Abstract
AbstractWhat is epistemic self-trust? There is a tension in the way in which prominent accounts answer this question. Many construe epistemic trust in oneself as no more than reliance on our sub-personal cognitive faculties. Yet many accounts – often the same ones – construe epistemic trust in others as a normatively laden attitude directed at persons whom we expect to care about our epistemic needs. Is epistemic self-trust really so different from epistemic trust in others? I argue that it is not. We certainly do rely on our cognitive faculties to achieve epistemic ends; but I argue that we also have the normatively rich sort of epistemic trust in ourselves. Moreover, there is a theoretical need for this normatively rich notion of epistemic self-trust: positing it yields the best account of how we secure important epistemic goods, including knowledge and recognition as knowers. I argue this by giving an account of epistemic trust in others and showing that it can be generalized to epistemic trust in oneself.
Highlights
Self-trust is crucial to our epistemic lives
What is epistemic self-trust? A common answer is that a person epistemically trusts herself when she relies on her sub-personal cognitive faculties (Foley 2001; Hinchman 2012; Zagzebski 2012; Fricker 2016; Tanesini 2020)
If this is so, epistemic self-trust is a different kind of thing entirely from epistemic trust in others
Summary
Self-trust is crucial to our epistemic lives. We need to trust ourselves when we acquire knowledge, and when we take the risk of testifying our knowledge to others. Another is that the person being relied on may be under some degree of pressure or coercion, or have strong incentives to come through, for example due to a threat or legal or reputational consequences for failure, or the prospect of a paycheck for success In such cases, mere reliance could be more efficacious than trust would be. In response to the idea that having someone rely on you can influence you to behave reliably, the two reasons sketched above show that trust enjoys special advantages, as the trustee is apt to be especially disposed to help the truster On top of this – and this is my third reason for the efficacy-of-trust claim – mere reliance can have disadvantages in contrast to trust. Specific cases aside, the fact that mere reliance can come with pressure or coercion does not give it any general advantage over trust
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