Abstract
The questions of how and when trusting can be rational have recently been addressed by several writers.1 By definition, trust seems to involve relying on assumptions not ‘sufficiently’ warranted; and what is but another aspect of the same thing, believing what others tell one for no other reason than that it is they who say it. Such behaviour may seem to go against the grain of what is usually meant by rationality. Is there some way to rescue trust for rationality, or must it be dismissed as irrational?
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References
Baier 1986, 1989; Gambetta 1989 (also several other papers included in the volume); Govier 1993a, 1993c.
Hertzberg 1988, 312. Also see Giddens 1991, 19.
Dasgupta 1988, 52.
Gambetta 1988, 217. A similar position is explicitly stated in the following contributions to the volume edited by Gambetta: Dasgupta 1988, 51; Good 1988, 33; Hart 1988, 186–187; Pagden 1988, 129; Williams 1988, 8.—Also see Govier 1993a; Baier 1986, 235; Johnson 1933, 15. Elster, like Hobbes in the Leviathan, equates trust with the belief in the other party’s credibility.
Hobbes 1651 / 1985, 31 6Hobbes 1840, 44.
Good 1988, 33 and note 2. Also see DuBose 1995, 30.
Williams 1988. —Sometimes the word ‘confidence’ is preferred for beliefs that rest on evidence: Hart 1988, 197.
Baier 1986, 236. 10Dasgupta 1988, 50–51.
Gambetta 1988, 233. Also see, e.g., Hart 1988, 187.
Baker 1987, 5; Gambetta 1988, 227–228. The example comes from Baker, pp. 3–6. —However, there is in fact something problematic about the notion of evidence considered in abstraction from the human relationship; but more of this later. 13Good 1988, 43.
Luhmann 1979, 32.
Ibid., 78–79; Gambetta 1988, 233; Hawthorn 1988, 112, 114.
For a description of the game and an overview, see Pruitt & Kimmel 1976. Also see Good 1988, 31–48. For a critical description of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, see Grant 1993, 425–430. For some other games, see, e.g., Elster 1991, Cudd 1993, Hollis 1994, 115–141. 17Elster 1989, 28.
Fukuyama 1995. 19Arrow 1974, 23. Also see p. 16. —The passage was pointed out to me by Ieuan Williams.
Axelrod 1984.
Bateson 1988. Also see Good 1988, 35; Dawkins 1989, 203–227.
Gambetta 1988, 228. Emphasis in the original. sup>23 Ibid., 234.
Adler 1994, 274; Baker 1988, 10; Gambetta 1988, 235; Govier 1993a, 169; Pagden 1988, 129.
This was pointed out by an anonymous reader.
Govier 1993a, 167–168.
Ibid., 157.
Ibid., 167.
See Baker 1988, 6.
Kenneth Arrow has an inkling of the problem—but no more than that—when he writes, ‘[u]nfortunately [trust] is not a commodity that can be bought very [!] easily. If you have to buy it, you already have some doubts about what you’ve bought’. —Arrow 1974, 23.
The question was raised by a reader for this series.
Johnson (1993, 102) makes, it seems to me, an analogous mistake without suggesting that trust can be justified in terms of self-interest. He describes a short story by Henry James. There a man trusts a woman, according to Johnson, because he sees in trust ‘a moral virtue whose value is intrinsic, sufficient in itself’. But this suggests, it seems, that his trust is not genuine; perhaps, that he has decided to reserve judgment and give her a chance to earn his trust. This is to misconstrue the original story where the man trusted her instantly.
Baier 1986. She later discusses Gambetta and some other essays in his collection, but without directly linking her discussion of them to criticism of game theory and quasi-contractual accounts of social life (Baier 1994, 183–202).
Baier 1994: 141–142, 151, 179–181.
Baier 1986, 236; 1994, 145–146. For similar views, see, e.g., Baker 1987, 8.
A parallel point about the relation between strategy and justice is made by Phillips (1964–5). Cf. Foot 1967.
A question raised by David Cockburn.
This point is made, à propos of religious disagreement, by Whittaker (1996, 207).
Perhaps I am being too restrictive about the word ‘trust’. In any case, the point is that there are a number of important cases for which we could not imagine a justification, without that implying that they must be irrational.
As observed, e.g., by Baier (1986).
Baier 1986, 236. —For the idea that the entrusted goods might consist of the trustful relation itself, see my discussion in Chapter 3.
See Sharpe 1996, 188.
Hobbes 1651 / 1985, ch. 14–15. Here I am assuming the interpretation of Hobbes put forward in the first chapter. —This section has profited from Peter Winch’s seminar on political authority at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Autumn 1990.
Kant, GMS, 10–11. Kant’s point is that the categorical character of morality is lost if one takes morality to be dependent on anyone’s (contingent) preferences whatever those may be.
Rousseau 1987, I p. 52. Rousseau is taking up an argument against Hobbes: ‘I know that we are repeatedly told that nothing would have been so miserable as man in that state [...]. But if we understand the word miserable properly, it is a word which is without meaning or which signifies merely a painful privation and suffering of the body or the soul. Now I would very much like someone to explain to me what kind of misery can there be for a free being whose heart is at peace and whose body is in good health?’ —Cf. Hobbes 1651/1985, ch. 13, p. 62. The relation between Hobbes and Rousseau has been discussed by Peter Winch (in Winch 1972b as well as in his Seminar on political authority, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Autumn 1990).
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Lagerspetz, O. (1998). Does Trust Pay?. In: Trust: The Tacit Demand. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8986-4_4
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