The Conditions of Trust

Abstract

Trust is vital for much of what we know and do. Yet, standard accounts of trust face a problem. Either they analyze trust in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions such that they face counterexamples, or they fail to explain trust’s role in social practices. To address this problem, I develop and defend a view that I call pragmatic pluralism. Pluralism is the view that trust comes in many forms. I show how pluralism can address counterexamples and preserve the insights of standard theories of trust. However, pluralism neglects to explain how the diverse interests of different parties coalesce in cooperative social practices. In turn, pragmatism provides an explanatory strategy for uniting various forms of trust according to their function. Specifically, I examine trust’s role in disposing parties to rely on each other to achieve their goals. This shared, dispositional function explains how various forms of trust can facilitate cooperative social practices. I argue that pragmatic pluralism is plausible given developments in empirical trust research. I then apply insights from pragmatic pluralism to disputes about values in science and trust in artificial intelligence. I contend that well-placed trust in each case requires a normative view about the appropriate conditions of trust. While pragmatic pluralism is a descriptive account of trust, I conclude that it provides resources for inquiring about the normatively appropriate conditions of trust—those conditions according to which a trustee is worthy of trust.