Trusting in order to inspire trustworthiness

Synthese 198 (12):11897-11923 (2020)
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Abstract

This paper explores the epistemology and moral psychology of “therapeutic trust,” in which one trusts with the aim of inspiring greater trust-responsiveness in the trusted. Theorists have appealed to alleged cases of rational therapeutic trust to show that trust can be adopted for broadly moral or practical reasons and to motivate accounts of trust that do not involve belief or confidence in someone’s trustworthiness. Some conclude from the cases that trust consists in having normative expectations and adopting vulnerabilities with respect to the trusted; others that trust involves accepting that someone will prove trustworthy. Although there are, I argue, some genuine cases of rational therapeutic trust, some prominent examples confuse trusting with entrusting and are actually counterexamples to the adopted vulnerabilities and acceptance accounts they have been taken to support. An alternative account, which construes trust in terms of being confident enough to take salient risks on someone’s trustworthiness, makes better sense of therapeutic trust.

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Michael Pace
Chapman University

References found in this work

Knowledge in an uncertain world.Jeremy Fantl & Matthew McGrath - 2009 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Matthew McGrath.
Trust and antitrust.Annette Baier - 1986 - Ethics 96 (2):231-260.
Trust.Carolyn McLeod - 2020 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Doxastic deliberation.Nishi Shah & J. David Velleman - 2005 - Philosophical Review 114 (4):497-534.

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