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Trust as a concept
Below are five statements about trust that bring out important components about this concept. Moral concepts are not as easily defined or applied as mathematical or even scientific concepts. They are best approached by examples and by moving from clear and indisputable examples to more complex, grey-shaded ones. They are also approached by what Gilbert Ryle used to term conceptual cartography; one understands one concept by drawing out a map that conveys its relations to other, similar concepts. Understanding trust requires exploring its relations to concepts like responsibility and hope. Trust is a kind of sensitivity or responsiveness that arises in social relations; thus, it is a mode of responsibility. And trust is ignited, sustained, and restored through hope; when disrupted by wrongdoing and betrayal it can be restored by forgiveness. So our accounting of trust will touch on its relations to these related moral concepts.
1. trust is reliance on responsibility
Trust has a central or core meaning that Urban-Walker characterizes as “reliance on responsibility.” I rely on others to behave responsibly in everyday social interactions; I also understand that they rely on me to behave responsibly. This is close to Solomon’s formulation of trust as the expectation of ethically justifiable conduct from others. But Urban-Walker inserts trust into the everyday moral relations and interconnections created by responsibility. As we will see below, trust is best understood by spelling out the context in which it functions where individuals interacting with one another, stand vulnerable to each other, and rely on one another to carry out the duties and projects of their lives.
2. trust makes us vulnerable and dependent on the good will of others
Trudy Grover (as summarized by Urban-Walker) identifies several characteristics of operative trust (MR 79): (a)“expectation of benign behavior based on beliefs about a person’s motivation and competence;" (b) “an attribution of general integrity;” (c) “an acceptance of risk and vulnerability;” (d) a “disposition to interpret the trusted person’s actions favorably.”
This list conveys the idea that trust makes us vulnerable to the actions of others while it makes them vulnerable to our actions. Trust, others words, arises only when we risk betrayal.
3. trust requires taking up the "participant attitude."
Trust takes place within what the philosopher Strawson terms the
“participant attitude” or participant standpoint. This standpoint is accompanied by reactive attitudes; should others fail to do what is expected of them or fall short of commonly accepted moral standards, then we respond with “reactive attitudes” like resentment and indignation. In fact, trust functions through a whole series of responsive emotions such as pride, shame, resentment, indignation, and hope. (MR 79) When we take up the participant standpoint, we become involved in the world and its interrelations and transactions. Opposed to this is what Strawson terms the
objective attitude where these intentional and self-directed emotions do not apply because the agent, for some reason, fails to become involved in social and moral relations. Part of what it means to be moral is to be subject to these reactive attitudes as well as being able to direct them responsively toward others. Psychosis is defined as being unable to exercise reactive attitudes; one doesn't feel resentment or indignation or feels them inappropriately. Thus, trust must be understood as functioning within the participatory standpoint, that is, within a network of social and moral interdependencies and transactions.
Source:
OpenStax, The environments of the organization. OpenStax CNX. Feb 22, 2016 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11447/1.9
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