Abstract

This paper addresses the question of what it means to be trustworthy and suggests that trustworthiness is a kind of reliability specific to persons. This is based on the common ideas that (a) being trustworthy involves being reliable in some way and (b) while objects and artefacts may be relied upon, only persons can be properly trusted.

The person-specific reliability view is deceptively simple and much of the paper will be spent unpacking what it means. There are two main sections. The first will ask what it means to be reliable generally, before asking what it means to be reliable as a person. It will be argued that, under normal usage, being reliable is a matter of something doing what it is meant to do. A car that frequently breaks down when driving but happens to float on water is an unreliable car. It can be relied upon for floating, but this does not improve its reliability as a car. Here, we adopt the language of fitting attitude accounts. As it is fitting to desire the desirable and admire the admirable, so it is fitting to rely on the reliable. Fitting reliance, then, is relying on something to do what it is meant to do. It will be further argued that persons, unlike cars, choose what they are meant to do.

They do this by making commitments: creating obligations to another by signalling that they will do something. Therefore, person-specific reliability – and hence trustworthiness – is a matter of fulfilling commitments. Reliance on a person is fitting, then, just in case it is reliance on them to fulfil a commitment.

The second section will make the account more precise. Three conditions necessary for trustworthiness will be considered and for each, it will be shown that person-specific reliability can accommodate it. These are relevant competence, intentional action and appropriate reasons for acting.

Competence follows from trustworthiness being a kind of reliability, which requires that one be competent in the relevant domain. One can hardly be a reliable teacher, say, if one is not a competent teacher. That trustworthy behaviour must be intentional is also intuitive; we would not call someone trustworthy if they only accidentally fulfilled their commitments. The interesting question is under what description the act must be intentional. It will be argued that the description must be that of fulfilling a commitment. Finally, it seems clear that acting from certain reasons precludes trustworthiness. Just as blackmailing or manipulating someone is not trusting them, so being blackmailed or manipulated is not being trustworthy. We therefore ask what kind of reason the trustworthy actor needs to have and argue that they must be moved by the fact that the other person is relying on them.

The fully unpacked account, then, is this: trustworthiness is intentionally doing what one is fittingly relied upon to do, because one is relied upon to do it. Thus, the simple idea of person-specific reliability can incorporate the complexities of the various conditions for being trustworthy.