Trust

This paper presents a structural definition of wokeism as a coercive moral doctrine that suppresses inquiry and reframes dialogue into a mechanism of belief enforcement through guilt and reputational threat. The definition offered is not based on polemic opposition, but on structural necessity. Academic institutions that enforce the behavioral norms of wokeism while refusing to define the doctrine create an epistemic closure loop. In such a system, critique is interpreted as harm, dissent as complicity, and dialogue becomes a performance of (...) moral loyalty rather than a search for truth. The paper proceeds by formally defining wokeism using the classical method of genus and differentia. It then analyzes institutional behavior to determine whether the doctrine, once embedded, behaves as the definition predicts. Through a series of six theorems, the paper shows that wokeism transforms the university from a space of inquiry into a system of enforcement. It insulates itself through semantic denial, collapses constitutional and logical coherence, and converts dissent into guilt without recourse to argument. Objections are addressed not as neutral critiques, but as defensive patterns within the structure itself. The analysis concludes that the institutional adoption of wokeism violates the foundational principles of American higher education. An institution that suppresses critique and enforces belief without accountability has broken the public trust that legitimizes its existence. What remains is not education, but doctrinal control under the appearance of virtue. -/- Keywords: wokeism, epistemic closure, coercive moral doctrine, belief enforcement, academic institutions, philosophical inquiry, structural recursion, dialogue suppression, institutional authoritarianism, moral epistemology . (shrink)

Trust in the scientific enterprise — in science as an institution — is arguably important to individuals’ and societies’ well-being. Although some measures of public trust in science exist, the recipients of that trust are often ambiguous between trusting individual scientists and the scientific community at large. We argue that more precision would be beneficial — specifically, targeting public trust of the scientific community at large — and describe the development and validation of such an instrument: the Scientific Community Trust (...) Index (SCTI). We show the results of initial field testing to establish instrument reliability and validity. We then demonstrate certain advantages of the SCTI against other measures of trust and deference, and present correlations between the SCTI and participant scores in two trust-in-science scenarios. Our results suggest that the SCTI is a useful and compact tool for measuring public trust in the scientific community. (shrink)

Corruption prevention can be more effective if it does not rely merely on legal enforcement. This theoretical review aimed to propose a hypothetical psychological model capable of explaining the behavior of corruption. Moral disengagement is a variable that is considered ontologically closest in “distance” to the variable of corruption behavior. Counterfeit self, implicit self-theory, ethical mindset and moral emotion are taken into account as the pivotal factors of the corruption behavior and its mechanism of moral disengagement. Counterfeit self along with (...) some moderating variables are regarded to “set” one’s future corrupt behavior based on his/her past/prior ethical or unethical behavior and moral emotions. This review discovered a conjectural-theoretical model of the corruption psychology. It can be used to design a social intervention and training for individuals to manage the mindset and emotion that can buffer counterfeit self effect. In addition, the users of these research findings are recommended to be aware of the surroundings that consist of groups of people with particular ethical mindset, moral emotion proneness and self-theory. (shrink)

Few recent developments in information technology have been as hyped as blockchain, the first implementation of which was the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Such hype furnishes ample reason to be skeptical about the promise of blockchain implementations, but I contend that there’s something to the hype. In particular, I think that certain blockchain implementations, in the right material, social, and political conditions, constitute excellent bases for common knowledge. As a case study, I focus on trust in election outcomes, where the ledger records (...) not financial transactions but vote tallies. I argue that blockchain implementations could foster warranted trust in vote tallies and thereby trust in the democratic process. Finally, I argue that if the promise of blockchain implementations as democratic infrastructure is to be realized, then democracies first need to ensure that these material, social, and political conditions obtain. (shrink)

