Account Of Trust Research Articles

Continuing Formalization of Coalition Formation with a New “Sound”

Getting a new government together in Germany requires building a coalition. The process for doing so has evolved, becoming more institutionalized but remaining part of informal politics. Looking closely at the coalition building in 2021 shows that its organizational structure was vertically slimmer and horizontally more differentiated than in previous years. The role of parliamentary actors was more pronounced than before, and parliamentary organization was mirrored throughout it. Yet the strong inclusion of the Länder (party) perspectives prevailed, making coalition building a multi-level task. While the process in 2021 had more procedural transparency than before, its content remained largely out of public sight. At defined steps, party approval was gathered through formal votes. Whether the established account of better personal trust among the involved partners is more than a nice narrative remains to be seen in the analysis of the coalition’s governing practice.

Therapeutic trust

ABSTRACT This paper develops and defends a new account of therapeutic trust, its nature and its constitutive norms. Central to the view advanced is a distinction between two kinds of therapeutic trust – default therapeutic trust and overriding therapeutic trust – each which derives from a distinct kind of trusting competence. The new view is shown to have advantages over extant accounts of therapeutic trust, and its relation to standard (non-therapeutic) trust, as defended by Hieronymi, Frost-Arnold, and Jones .

Trust in medical artificial intelligence: a discretionary account

This paper sets out an account of trust in AI as a relationship between clinicians, AI applications, and AI practitioners in which AI is given discretionary authority over medical questions by clinicians. Compared to other accounts in recent literature, this account more adequately explains the normative commitments created by practitioners when inviting clinicians’ trust in AI. To avoid committing to an account of trust in AI applications themselves, I sketch a reductive view on which discretionary authority is exercised by AI practitioners through the vehicle of an AI application. I conclude with four critical questions based on the discretionary account to determine if trust in particular AI applications is sound, and a brief discussion of the possibility that the main roles of the physician could be replaced by AI.

Trust, Trustworthiness, and Trust-Free Technologies

The technology underlying most cryptocurrencies, blockchain, is well known for enabling “trust-free” financial transactions and for transforming the role of trust in financial transactions (Nakamoto, 2008). Since blockchains typically depend on the cryptocurrencies they underlie to pay users for monitoring and updating them, I investigate whether cryptocurrencies are also trust free. Based on a classic conception of trust (Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer, 1998), I define what it means for technologies to be trust dependent and trust free. I argue that blockchain is trust free, but that conventional currencies and cryptocurrencies are trust dependent. Then, I introduce a novel, probabilistic account of trustworthiness, adapted from Gambetta (1988b) to conform to Rousseau and colleagues’ (1998) account of trust and the research streams to which it has given rise. Based on this account, I argue that most conventional currencies are trustworthy but that most cryptocurrencies are untrustworthy. Finally, I investigate what my argument that most cryptocurrencies are untrustworthy entails regarding the question of whether cryptocurrencies are ethical. Drawing upon research regarding when cryptocurrencies are ethical and when a trustee’s trustworthiness demonstrates that the trustee is ethical, I argue that whether cryptocurrencies are ethical is independent of whether they are trustworthy.

Trust Between Teacher and Student in Academic Education at School

Abstract What is the nature and what is the role of trust between teacher and student in academic education at school? Providing a philosophically informed answer to these questions is the aim of this paper. In its first part, I present a relationship account of trust based on two fundamental assumptions: first, trust between teacher and student is essentially about them being in a trust relationship, and second, the reasons for trust are relationship dependent. The second part explores the role of trust by looking at two aspects of academic education at school: the student's acquisition of knowledge from the teacher's testimony and the student's development of epistemic confidence, the latter being a key constituent of competent epistemic agency. Drawing on findings from developmental psychology, I explain how trust is involved in successful academic education at school. My aim is to provide a detailed conception of trust in the teacher–student relationship, as well as a conclusive argument for the importance and the value of trust in academic education at school.

