This tribute to the breadth and influence of Trudy Govier’s philosophical work begins with her early scholarship in argumentation theory, paying special attention to its pedagogical expression. Most people first encounter Trudy Govier’s work and many people only encounter it through her textbooks, especially A Practical Study of Argument, published in many editions. In addition to the work on argumentation that has continued throughout her career, much of Govier’s later work addresses social philosophy and the problems of trust and response (...) to moral wrongs. The introduction by Catherine Hundleby situates Govier’s research along the path of her unusual academic life. While following the timeline of Govier’s research publication, in this collection the authors build on her work and suggest certain new connections between her argumentation theory and social philosophy. A Practical Study of Argument, first published in 1985, situates Govier among a distinct segment of informal logicians whose concerns about teaching reasoning to post-secondary students orient their research, Takuzo Konishi argues. Moira Kloster evaluates Govier’s progress in the challenge of providing critical thinking education to diverse and changing social contexts. Shifting gears to social philosophy but still addressing education, Laura Elizabeth Pinto explores the significance of Govier’s work on trust for explaining the problem of “audit culture” for teaching. At the centre of this volume, social philosophy receives an abstract meta-ethical defense from Linda Radzik. Moving solidly into the domain of normative social philosophy, Alice MacLachlan reconsiders Govier’s condemnation of revenge by viewing it as a form of moral address, but she notes how revenge as an act of communication contrasts with argumentation in lacking the respect that Govier maintains is intrinsic to argumentation. MacLachlan ultimately agrees that revenge is morally indefensible. The practical challenges of addressing others in the aftermath of wrongdoing, especially in public contexts, can make it difficult to distinguish between victims and combatants or wrongdoers, Alistair Little and Wilhelm Verwoerd explain, and Kathryn Norlock argues that forgiveness is psychologically vexed too. People may recognize transformation to be in principle possible for all people, Norlock argues, and yet we may find the evidence regarding some particular evildoer sufficient to count that person as an exception. Finally Govier responds to the various papers. (shrink)

I construct an analysis of social trust that attends distinctively to cooperation in social relations that has the capability to (begin to) counter the default social distrust obtained due to oppressive conditions via a form of collective reasoning. For social trust to overcome oppression it must be a normatively transparent form of trust. Transparent trust can counter the effects of oppression on social interaction and foster social cooperation by correcting unequal positions of social vulnerability and improving disparities in credibility resultant (...) of oppression since collective reasoning in norm legitimization permits all individuals to participate in the process of self and other defining and the development of the concomitant norms that guide these processes. (shrink)

This paper proposes freedom as the condition of possibility for the construction of trust in human relationships. The methodology used is a review of the scientific literature of the most recent moral and political philosophy. As a result of the dialogue between different positions, it is discovered that freedom, despite being present in the act of trust, is forgotten in the discussion around trust, a forgetfulness that has as its main causes the assumption that trust is natural and the confusion (...) between the propensity to trust and the act of trusting. All this leads to proposing an approach of the act of trusting that starts from the freedom of the trustee and the trustor. (shrink)

This paper explores the nature of trust in nurse–patient relationships from the perspective of the patient's trust in the nurse and what might be said to then render such a relationship trustworthy, from the patient's point of view. The paper commences with a general examination of the nature of trust, followed by consideration of the nature of professional–patient relationships in healthcare, with emphasis on nurse– patient relationships in particular. The nature of this relationship is used to provide grounds for arguing, (...) both morally and conceptually, that the nature of patients’ trust in those who nurse them is generally such that for the nurse to respond in a trustworthy way, she must care about her patients, not just for them. In arriving at this conclusion, the paper deliberately restricts its focus to nurse–patient encounters where patients are adults and a relationship, as opposed to a brief engagement between two people, can be said to have taken place. The context for this focus is public sector health care in the United Kingdom. In the text, gendered pronouns referring to doctors, nurses and patients are meant to be inclusive of both sexes. (shrink)

This paper attempts two things: to give the reader a very general idea of the main outlines of what Govier has to say both about social and political trust and about trust in personal relationships, and to present in slightly more detail what she says about the role of trust in acquiring belief and/or knowledge from testimony and about the reasons for trusting such testimony.

This paper examines developing trust in two related senses: (1) rationally overcoming distrust, and (2) developing a mature capacity for trusting/distrusting. In focussing exclusively on the first problem, traditional philosophical discussions fail to address how an evidence- based paradigm of rationality is easily co-opted by (immature) agents in support of irrational distrust (or trust) - a manifestation of the second problem. Well-regulated trust requires developing a capacity to tolerate the uncertainties that chracterise relationships among fully autonomous self-directed agents. Early relationships (...) lack this uncertainty since care-givers take primary responsibility for determining a child's interests, reducing the scope (if not the intensity) of potential conflict between self and other. Once agents recognize that adulthood demands foregoing the security embedded in such relationships of dependency, they are free to embrace a more appropriate paradigm of rationality for guiding their thought and action in interactions with others. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a special kind of injustice I call “trust injustice.” Taking Miranda Fricker's work on epistemic injustice as my starting point, I argue that there are some ethical constraints on trust relationships. If I am right about this, then we sometimes have duties to maintain trust relationships that are independent of the social roles we play.