First, we explain the conception of trustworthiness that we employ. We model trustworthiness as a relation among a trustor, a trustee, and a field of trust defined and delimited by its scope. In addition, both potential trustors and potential trustees are modeled as being more or less reliable in signaling either their willingness to trust or their willingness to prove trustworthy in various fields in relation to various other agents. Second, following Alfano (forthcoming) we argue that the social scale of (...) a potential trust relationship partly determines both explanatory and normative aspects of the relation. Most of the philosophical literature focuses on dyadic trust between a pair of agents (Baier 1986, Jones 1996, Jones 2012, McGeer 2008, Pettit 1995), but there are also small communities of trust (Alfano forthcoming) and trust in large institutions (Potter 2002, Govier 1997, Townley & Garfield 2013, Hardin 2002). The mechanisms that induce people to extend their trust vary depending on the size of the community in question, and the ways in which trustworthiness can be established and trusting warranted vary with these mechanisms. Mechanisms that work in dyads and small communities are often unavailable in the context of trusting an institution or branch of government. Establishing trust on this larger social scale therefore requires new or modified mechanisms. In the third section of the paper, we recommend three policies that – we argue – tend to make institutions more trustworthy and to reliably signal that trustworthiness to the public. First, they should ensure that their decision-making processes are as open and transparent as possible. Second, they should make efforts to engage stakeholders in dialogue with decision-makers such as managers, members of the C-Suite, and highly-placed policy-makers. Third, they should foster diversity – gender, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic background, disability, etc. – in their workforce at all levels, but especially in management and positions of power. We conclude by discussing the warrant for distrust in institutions that do not adopt these policies, which we contend is especially pertinent for people who belong to groups that have historically faced (and in many cases still do face) oppression. (shrink)

While deliberation has traditionally played a central role in philosophical and behavioral accounts of ethical decision-making, several recent studies challenge the value of deliberation. These studies find that deliberative thinking, such as considering divergent views or different perspectives, leads to less ethical decisions. We observe, however, that these studies do not address normative deliberation, in which decision-makers consider or apply a normative standard. We predict that normative deliberation improves ethical decision-making. Across six experiments, we examine the effects of non-normative deliberation (...) and normative deliberation on ethical decision-making. We find that normative deliberation improves ethical decision-making and, in contrast to recent studies, no form of deliberation harms ethical decision-making. (shrink)

Faced with current urgent calls for more trust in experts, especially in high impact and politically sensitive domains, such as climate science and COVID-19, the complex and problematic nature of public trust in experts and the need for a more critical approach to the topic are easy to overlook. Scepticism – at least in its Humean mitigated form that encourages independent, questioning attitudes – can prove valuable to democratic governance, but stands in opposition to the cognitive dependency entailed by epistemic (...) trust. In this paper, we investigate the tension between the value of mitigated scepticism – understood as the exercise of reason-based doubt in a particular domain – and the need for trust in experts. We offer four arguments in favour of mitigated scepticism: the argument from loss of intellectual autonomy; the argument from democratic deficit; the argument from the normative failures of science; and the argument from past and current injustices. These arguments highlight the tension between the requirements for trust and justified scepticism about the role of experts. One solution, which we reject, is the idea that reliance, rather than trust, is sufficient for the purposes of accommodating experts in policy matters. The solution we endorse is to create a ‘climate of trust’, where questioning experts and expertise is welcomed, but the epistemic trust necessary for action upon information which the public cannot obtain first-hand is enabled and encouraged through structural, institutional, and justice-based measures. (shrink)

This paper proposes a formal account of AI trustworthiness, connecting both intrinsic and perceived trustworthiness in an operational schematization. We argue that trustworthiness extends beyond the inherent capabilities of an AI system to include significant influences from observers' perceptions, such as perceived transparency, agency locus, and human oversight. While the concept of perceived trustworthiness is discussed in the literature, few attempts have been made to connect it with the intrinsic trustworthiness of AI systems. Our analysis introduces a novel schematization to (...) quantify trustworthiness by assessing the discrepancies between expected and observed behaviors and how these affect perceived uncertainty and trust. The paper provides a formalization for measuring trustworthiness, taking into account both perceived and intrinsic characteristics. By detailing the factors that influence trust, this study aims to foster more ethical and widely accepted AI technologies, ensuring they meet both functional and ethical criteria. (shrink)

