Deciding to Trust, Coming to Believe

Australasian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 72, Issue 1, 1994, Pages 63-76

  Holton, Richard ^a  

^a MONASH UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0002239610     PISSN: 00048402     EISSN: 14716828     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00048409412345881     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. Thanks to John Campbell, Bas van Fraassen, Lloyd Humberstone, Rae Langton and two referees for comments on drafts of this paper.
2. The idea that trusting someone can be a way of making them trustworthy, that, as he puts it, trust ‘can generate the very behaviour which might logically seem to be its precondition' has been noted by Diego Gambetta in ’Can We Trust Trust?' in Gambetta (ed.), Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988) pp.213-237 at p.234.
3. H.G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance in The Atlantic Edition of the Works of H. G. Wells (London: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd., 1925) Vol. 7, p.19.
4. Annette Baier, ‘Trust and Antitrust’, Ethics 96 1986 pp.231-260. Since writing this paper I have seen a copy of Baier's Tanner lectures, ‘Trust’, Tanner Lectures on Human Values 13 1992 pp.107-174. These do not seem to modify her original account substantially; they do however include a discussion of a case very much like my drama class example (p.115).
5. “Trust and Antitrust', p.234.
6. Ibid.
7. Is this the same as acting as if I believed it would happen? In one sense ‘yes’: in certain circumstances my behaviour will be as it would be if I believed. But belief and reliance involve different dispositions, as I discuss below.
8. I assume here that we should give the same account of relying on someone not to do something as we gave for that of relying on them to do it.
9. Baier also thinks that we should treat trust as a three-place relation. But she suggests that we take as central the idea of one person trusting another with some valued thing ('Trust and Antitrust', p.236). I think that this is a special case of the more general three-place account that I propose: the special case in which the act that we trust the other to perform is that of looking after something.
10. 'Freedom and Resentment', p.7.
11. Op. at., pp.244-245. In her later Tanner Lectures she has changed this to the more moderate claim that 'trusting is rarely something we decide to do' (p.123).
12. 'Trust and Antitrust', p.235.
13. Beware of one use of the phrase ‘Whom can I trust?' in which it means ’Whom should I trust?' That's not what I mean by the question (although clearly your beliefs about who you should trust will restrict who you can trust in the sense which interests me).
14. Contrast this with pretence. When I feign belief in God, I do not work my plans around the supposition of God's existence: I do not, for instance, plan with an eye to the Day of Judgement.
15. All that I work into my plans is my pretence itself, not the truth of that which I am pretending. 16 Those familiar with Bratman's work on intention will see a parallel with what he says there. You can intend to do something without believing that you will succeed; but you cannot intend, whilst believing that you will fail. And again some explanation for this asymmetry lies in the need for my intentions to be consistent with my beliefs if they are to be worked into my plans. See Michael Bratman, Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987) ch.3.
16. Thomas Scanlon notes this possibility in ‘Promises and Practices’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 19 1990 pp.199-226 at p.211.
17. Judith Baker, ‘Trust and Rationality’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 68 1987 pp.1-13. Some of Baker's discussion strikes me as more appropriate to the issue of loyalty: appropriate, that is, to the question of the attitude I should adopt towards third parties regarding my friend's innocence, rather than to the attitude I should adopt towards my friend. But I shall not go into this here.
18. 'Trust and Rationality', p.6.
19. Bas van Fraassen, ‘Belief and the Will’, The Journal of Philosophy 81 1984 pp.235-256.
20. See C.A.J. Coady, ‘Testimony and Observation’, American Philosophical Quarterly 10 1973 pp.149-155; John Hardwig, “The Role of Trust in Knowledge', The Journal of Philosophy 88 1991 pp.693-708.
21. Baier, ‘Trust and Antitrust’, p.244.