On the Risks of Resting Assured: An Assurance Theory of Trust

In Tom Simpson Paul Faulkner (ed.), New Philosophical Essays on Trust. Oxford University Press (2017)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

An assurance theory of trust begins from the act of assurance – whether testimonial, advisorial or promissory – and explains trust as a cognate stance of resting assured. My version emphasizes the risks and rewards of trust. On trust’s rewards, I show how an assurance can give a reason to the addressee through a twofold exercise of ‘normative powers’: (i) the speaker thereby incurs an obligation to be sincere; (ii) if the speaker is trustworthy, she thereby gives her addressee the reason. Each claim is controversial; my contribution lies in how I defend them together, linking the sincerity obligation to the provision of reasons. On trust’s risks, I defend a popular thesis about the nature of trust – that trust differs from mere reliance in how it risks betrayal – against the objection that the thesis ‘moralizes’ trust. Such betrayal need not be moral, I argue, because it may derive entirely from how the assurance purports to provide a reason.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Promises beyond assurance.Nicholas Southwood & Daniel Friedrich - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 144 (2):261 - 280.
The Nature of Epistemic Trust.Benjamin W. McCraw - 2015 - Social Epistemology 29 (4):413-430.
Auto-Immunity of Trust Without Trust.Badredine Arfi - 2010 - Journal of International Political Theory 6 (2):188-216.
Creating Trust.Robert C. Solomon - 1998 - Business Ethics Quarterly 8 (2):205-232.
Trust.Carolyn McLeod - 2020 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Trust it!D. Z. Phillips - 1999 - Bijdragen 60 (4):380-392.
Trust: self-interest and the common good.Marek Kohn - 2008 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Trust and Obligation-Ascription.Philip J. Nickel - 2007 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 10 (3):309-319.

Analytics

Added to PP
2017-02-10

Downloads
43 (#324,761)

6 months
11 (#128,523)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Edward Hinchman
Florida State University

Citations of this work

Trust.Carolyn McLeod - 2020 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Trust and Trustworthiness.J. Adam Carter - 2022 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2):377-394.
Exploitative Epistemic Trust.Katherine Dormandy - 2020 - In Trust in Epistemology. New York City, New York, Vereinigte Staaten: pp. 241-264.
Trust and Will.Edward Hinchman - 2020 - In Judith Simon (ed.), Routledge Handbook on Trust and Philosophy. New York: Routledge.

View all 9 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references