How to be trustworthy, by Katherine Hawley

Who is untrustworthy? It’s those who lead others on, scatterbrains, bullshitters, and over-confident advisors. By contrast, you can trust someone who keeps their promises, even if being good at promise-keeping means that they sometimes have to say no to a request. You can also trust those who aim to tell you the truth, especially those who are well aware of the limits of what they know. In her book How to be Trustworthy Katherine Hawley offers a novel and compelling commitment-based account of trust and trustworthiness. To trust another person in what they do, she explains, is to believe that they have a commitment to act accordingly and to rely on them to meet their commitment. Similarly, to trust what another person tells you is to believe that they are committed to telling the truth and to rely on them to meet that commitment. A person is trustworthy if they...

Can Trust Work Epistemic Magic?

I develop a thin account of trust as trust-based reliance on an occasion. I argue that this thin notion describes the trust a recipient of testimony has in a speaker when she forms belief on his say-so. This basis for trusting belief in what one is told is also available to those who overhear and correctly understand the teller’s speech act. I contrast my account of trusting testimonial uptake with an alternative account that invokes a thicker notion: reciprocal trust. This involves mutual awareness of their trusting relation between truster and trustee, and so is not available to mere overhearers of an utterance. Reciprocal trust involves norms to be trusting, and to be trustworthy. I explore how these second-personal norms make visible the possibility of an epistemology of testimony that includes second-personal reasons to trust a speaker’s testimony, ones that hold only for the addressee. Crucially, if the account of trust is a non-doxastic one—that is to say, trust does not analytically entail belief in trustworthiness—then this possibility arises without prior rejection of a core canon of mainstream epistemology: that only evidence can serve as grounds for belief. We find that non-doxastic testimonial trust has the potential to work epistemic magic: to enable one to reach justified beliefs that are not reachable except via second-personal trust in what one is told. But this result obtains only if trust is not only analytically possible without belief in trustworthiness, but can be justified by norms of trust when the latter would not be. My own account rejects this thesis, at least in the case of trusting a speaker as regards her utterance. But my analysis makes sense of the idea of second-personal reasons for testimonial belief, as posited by so-called ‘assurance theorists’ of testimony, and allows that debate to proceed further.

Blockchain, trust, and trust accounting: can blockchain technology substitute trust created by intermediaries in trust accounting A theoretical examination

Blockchain, trust, and trust accounting: can blockchain technology substitute trust created by intermediaries in trust accounting A theoretical examination

Blockchain, trust, and trust accounting: can blockchain technology substitute trust created by intermediaries in trust accounting A theoretical examination

Blockchain technology features such as distributed ledger, decentralisation, smart contracts, and consensus mechanisms promise to trust in transactions. It could be beneficial to trust accounting processes. This paper, using theoretical analysis, reviews these features and examines if they could lead to the substitution or complement the role of trust agents such as legal firms, lawyers, accountants or auditors, and even regulatory authorities. The investigation shows that while blockchain presents novel features that are key to enhancing trust, the technology can only complement that trust accounting process, due to the technical skills required. At the same time, the paper discusses the relationship between trust and intermediaries. Future investigations could analyse the relationship between faith and technology, considering practitioners' view.

The Meaning of “Explainability Fosters Trust in AI”

We provide a philosophical explanation of the relation between artificial intelligence (AI) explainability and trust in AI, providing a case for expressions, such as “explainability fosters trust in AI,” that commonly appear in the literature. This explanation considers the justification of the trustworthiness of an AI with the need to monitor it during its use. We discuss the latter by referencing an account of trust, called “trust as anti-monitoring,” that different authors contributed developing. We focus our analysis on the case of medical AI systems, noting that our proposal is compatible with internalist and externalist justifications of trustworthiness of medical AI and recent accounts of warranted contractual trust. We propose that “explainability fosters trust in AI” if and only if it fosters warranted paradigmatic trust in AI, i.e., trust in the presence of the justified belief that the AI is trustworthy, which, in turn, causally contributes to rely on the AI in the absence of monitoring. We argue that our proposed approach can intercept the complexity of the interactions between physicians and medical AI systems in clinical practice, as it can distinguish between cases where humans hold different beliefs on the trustworthiness of the medical AI and exercise varying degrees of monitoring on them. Finally, we discuss the main limitations of explainable AI methods and we argue that the case of “explainability fosters trust in AI” may be feasible only in a limited number of physician-medical AI interactions in clinical practice.