Background Trust is an essential phenomenon of relationship between patients and healthcare professionals and can be described as an accepted vulnerability to the power of another person over something that one cares about in virtue of goodwill toward the trustor. This characterization of interpersonal trust appears to be adequate for patients suffering from chronic illness. Trust is especially important in the context of chronic cardiovascular diseases as one of the main global health problems. Research Aim The purpose of the qualitative (...) study was to gain a deeper understanding of how people with chronic cardiovascular disease experience and make sense of trust in healthcare professionals. Research Design Eleven semi-structured interviews with participants analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore in detail their lived experience of trust as a relational phenomenon. Participants and Research Context Participants with chronic cardiovascular disease were purposively recruited from inpatients on the cardiology ward of the university hospital located in central Slovakia. Ethical Considerations The study was approved by the faculty ethics committee. Participants gave their written informed consent. Findings Four Interrelated Group Experiential Themes Sense of co-existence; Belief in competence; Will to help; Ontological security with eight subthemes were identified. The findings describe the participants' experience with trust in healthcare professionals as a phenomenon of close co-existence, which is rooted in the participants’ vulnerability and dependence on the goodwill and competence of health professionals to help with the consequence of (re)establishing a sense of ontological security in the situation of chronic illness. Conclusion Findings will contribute to an in-depth understanding of trust as an existential dimension of human co-existence and an ethical requirement of healthcare practice, inspire patient empowerment interventions, support adherence to treatment, and person-centred care. (shrink)

Standardly, echo chambers are thought to be structures that we should avoid. Agents should keep away from them, to be able to assess a fuller range of evidence and avoid having their confidence in that information manipulated. This paper argues against that standard view. Not only can echo chambers be neutral or good for us, but the existing definitions apply so widely that such chambers are unavoidable. We are all in large numbers of echo chambers at any time – they (...) can be found not just on social media or in political groups, but in almost every social or epistemic group we could categorise ourselves into. Because we are finite and fallible, we cannot escape them and need to exist in them just to get by. The concept, then, does not actually capture something as structurally problematic as the paradigmatic cases would suggest. Our way of using the term in social epistemology needs to change. (shrink)

A great many important decisions we make in life depend on scientific information that we are not in a position to assess. So it seems we must defer to experts. By now there are a variety of criteria on offer by which non-experts can judge the trustworthiness of a scientist responsible for producing or promulgating this information. But science is, for the most part, a collective not an individual enterprise. This paper explores which of the criteria for judging the trustworthiness (...) of individual scientists can be amended for use in assessing the trustworthiness of scientific collectives. It also offers some new proposals specifically geared to assessing collective trustworthiness in science, notably, an analysis of where to apply the criteria (for example at the group or individual level) and additional criteria to assess group infrastructure and design. The paper ends with some practical suggestions for how to assist the non-expert in this task. (shrink)

Extending ethical leadership theory and research beyond the walls of the organization, we propose a spillover model wherein ethical leaders impact customer loyalty (i.e., repeat purchase amount) by first establishing trusting relations with employees, who in turn emulate their leaders’ ethical behavior. In Study 1, we examined how this initial trust (i.e., trust primacy) facilitates new employees’ moral imprinting in a controlled experiment. In Study 2, with a field design, we tested our model among new employees and their respective customers (...) over a 6-month timespan. Results indicate that perceptions of ethical leadership operate through trust primacy to affect customer repeat purchase, with accelerated growth over time. We conclude by considering theoretical and practical implications as they relate to ethical leadership and trust primacy, as well as marketing and salesforce management. (shrink)

In this paper, we locate a general rhetorical strategy employed in theoretical discourse wherein philosophers argue from the mere existence of internalized oppression to some kind of epistemic, moral, political, or cognitive deficiency of oppressed people. We argue that this strategy has harmful consequences for oppressed people, breaking down our analysis in terms of individual and structural harms within both epistemic and moral domains. These harms include attempting to undermine the self-trust of oppressed people, reinforcing unjust epistemic power hierarchies, undermining (...) the moral agency of oppressed people, and obscuring real issues of oppression. In light of these many harms, we conclude that there are pro tanto reasons not to employ this strategy, and instead offer a series of suggestions for those considering adopting such a rhetorical move. (shrink)

