Trust: On Acts and Attitudes of Trust

Rollins, Joshua

Trust: On Acts and Attitudes of Trust

dc.contributor.advisor	Riggs, Wayne
dc.contributor.author	Rollins, Joshua
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Hale, Piers
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Hawthorne, James
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Montminy, Martin
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Zagzebski, Linda
dc.date.accessioned	2016-08-04T20:40:34Z
dc.date.available	2016-08-04T20:40:34Z
dc.date.issued	2016-08
dc.date.manuscript	2016-08
dc.description.abstract	Trust comes in many forms. Trust is, at the very least, both an act and a set of attitudes. In this dissertation, I motivate the distinction between acts and attitudes of trust and offer partial accounts of each. Acts of trust are forms of active reliance. But acts of trust (or trust reliance) require more than mere active reliance. I argue that the central feature of trust reliance is a non-monitoring, commitment condition. This condition can explain what makes some acts more trusting than others, and it can explain why trusting others often makes us vulnerable. Next, I motivate the idea that attitudes of trust come in two forms: propositional trust (trust that) and interpersonal trust (trust in). Propositional trust is a matter of predictive expectation about what others will do, particularly when we rely on them. Interpersonal trust, though, is more a matter of trusting persons than a predication about their performance. After motivating the propositional/interpersonal distinction, I defend a version of weak cognitivism with respect to interpersonal trust, according to which this attitude entails beliefs that others are trustworthy (i.e., trust beliefs). These beliefs are not only about the reliability of others, but about their motives for working on one’s behalf. To interpersonally trust is to, in part, believe that others are disposed to working on one’s behalf because one needs them to. Finally, I defend cognitivism against objections. In the end, weak cognitivism comes out looking like a plausible view of the attitude of interpersonal trust.	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/11244/44855
dc.language	en_US	en_US
dc.subject	trust	en_US
dc.subject	Cognitivism	en_US
dc.subject	attitudes	en_US
dc.subject	reliance	en_US
dc.thesis.degree	Ph.D.	en_US
dc.title	Trust: On Acts and Attitudes of Trust	en_US
ou.group	College of Arts and Sciences::Department of Philosophy	en_US