Epistemic Self-Trust: It's Personal

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.

The account review

The account review is a fundamental component of modern business. They are a strategic and detective tool to assess both performance and satisfaction. Successful account reviews provide an opportunity to grow relationships and reaffirm commitment to an account’s success, whether the account under review is a client, or a vendor. For a fiduciary, organised under US law, the account review represents not only an industry best practice, but a regulatory requirement. A successful fiduciary account review is not an assessment of risk alone. It also validates expectations. Expectations about quality of performance, and validation that all contractual obligations are being met. The account review can corroborate achievements and identify gaps in compliance. It is also a tool to identify and address unnecessary exposure to risk. For trust companies, the fiduciary standard binds a trustee to always act in the client’s interests above their own. The account review ensures adherence to requirements of the contract, and to the mandates of law. A fiduciary is an ethical custodian who must adhere to both the letter of law, but also the spirit of law, while always being obedient to the duties of loyalty and impartiality. The account review provides governance and oversight and helps senior management and the Board of Directors to measure potential exposure to client dissatisfaction, or even litigation. This paper explores six separate and distinct account reviews required during the life of a trust account, which provides a comparative roadmap that could be aligned to any number of other business disciplines.

Trust does not need to be human: it is possible to trust medical AI

In his recent article ‘Limits of trust in medical AI,’ Hatherley argues that, if we believe that the motivations that are usually recognised as relevant for interpersonal trust have to...

In AI We Trust: Ethics, Artificial Intelligence, and Reliability

One of the main difficulties in assessing artificial intelligence (AI) is the tendency for people to anthropomorphise it. This becomes particularly problematic when we attach human moral activities to AI. For example, the European Commission’s High-level Expert Group on AI (HLEG) have adopted the position that we should establish a relationship of trust with AI and should cultivate trustworthy AI (HLEG AI Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI, 2019, p. 35). Trust is one of the most important and defining activities in human relationships, so proposing that AI should be trusted, is a very serious claim. This paper will show that AI cannot be something that has the capacity to be trusted according to the most prevalent definitions of trust because it does not possess emotive states or can be held responsible for their actions—requirements of the affective and normative accounts of trust. While AI meets all of the requirements of the rational account of trust, it will be shown that this is not actually a type of trust at all, but is instead, a form of reliance. Ultimately, even complex machines such as AI should not be viewed as trustworthy as this undermines the value of interpersonal trust, anthropomorphises AI, and diverts responsibility from those developing and using them.

Objectivity, trust and social responsibility

I examine ramifications of the widespread view that scientific objectivity gives us a permission to trust scientific knowledge claims. According to a widely accepted account of trust and trustworthiness, trust in scientific knowledge claims involves both reliance on the claims and trust in scientists who present the claims, and trustworthiness depends on expertise, honesty, and social responsibility. Given this account, scientific objectivity turns out to be a hybrid concept with both an epistemic and a moral-political dimension. The epistemic dimension tells us when scientific knowledge claims are reliable, and the moral-political dimension tells us when we can trust scientists to be socially responsible. While the former dimension has received a fair amount of attention, the latter is in need of analysis. I examine what it means for scientists to be socially responsible, that is, to follow “sound” moral and social values in different stages of scientific inquiry (Kourany in Philosophy of science after feminism, Oxford University Press, New York, 2010). Social responsibility is especially important when scientists function as experts in society. Members of the public and policymakers do not want to rely on scientific research shaped by moral and social values they have good reasons to reject. Moreover, social responsibility is important in social research in which moral and social values can legitimately play many roles. I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of different answers to the question of how social scientists can identify appropriate moral and social values to inform their research. I argue that procedural accounts of social responsibility, such as well-ordered science and deliberative polling, have limitations.

