Distrust, Ignorance and Injustice: Mangoletsi
lectures 2010
In May 2010 I will give four
public lectures at the University
of Leeds. This page has titles,
abstracts, handouts and some references/reading.
Trust, knowledge and justice
are all lovely, but to understand their nature and value we must also grapple
with distrust, ignorance and injustice.
I will begin these lectures by showing how both trust and distrust must
be understood in terms of commitment:
without commitment, trust is an imposition and distrust is an
insult. We will examine the special
connections between trust and knowledge: distrust makes it hard for us to learn
from other people’s evidence, but does trust render evidence unnecessary? Finally, I will look at how prejudice and
implicit bias can affect our decisions about who to trust, and who to distrust.
Lecture 1 (10th May): Distrust and
Trust handout
(pdf)
Our trust in one another can
be deeper and richer than our practical reliance on inanimate objects. Yet distrust of another person can also be
deeper and more complex than mere reluctance to rely upon a faulty car. Thinking about distrust can help us
understand trust, to see why, for example, being trusted can sometimes be an
unwelcome imposition, even when being distrusted is also unwelcome.
Related
- A good place to start is the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy
article on Trust by
Carolyn McLeod; she provides many further references.
- Russell Hardin is a
political scientist who has written extensively on trust. His 2006 book Trust ( Polity Press) is an
accessible survey, with references to Hardin’s other work.
- Philosopher Annette Baier gave the 1991
Tanner Lectures on ‘Trust’; these develop her ‘Trust and Antitrust’, Ethics 96 (1986) pp. 231-60.
- In the lecture I also draw on Karen Jones’s
work, particularly her article ‘Trust as an Affective Attitude’, Ethics 107 (1996), pp. 4-25.
- See also Onora O’Neill’s 2002 Reith Lectures on A Question of Trust (the BBC
website links through to Open University resources).
Lecture 2 (11th May): Commitment and
Assertion handout
(pdf)
Both trust and distrust
require commitment: if I am not committed to doing something, you should not
trust me to do it, but nor should you insult me by considering me untrustworthy
in this respect. The commitment account
of trust is powerful, but it raises difficult questions about what commitments
are, and how we acquire them. In particular,
I argue that assertion – making a claim – involves commitment to telling the
truth.
Related
- The commitment account is influenced by Richard Holton’s
‘Deciding to Trust, Coming to Believe’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 72 (1994) pp.63-76.
- The Stanford
Encylopedia of Philosophy has a number of relevant articles, including
Promises by
Allen Habib and Assertion
by Peter Pagin.
- A significant part of this second lecture
focuses on the explanatory power of the commitment account of
(dis)trust. A longer version would
also highlight the relative problems of rival accounts, focusing on
Hardin, Baier and Jones as sophisticated representatives (see above).
Lecture 3 (17th May): Checks, Lies and
Videotape handout
(pdf)
Other people are key to your acquisition of factual knowledge and practical
skills, and trust is key to this learning.
But how much evidence of trustworthiness do you need? Trust may make evidence unnecessary: if you
constantly check up on me, it is disingenuous to claim that you trust me. Similarly, trust is often thought to be inherently
risky – in the absence of risk there can be no trust. I examine these claims in the light of the
commitment account of (dis)trust, and discuss the value of trust in
inter-personal relationships.
Related
- The various readings on trust (above) are still
relevant.
- The short discussion of trust and testimony
reacts to Paul
Faulkner’s work, especially his ‘On Trust and Knowledge’, Mind 116 (2007), and to Richard Moran’s ‘Getting
Told and Being Believed’, Philosopher’s
Imprint 5 (2005).
- I also draw on my forthcoming ‘Testimony
and Knowing How’.
Lecture 4 (18th May): Just Trust and
Unjust Distrust handout (pdf)
You owe it to yourself to
place your trust and distrust appropriately, to take advantage of practical and
emotional opportunities, and to protect yourself from exploitation. But you also owe it to other people to trust
or distrust them appropriately: life is hard for untrusted people, and untrustworthiness
is a moral flaw, yet uninvited trust can be a burden. The misguided idea that trust depends on gut
instinct may make us particularly susceptible to unfair prejudice and implicit
bias in this area, even despite our best intentions. Using recent literature on epistemic
injustice, I discuss whether there is a more general phenomenon of justice and
injustice in (dis)trusting.
Related
- Much of this lecture responds to Miranda Fricker’s
work, especially her Epistemic
Injustice (OUP 2007).
- I also draw on my forthcoming ‘Knowledge
How and Epistemic Injustice’.
- The material about stereotypes is drawn from Social Psychology (3rd
edition) by Eliot R. Smith and Diane M. Mackie (Psychology Press 2007),
especially ch. 5.
- A good practical resource about implicit bias
(especially in academic contexts) is here at
the