Do infants trust you? Faulkner and Hawley on trust.

I trust my wife. And no, this isn't the set-up to some awful joke. There may be plenty of those to come--but this is not that.

I trust my wife and yet there are lots of things that I don't trust her to do. It's easy to give you examples and none of them spell disaster for my marriage. 

For instance, I trust my wife, but I don't trust her to save the last glass of champagne. I trust my wife, but I don't trust her to save me the last chocolate biscuit. I trust my wife, but there are many things I don't trust her to run a five minute mile.

What's going on here? The distinction is well known in the philosophy of trust--it's one between generalised trust ('x trusts y') and relational trust ('x trusts y to carry out some action, A'). And, crucially, these two notions of trust--generalised trust and relational trust--are not contradictories. I don't contradict myself by saying that 'I trust my wife', and that 'I don't trust my wife to save me the last of the biscuits'.

So far, so good. We had the appearance of a tension and we've now managed to smooth it over. We've managed to avoid contradiction. 

What gets philosophically interesting in this space is two-fold and will lead us in the direction of infants. Don't worry, we're getting there.

First, can we give an analysis of what it means to say that 'x trusts y to carry out some action, A')? That is, can we use other concepts to understand what's said here? It would be good if we could. Philosophical projects often look to understand some concepts in terms of other, more basic concepts, and given the trust seems to have a moral component (if someone breaks your trust, it seems like they've done something morally wrong--a bit like breaking a promise) it would be good if the analysis could explain where that moral component comes from.

Second, which of generalised trust ('x trusts y') and relational trust ('x trusts y to carry out some action, A') is more fundamental? As in, can we understand generalised trust in terms of relational trust? Or do we need to go the other way around? Or, in fact, are the two concepts just completely different?

Different philosophers take different stances on this. For instance, Hawley thinks we can understand generalised trust in terms of relational trust. So, the idea might be something like: generally trusting someone is a matter of trusting them to do most things or the most important things. So, when I speak of 'trusting my wife' what I'm saying is that, for most actions (or most actions I care about) I trust her to perform them. There is something pretty plausible about that.

In contrast, there are others--and I think that this is probably the majority view at this stage--who think that this gets the story wrong and that generalised trust cannot be understood in that way. Paul Faulkner has a really nice paper on this. He gives five reasons for thinking that generalised trust is basic, the last of which we'll focus on here.

Faulkner's notes that:

"Any account of trust, Annette Baier proposes, should accommodate infant trust. And this generates the constraint ‘that it not make essential to trusting the use of concepts or abilities which a child cannot be reasonably believed to possess’ (1986: 244). "

He then goes on to argue that it's not plausible to think that an infant will have the cognitive capacity to suitably differentiate actions such that they can reasonably be said to, for instance, 'trust their mother to feed them'--more generally, an infant can't reasonably be thought to trust their mother to some specific action, A'. . Nonetheless, an infant can (and in many cases does) trust their mother. In that case, since infants do trust their mothers, but can't trust their mothers to perform specific actions, it can't be the case that trusting x to perform y is more basic than simple generalised trust.

There's a lot that could be said in response, but I want to focus here on the constraint that Faulkner draws from Baier--that any account of trust should accommodate infant trust. 

Simply, I'm not convinced (convince me why I'm wrong in the comments!). I freely accept, of course, that children behave in a way that mimics the trusting behaviour. That much is undeniable. But why think that has to be trust? Put the point another way: trust has a moral dimension, as we said above. If you trust someone and they break that trust, then you have been morally wronged. And, normally, we would want say that there is a connection between being morally wronged and the feeling of outraged betrayal that one feels when this occurs--if I have been wronged, then my belief that this is so explains why I am angered. 

But, if we do not think that infants can form the belief that they trust their mother to form some specific action, then I think it's a reach to think that infants can form the belief that they are been morally wronged, and their belief that this is so explains the strength of their reaction.

Indeed, I think it's a part of what it is to trust to be able to reflect upon and experience the moral dimension of that trust. To think otherwise is just to mistake the nature of trust--at least, so I claim here.

If that's right, then that undercuts one of Faulkner's arguments for thinking that generalised trust is basic. Perhaps more pressingly, it also cuts to the hear of a key constraint on what a theory of trust should deliver. Put simply: don't worry about whether a baby trusts you. 

The Philosophy of Trust

 Welcome to my first post. The point of the blog will be to give time and space to interesting philosophy papers that focus on the philosophy of trust. I'll also cover some of my own work....

The hope is to make some of the philosophical ideas accessible. There is something about philosophical methodology that makes us write in a particular way. It's not easy to follow. It's not easy to make sense of. But the philosophy of trust is so important, that I think we need to do whatever we can to make those themes and ideas accessible. 

And so, that's what I'll do here. Once or twice a week I will post about a philosophy paper and try to connect it to 'the real world'--saying a bit about why the paper matters, is interesting, and what we can learn from it if it's right. I'll also offer a few thoughts of my own about the paper sometimes, too.

So, check back if you're interested in the philosophy of trust! And, if you're interested in trust more widely than just the philosophical side of things, take a look at my Medium page and my YouTube channel.