Wallbank

(Uppsala University)

9:00-9:20 EST

15:00-15:20 MESZ

10:40-11:50 EST

16:40-17:50 MESZ

Gloria Origgi

Can we distinguish between epistemic and moral and social trust?

Discussant: Maria Eunice Q. Gonzales

(University of São Paulo State)

Breakout Rooms

9:20-10:30 EST

15:20-16:50 MESZ

11:50-12:20 EST

17:50-18:20 MESZ

Break

Dimitrios Panagos

Reconciliation and Obligations of Trust

Discussant: Patti Lenard

(University of Ottawa)

10:30-10:40 EST

16:30-16:40 MESZ

12:20-13:30 EST

18:20-19:30 MESZ

Trust & The Public Sphere

Program

Day One - August 26th, 2021

Program

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