My aim here is to clarify the practice of honoring and validating the relational model of self which plays an important role in feminist therapy. This practice rests on a tangle of psychological claims, moral and political values, and mental health norms which require analysis. Also, severe pathology affects the relative "relationality" of the self. By understanding it we can better understand the senses of autonomy compatible with and even required for a desired relationality.

Self-trust is a necessary condition of personal autonomy and self-respect. Self-trust involves a positive sense of the motivations and competence of the trusted person; a willingness to depend on him or her; and an acceptance of vulnerability. It does not preclude trust in others. A person may be rightly said to have too much self-trust; however core self-trust is essential for functioning as an autonomous human being.

This article considers the forces which act to prevent women in Ireland from speaking about their experiences of abortion. It considers the various forms such silencing can take and the complexity of feelings and circumstance which women who have had abortions are subject to. In so doing it raises important questions about the way public debate about abortion between pro-choice and pro-life arguments — couched in terms of rights — acts to further silence women. Finally, the article calls for the (...) creation of a new public and intellectual space in which the complexities of the issues can be realized. A new public space such as this could then facilitate the enactment of permissive legislation which in turn could enable women to decide the best pregnancy option available for them at any particular moment in their lives. (shrink)

DINÇ L and GASTMANS C. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 223–237 Trust and trustworthiness in nursing: an argument‐based literature reviewCaring requires nurses to establish trusting relationships with patients and to be trustworthy professionals. This article provides insight into the conceptual understanding of trust and trustworthiness in nursing through an argument‐based literature review of 17 articles published between 1980 and 2010. Trust is characterized as an attitude relying with confidence on someone. The importance of trust relationships is considered by addressing the imbalances (...) of power in nurse–patient relationships as they increase the vulnerability and dependency of the truster. Trust is considered as a process, and time, reliance on others, risk and fragility are identified as basic attributes of trust. However, trustworthiness is inadequately explored in the nursing ethics literature. Nurse educators have a responsibility to ensure that nurses are equipped with the attitudes and knowledge that are needed to establish trusting nurse–patient relationships. (shrink)

This paper explores the nature of trust in nurse–patient relationships from the perspective of the patient's trust in the nurse and what might be said to then render such a relationship trustworthy, from the patient's point of view. The paper commences with a general examination of the nature of trust, followed by consideration of the nature of professional–patient relationships in healthcare, with emphasis on nurse– patient relationships in particular. The nature of this relationship is used to provide grounds for arguing, (...) both morally and conceptually, that the nature of patients’ trust in those who nurse them is generally such that for the nurse to respond in a trustworthy way, she must careabouther patients, not justforthem. In arriving at this conclusion, the paper deliberately restricts its focus to nurse–patient encounters where patients are adults and a relationship, as opposed to a brief engagement between two people, can be said to have taken place. The context for this focus is public sector health care in the United Kingdom. In the text, gendered pronouns referring to doctors, nurses and patients are meant to be inclusive of both sexes. (shrink)

Just how care moves us is the subject of Katherine Gardiner’s thesis. Gardiner wants to know how care moves us – or in philosophical terms, how it motivates us. She describes caring as a morally ‘necessary’ activity, which means that we cannot escape responding to the care appeal. However, Gardiner uses the example of ‘Pim’, who cannot care and feels really bad about it - not because he is incapable of caring, but who just can’t. She reviews several versions of (...) care ethics that might persuade him to care, containing concepts like ‘engrossment’, ‘responsibility’, ‘solidarity’, ‘virtue’ and ‘reason’. According to Gardiner, none will do, because they are not compelling enough. She concludes that we need to understand how morality has effect, how it works. Christine Korsgaard’s concept of ‘normativity’ does just this. Korsgaard makes necessary links between making moral decisions and having an identity and being human and argues that acting contrary to any of these will make one “feel worse than death”. Caring for and about others is an important human activity and for some people is a crucial part of their practical identity. Without Korsgaard, we would have to reject Pim as a moral deviant (someone insensible to moral reason); with Korsgaard we can understand Pim’s pain, according to Gardiner. (shrink)

