Can we distinguish between epistemic and moral and social trust?
Gloria Origgi - Directrice de Recherche
Institut Jean Nicod
A notion that comes from the toolbox of social sciences, trust has become a mainstream epistemological concept in the last 15 years (Origgi, 2004). Knowledge is a collective good, and trust relations are deeply embedded in our cognitive appraisal of what is true or false. We not only rely on our mental faculties (perception and inference) to come to know: we defer to experts, ask friends, rely on the media in order to come out with a coherent picture of reality, especially in knowledge matters where our competences are limited.
Yet, the notion of epistemic trust has been distinguished from the notion of moral and social trust, the former involving kinds of inferences about the others that are supposed to be justifiable in a rational matter. If I trust a scientist about the efficacy of a vaccine against COVID-19, I must have an epistemic justification, for example I trust her competence by checking her academic records (Anderson, 2011). I am therefore rationally justified in trusting her because I have an epistemic reason to justify my belief. Moral and social trust is a more complex notion that involves moral, emotional and social dimensions, that have been less discussed in the epistemological literature, with some notable exceptions (Faulkner, 2013, Almassi, this volume).
My aim in this paper is to challenge the distinction between epistemic and moral and social trust by pointing to a number of social indicators that, while not strictly epistemic, contribute to our trustful attitudes in a rational way. Social indicators of reputation, emotions as detectors of values and moral commitments to values are indispensable strategies to come to trust in a rational way, an attitude that is different from merely believing the truth.
Anderson, E. (2011) “Democracy, Public Policy and Lay Assessment of Scientific Testimony” Episteme, vol.8, issue 2.
Faulkner, P. (2013) Knowledge on Trust, Oxford UP.
Origgi, G. (2004) “Is Trust an Epistemological Notion?” Episteme, vol. 1, issue 1
A Feminist Critique of the Commitment Account of Distrust
Hale Doguoglu - PhD Candidate, Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
Carolyn McLeod - Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy
Western University
The philosophical literature contains rich theories about the nature of interpersonal trust and public trust (i.e., trust in institutions). But it says comparatively little about distrust, especially the public variety. Our paper provides the beginnings of a theory of public distrust. We centre our discussion on one of the most well-developed theories of distrust in philosophy: Katherine Hawley’s commitment account (2014). While focusing on instances of interpersonal distrust, Hawley defines distrust as an expectation of unfulfilled commitment. We argue that this theory cannot easily be extended to public distrust as it is experienced, in particular, by marginalized people. Their distrust is often rooted in communal histories and memories of oppression by public institutions (and their individual representatives) rather than in an expectation that these institutions, as they exist now, will fail to meet their commitments. As such, oppressed individuals can—and frequently do—distrust public institutions even as they rely on them to meet their current commitments.
Reconciliation and Obligations of Trust
Dimitrios Panagos - Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador
This paper examines the relationship between reconciliation, trust and duty in the context of settler state colonialism. It puts forward that trust is a necessary requirement for reconciliation and that a focus on duties, instead of rights, provides an avenue for including trust in our accounts of reconciliation in settler states. The paper identifies two trust-based duties connected to reconciliation in this context: a duty to shape institutions that inspire trust in Indigenous peoples and a duty to become trustworthy that is held by all non-Indigenous peoples residing in settler states. The paper concludes by arguing that the recognition and fulfilment of these duties would advance the cause of reconciliation in settler states.
Terms - Reconciliation, Obligations, Indigenous Rights, Trust, Decolonization
Risk, Distrust and Moral Chaos
Nikolas Kirby - Democracy Visiting Fellow
Harvard University
Distrust or Diffidence is Doubt that maketh him endeavour to provide himself by other means.
Thomas Hobbes, Humane Nature, IX.9
Given any distribution of moral duties, each individual (or, group of individuals) lives with varying degrees of (subjective) risk that others will breach their duties owed to them and, in doing so, cause them unjustified harm. We might call this, in a stylised fashion, the distribution of ‘distrust’ across those individuals (and groups).