The British Commonwealth as liberal international avatar: with the spines of Burke

ABSTRACT This article examines early twentieth-century British Commonwealth ideologies as historical precursors of empire-related Euroscepticism, with a particular focus on the thought of Reginald Coupland (1884–1952) and Alfred Zimmern (1879–1957). It shows that the liberal internationalists committed to advocating the Commonwealth, Coupland and Zimmern sought to promote an idealized view of the empire by portraying it as a harmonious and multiagency polity grounded in a supposed benign form of nationalism and internationalism. The essay also highlights a relatively disregarded ideological source of the British Commonwealth projects at the time: Edmund Burke. Coupland and Zimmern built on aspects of Burke’s thought – respectively, his account of trust and manners – to characterize their schemes for the empire. Moreover, such Burkean elements helped them to distinguish between the systems of their envisaged Commonwealth and Continental states, among others, Germany. The essay presents Coupland’s and Zimmern’s imperial projects as two significant cases of the incorporation of Burke’s thought into the early century British Commonwealth accounts.

Interpersonal Trust and Contracts Theory Redux

The proposition that mutual loyalty facilities cooperation required for contract performance is a truism, almost a cliche. Jurists have extensively debated the role of honesty, collaboration, and reciprocity for supporting decent contractual relations. Surprisingly, contract law scholars have not developed a detailed account of interpersonal trust yet in a one-shot contract that is outside the frame of relational transactions, or the common understanding of fiduciary relations. While theoreticians acknowledge the significance of interpersonal trust as a core component of any contract theory, they fail to develop a comprehensive understanding of such concept and how it is integrated into a descriptive approach of contract law. This Article is devoted to exploring the fundamental perceptions of moral, economic, and behavioral interpersonal trust as a basis for establishing a new framework on the role of faith in contract law and theory. I show that consolidating the studies of interpersonal trust in the fundamental assumptions of promissory, efficiency, and fairness theories may fill this void and resolve some difficulties regarding their analytical force of different contract doctrines as well as provide a better justification for various transactions between a variety of contractors’ types in different legal systems.

On behalf of a bi-level account of trust

A bi-level account of trust is developed and defended, one with relevance in ethics as well as epistemology. The proposed account of trust—on which trusting is modelled within a virtue-theoretic framework as a performance-type with an aim—distinguishes between two distinct levels of trust, apt and convictive, that take us beyond previous assessments of its nature, value, and relationship to risk assessment. While Sosa (A virtue epistemology: apt belief and reflective knowledge, volume I, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009; Judgment and agency, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015; Epistemology, University Press, Princeton, 2017), in particular, has shown how a performance normativity model may be fruitfully applied to belief, my objective is to apply this kind of model in a novel and principled way to trust. I conclude by outlining some of the key advantages of the performance-theoretic bi-level account of trust defended over more traditional univocal proposals.

Political Trust, Commitment and Responsiveness

Political trust has become a central focus of political analysis and public lament. Political theorists and philosophers typically think of interpersonal trust in politics as a fragile but valuable resource for a flourishing or stable democratic polity. This article examines what conception of trust is needed in order to play this role. It unpicks two candidate answers, a moral and a responsiveness conception, the latter of which has been central to recent political theory in this area. It goes on to outline a third, commitment conception and to set out how a focus on commitments and their fulfilment provides a better account of trust for political purposes. Adopting this conception discloses how trust relies on a contestable public normative space and has significant implications for how we should approach three cognate topics, namely, judgements of trust, the place of distrust and the relationship of interpersonal to institutional trust and distrust.

Characteristics of Lawyers Who Are Subject to Complaints and Misconduct Findings

Regulators of the legal profession are charged with protecting the public by ensuring lawyers are fit to practice law. However, their approach tends to be reactive and case based, focusing on the resolution of individual complaints. Regulators generally do not seek to identify patterns and trends across their broader caseloads and the legal profession as a whole. Using administrative data routinely collected by the main regulator of the legal profession in Victoria, Australia, we characterized complaints lodged between 2005 and 2015 and the lawyers against whom they were made. We also analyzed risk factors for complaints and misconduct findings. We found that the odds of being subject to a complaint were higher among lawyers who were male, older, had trust account authority, and whose legal practices were smaller, in nonurban locations, and incorporated. A deeper understanding of these risk factors could support efforts to improve professional standards and reform regulatory practices.