This thesis defends an account of what it is to trust other people, and what gives matters of trust (i.e. situations where we trust/distrust others) a characteristic interpersonal, normative, or moral/ethical importance to us. In other words, it answers what the nature of betrayal (and being susceptible to betrayal) is. -/- Along the way I put forward/defend accounts of the following: the relationship between trust and reliance (chapter 4); an account of reliance itself (chapter 5); trust and distrust as one/two/three-place (...) attitudes (chapter 7); and the ethical/normative significance of trust and betrayal as a matter of attachment security (chapters 6 and 8). -/- In addition to these accounts, the thesis also gives (in chapter 2) a conceptual/historical overview of the dominant paradigm in philosophical understanding of trust: as a form of reliance 'plus' betrayal conditions (a la Baier 1986; Holton 1994; Hawley 2014, among others). It also offers a rebuttal of that dominant paradigm in chapter 3 and 4. Furthermore, it offers an overview of how trust is understood more generally across philosophical and some social scientific/psychological literature (chapter 1). It also offers a rebuttal of the rational choice/game-theoretic understanding of trust and economic rationality a la so-called 'trust games' (chapter 1). This carries the consequence that analysis of trust in these traditions is not really based on anything resembling interpersonal trust, as we would intuitively recognise it. (shrink)

This thesis investigates the structure of knowing, and it argues that existential trust is an epistemological category. The aim of the dissertation is to develop a view according to which all human activity is seen as an activity of a lived body, and in which the understanding of the structure of such activity is regarded as central for the solution even of epistemological problems. This view is not rooted in any one philosophical tradition, but circles around activity of the lived (...) body. It connects thinkers who in other respects belong to different "isms" in philosophy. Central to the dissertation are Aristotle, Dewey, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, Ryle, Anscombe, Polanyi, and Grene. Michael Polanyi's concept of tacit knowledge, and connected concepts like attend to, attend from, and subsidiary awareness, are presented. Different kinds of subsidiary awareness, not noted by Polanyi, are distinguished. It is also argued that Polanyi has not seen all the implicatons of his view that instruments can be interiorized and be part of the lived body. Conversely, parts of the normally lived body can be exteriorized. Nor has Polanyi seen that one has subsidiary awareness of oneself as a certain kind ofperson. This fact, in turn, is shown to have implications for the way we constitute ourselves as agents. Since we are engendered agents, we always attend from gender. In the last decade, the concept of trust has definitely entered epistemology. Mostly, it has been in terms of trusting testimony and/or testifier. This thesis wants to deepen that account. There is a more fundamental kind of trust, namely trust in oneself and trust in the world. It is called existential trust, and it is of epistemological importance, too. Existential trust, it is claimed, is necessary in all acts of knowing. Probably, this fact is hard to discover without having recourse to a distinction like that between attending from and attending to. Existential trust is shown in the way we attend from something. Observation and thinking are central epistemological categories, of course, but they should be supplemented by trust. Without trust they cannot perform any epistemological work. Linguistically, 'to know' is a state verb. Superficially, it describes only a state, not an activity. This fact, however, does not contradict the view of knowledge put forward in the dissertation. To know is to have a disposition to perform successfully either some kind of action, or to perform some kind of true assertive speech act. Basically, knowing is an activity. (shrink)

In this dissertation I defend five claims about trust: 1) trusting and trustworthiness are conceptually but not causally connected; 2) trust is risky; 3) trust requires good will; 4) trust is a two-part relation; and 5) trust is an interpretative framework. A concern for trust often appears in discussions about testimony and the expectation of truthfulness; Bentley Glass, John Hardwig, and Jonathan Adler each address the role of trust in science while assuming a necessary connection between trusting and trustworthiness. I (...) argue that this conception is untenable because a justification for one fails to suffice as a justification of the other. I show, instead, that it is our assessment that links trustworthiness to trusting. My second claim, that trust involves risk, is contentious. I argue that the common understanding of risk as harm, which is held by Russell Hardin, contains the more technical understanding of risk as uncertainty, which is suggested by Niklas Luhman. Trust is risky precisely because it is inherently uncertain. Annette Baier argues that failing to recognize a distinction between trusting and action associated with that trust leads us to accept accounts of trust that are too broad. I argue that trust is to believe that another is concerned with your well-being, has good will, because she is concerned about you and not that it will necessarily benefit her in some way. Seeing trust as good will allows me to advance my fourth claim, that trust is a two-part relation, because trust is the assessment of another's good will towards me. Trusting another is believing that the other's good judgment will include concern and consideration for my interests because they are my interests. My fifth point follows naturally once trust is understood to be a risky, two-part relation requiring good will: it is an interpretive framework. Our trust in another sets the tone for understanding her behavior such that we take her actions as either supporting or blocking our interests. This account takes the capacity to trust to be the foundation for, rather than merely an outgrowth of, our judgments. (shrink)