In the first part of this paper, drawing upon the recent literature on the ethics of risk imposition, I argue that the distribution of such distrust raises a problem of justice. Living with such distrust of others may not itself be a ‘harm’, but it is a ‘burden’. It devalues one’s bundle of rights, such that it would only be rational to swap one’s currently just bundle for a relevantly less valuable but more secure bundle. Thus, the distribution of such burdens is a proper subject of distributive justice. Prima facie, it is unjust that one should have to bear such burdens – uncompensated – and others not.
Given this fact, in the second part of this paper, I explore the rights, duties and permissions of various actors where such distrust arises. First, I address what the distrusted may owe the distrusting. My most important conclusion is that the distrusted may owe the distrusting signs of trustworthiness, despite being in truth entirely innocent, in tensions with liberal intuitions. Second, I address what the distrusting may be permitted to do in light of their burden of distrust. My most important conclusion is that sometimes the distrusting is not merely excused, but permitted to act, pre-emptively, to reduce their vulnerability to distrust, at some cost to an entirely innocent distrusted agent. Third, I address what arises where distrust is reciprocal. I argue that this may lead to a kind of ‘suspension’ of obligations as each side is permitted to reduce vulnerability in an equitable way, but this must be complemented by pro-active attempts to rebuild trust. Finally, I address what by-standers and society at large may owe in light of distrust. I argue that, where particular members of a society are not responsible for the seeds of their own distrusting relationship, society owes it to them to expend resources through compensation, insurance, and/or deterrence until the burden associated with distrust is either made just or dissipated.
With this basic model in place, I then turn to its key limitation. This limitation is that it may not always be possible to dissipate or de-risk distrust in a way that is just to other actors. This leaves the distrusting in a position where, they unjustly bear the burden of distrust, but no one has a duty to ameliorate such distrust. I argue that this permits the distrusting to take self-help measures, doing whatever is required to remove such an unjust burden including, if necessary, causing great harm to the distrusted who may well be innocent. However, in such scenarios, the distrusted retains a permission to defend themselves against such harm. In this way, distrust may corrode moral obligation, and sow a kind of moral ‘chaos’: where, like in a Hobbesian state of nature, two innocent individuals (or groups) may have permission to harm one another for the sake of their own security.
Trust and reconciliation
Kerstin Reibold - Postdoctoral fellow at the Chair for Political Theory
University of Potsdam
Reconciliation is often a primary focus in societies that have experienced widespread, prolonged, and grave injustices. In transitional societies (TS), which have undergone a regime change and a change in power relations, the focus of reconciliation is often to affect forgiveness between victims and wrongdoers. In non-transitional societies (NTS), reconciliation processes so far have had a similar focus as can be witnessed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions for indigenous peoples in various countries and accompanying public apologies. This paper argues that, besides forgiveness, the rebuilding of trust is crucial to reconciliation processes in NTS, yet has been neglected so far. The paper turns out how some of the features that differentiate TS and NTS explain why rebuilding trust is a central feature of successful reconciliation in NTS while it plays a secondary role in TS.
Democracy and Trust in a Digital World
Christian Budnik - Research fellow at the Chair for Applied Ethics
University of Zurich
It is often assumed that the functioning of a democracy depends on the trust that citizens have towards each other. This trust, in turn, is on some accounts considered as at least partially caused by bonds of a shared culture. In the first part of the paper, I argue against the conclusion suggested by these two claims: In order for a democracy to work, we do not depend on such forms of ‘communitarian trust’, and we should instead try to make sure that we can rely on our fellow citizens by other, e.g. legal, means. In the second part of the paper, I argue that there is a rather specific notion of trust and trustworthiness that is indeed crucial for the functioning of a democracy. This ‘liberal trustworthiness’, as I call it, has less to do with performance expectation than with the ability to adopt the perspectives of fellow citizens with different normative outlooks. I argue that it is this form of trust that is especially endangered by processes of digitalization, most notably by the way in which information is accessed online, and I make suggestions how to design digital structures in order to preserve and bolster such liberal trustworthiness.