Monday, November 19, 2007

Trust - a philisophy

Trust is as elusive in philosophy as it can be in practice. Philosophers often simply ignore or presuppose it, and when they do consider it, they often struggle to explain it or confuse it with other things. Nonetheless, by considering some major philosophers’ thoughts on trust and related matters, we can reveal certain important features of it, and see why it might be so elusive, in both philosophy and practice.

Rethinking

As at the end of every bad film, however, there is perhaps one last chance to avoid disaster. And it is our natural love and sympathy, and our sense of morality which point us in the right direction. These nobler parts of human nature suggest that when we trust others, we are confidently relying on their good disposition towards us - we are relying on their love or sympathy for us or their sense of morality, for instance, rather than on their egoistic interests, habits, or irrationalities. Thus trust is a special kind of reliance, reliance on others’ good disposition towards us. In contrast, if I expect my friend not to steal my bike just because I have asked him to leave a deposit, then I may be relying on him not to steal it, but I am not trusting him. (Nor is he likely to remain my friend for long!) Similarly, if I rely on others not to attack me in a state of nature just because I believe that it is in their self-interest not to break our agreement and that they are rational enough to recognise this, again I may be relying on them, but I am not trusting them.

Conclusions

If we stick to a picture of human beings as moved only by self-interest, love, sympathy, or their sense of morality, then, the rationality of trust will remain obscure. Many of our most valuable cooperative activities will seem to be irrational, and will seem to persist only through blind habit or hope. Our friendships and our visits to the doctor will continue to be haunted by the Machiavellian conclusion: that if we are not confident that others are moved by self-interest, love, sympathy, or morality not to harm or steal from us, we should attack them before they attack us. If we act on this conclusion, mutual distrust and attack will spiral and we will soon find ourselves in a decidedly ‘miserable condition’. But if, out of habit or hope, we do not act on this conclusion, we will be blindly putting our faith in irrationality to keep our cooperation afloat, and we will struggle to cultivate and maintain trust, because we will not fully understand it. We are thus likely to do it more harm than good. Recognising that human beings may take responsibility for how their behaviour influences others’ decisions, however, offers us a way of explaining how trust can be rational. It thus also offers us a way of beginning to understand how trust can be genuinely cultivated and maintained. This does not mean that trust will necessarily be any less elusive in practice, particularly among those who mistake common reliance for genuine trust or believe in the common picture of human nature. But given the potentially disastrous consequences of such misunderstandings, the importance of making trust a little less elusive in philosophy should not be underestimated.

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