The Philosophy of Trust
Paul Faulkner and Thomas Simpson
Abstract
Trust is central to our social lives. We know by trusting what others tell us. We act on that basis, and on the basis of trust in their promises and implicit commitments. So trust underpins both epistemic and practical cooperation and is key to philosophical debates on the conditions of its possibility. It is difficult to overstate the significance of these issues. On the practical side, discussions of cooperation address what makes society possible—of how it is that life is not a Hobbesian war of all against all. On the epistemic side, discussions of cooperation address what makes the pooling ... More
Trust is central to our social lives. We know by trusting what others tell us. We act on that basis, and on the basis of trust in their promises and implicit commitments. So trust underpins both epistemic and practical cooperation and is key to philosophical debates on the conditions of its possibility. It is difficult to overstate the significance of these issues. On the practical side, discussions of cooperation address what makes society possible—of how it is that life is not a Hobbesian war of all against all. On the epistemic side, discussions of cooperation address what makes the pooling of knowledge possible—and so the edifice that is science. But trust is not merely central to our lives instrumentally; trusting relations are themselves of great value and, in trusting others, we realize distinctive forms of value. What are these forms of value, and how is trust central to our lives? These questions are explored and developed in this volume, which collects fifteen new essays on the philosophy of trust. They develop and extend existing philosophical discussion of trust and will provide a reference point for future work on trust.
Keywords:
trust,
trustworthiness,
cooperation,
ethics,
epistemology,
evidence,
second- person,
reactive attitudes,
rationality,
social philosophy
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2017 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198732549 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198732549.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Paul Faulkner, editor
University of Sheffield
Thomas Simpson, editor
Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford
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