Philosophical Perspectives on Trustworthiness and Open-mindedness as Professional Virtues for the Practice of Nursing: Implications for he Moral Education of Nurses

So for Hart trust lies between, and can be distinguished from both, faith and confidence.
He further suggests that reliance represents ‘complete confidence’ (ibid)∖ a state in
which belief is no longer necessary, or rather, where the evidence equates to full
knowledge and certainty. Others (including Baier) use reliance in the sense (more or
less) that Hart uses confidence; so to rely on someone to do a thing is to have
confidence that they will do it. While there may remain some subtle differences between
reliance and confidence the two terms will be used throughout this chapter in the way I
have outlined above. Hart’s is a useful, if non-specific, metric that allows us to
recognise that there are distinctions to be made between trust and faith on the one hand,
and trust and confidence on the other on the basis of the evidence available to us.

Hart’s approach does have the advantage of retaining some aspects of everyday
understandings of three inter-related terms (and the associated ideas) even if it does not
provide us with a way of determining between marginal cases. However, if we accept
the idea that there is a certain dynamic in the use of these terms and that efforts to define
any of them too rigidly may be to confine meaning unnecessarily (at least for present
purposes) then we can proceed with the task in hand. That task is to establish a working
construct of trust that accounts for differences in power of agents in trust relationships
between patients and professionals (specifically nurses) within health and social care
environments. To begin this task we must now turn to a defence of Baier’s conception
of trust.

Trust and good will

For Baier (1986) trust is a particular form of reliance (or confidence in Hart’s terms),
that is, a reliance on the good will (or at least the absence of ill will) of others. This
distinction is common in discussions on the nature of trust although it is not a
distinction without difficulties. Holton rejects the requirement for good will on two
grounds: “In the first place ... the confidence trickster might rely on your goodwill
without trusting you. Secondly ... I can trust a person without relying on their goodwill
towards me.” (Holton 1994 p. 65), the latter reflects the criticism made by O’Neill
discussed briefly earlier.

In the first example Holton confuses the good will of the truster with the good will of
the trusted. Certainly it is true that the confidence trickster may rely on his victims’
good will, that is after all part of the nature of ‘the con’, but as Baier notes it is

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