Trust as part of a family of ideas
One thing we might take from this is the idea that trust is part of a family of ideas; a
family that includes belief, hope, faith, confidence and reliance. Each can be
distinguished from trust but in some instances it can be hard to tell them apart, although,
following Baier, it will be allowed that it is the assumption of good will towards us that
makes the difference; at least in so far as we focus on differences between trust and
ConfidenceZreliance (the defence of good will as the essential feature of trust is threaded
throughout the remainder of this section of the current chapter). Baier’s example that we
may “.. .trust our enemies not to fire at us when we lay down our arms and put out a
white flag” (Baier 1986 p. 234) has been criticised for assuming a motivation of good
will (or at least a lack of an ill will) on the part of our enemy. Holton (1994) notes that
when we surrender our enemy may refrain from shooting us not from good will, but
from a sense of duty towards prisoners, or because that is what he is trained to do as a
soldier. He may actually have a desire to do us harm especially if he blames us as the
enemy who has caused him suffering, loss of loved ones and so on. So while we might
say that we trust him not to shoot us as we surrender, we might also say that we hope, or
we believe, or have faith, or have confidence, that our enemy will conform to the
practice of refraining from harming those who have surrendered. We might infer any of
these because at the time of surrendering we do not know his motivation. But to follow
this approach is to misconstrue the nature of trust, for this would be to conclude that we
can only give trust when we are certain that the other has a good will towards us. But
this cannot be right for trust is only an issue in matters of uncertainty. We cannot know
that those in whom we place our trust have a good will towards us - if we could be sure
about this it would no longer be a matter of trust. It is only because we cannot be sure
about others’ good will towards us that we must consider whether or not to trust and
sometimes our trust will turn out to have been misplaced. Thus we trust when we
believe that those in whom we are prepared to trust have a good will toward us. And this
belief in others’ good will is what distinguishes trust from the other ideas in the trust
family of ideas.
Hart comes close to suggesting a family of ideas around trust when he offers the idea of
.. .a continuum of words connoting ZzeZzefbased on the degree on which they rest
on evidence of the senses. Faith requires no evidence; trust is an expectation
based on inconclusive evidence, is tolerant of uncertainty or risk; confidence is a
strong conviction based on substantial evidence or logical deduction
(Hart 1988 p. 187) (original emphasis).
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