El propósito de este trabajo es exponer una estrategia explicativa que está en el núcleo de A Spirit of Trust de Robert Brandom. Esta estrategia consiste, de acuerdo con nuestra lectura, en tratar la oposición epistemológica entre apariencias y realidad —y otras oposiciones conceptuales emparentadas— como una distinción interna, normativa e histórica. Mostraremos cómo Brandom hace funcionar esta estrategia apelando al procedimiento de la rememoración, que permite, al ubicar diferentes representaciones en una secuencia de desarrollo histórico, entender la distinción entre (...) apariencias y realidad como la distinción entre cómo nos representamos qué son las cosas y cómo deberíamos representárnoslas. (shrink)

Misinformation perceptions related to global crises such as COVID-19 can have negative ramifications for democracy. Beliefs related to the prevalence of falsehoods may increase news avoidance or even vaccine hesitancy – a problematic context for successful interventions and policymaking. To explore how misinformation beliefs developed over a six-month pandemic period and how they corresponded to (digital) media preferences and selective exposure to the news, we rely on a five-wave panel survey conducted in the Netherlands (N =1,742). Our main findings show (...) that misinformation perceptions got more pronounced as the pandemic evolved. Social media use related to more pronounced misinformation beliefs within waves, whereas mainstream news use corresponded to less pronounced misinformation beliefs. An important implication for journalists and policymakers is to lower the over-time accumulation of misinformation perceptions, for example, by increasing transparency and acknowledging “honest mistakes.”. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a Kantian framework for moral trust—trust in another person to only act with us in morally permissible ways. First, I derive an understanding of trustworthiness from Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative. I argue that trustworthiness embodies a moral imperative, guiding us to act in ways that are reliable and recognizable as conducive to engaging in trusting relations. However, this alone is not enough, as it doesn't provide a means to assess whether someone is (...) truly committed to the moral law and thus morally trustworthy. Therefore, in the second part, I explore a basis for assessing their moral conduct found in a local version of the Kingdom of Ends: given an ideal or archetype of a morally perfect interpersonal relationship, an archetype of the morally trustworthy agent allows us to comparatively assess the moral disposition of fellow agents. (shrink)

When philosophers consider factors compromising autonomy in consent, they often focus solely on the consent-giver’s agential capacities, overlooking the impact of the consent-receiver’s conduct on the consensual character of the activity. In this paper, I argue that valid consent requires justified trust in the consent-receiver to act only within the scope of consent. I call this the Trust Condition (TC), drawing on Katherine Hawley’s commitment account of trust. TC constitutes a belief that the consent-receiver is capable and willing to act (...) as we expect from them. If such trust is not warranted, I argue, consent lacks the appropriate normative grounds. After establishing TC, I explore its application in the sexual arena, asserting that due to the non-contractual dimensions of sexual activity — such as the dynamic nature of sexual desires and the absence of external factors effectively binding sexual partners to the terms of consent—trust is warranted in sexual consent by means of care. I define care as a special sensitivity and attention toward the partner’s will and discuss how this approach leads to safer intimate relationships in practice. (shrink)

In this paper, I address a fundamental challenge in the philosophy of trust: how to account for trustee discretion in scenarios that fall outside explicitly defined expectations. I argue that this challenge reveals vagueness as an inherent feature of trusting relationships, often leading to disagreements between trustors and trustees. To resolve this, I propose a novel account of trust grounded in rule-following, shifting the object of trust from particular actions to adherence to rules constitutive of relationships. By focusing on relationships (...) and their constitutive rules, I provide here a framework for understanding and minimizing disagreements through communication and engaged practice. Furthermore, I argue this framework sheds light on the dynamics of trust-related reactive attitudes, in particular, distinguishing between betrayal and mere disappointment. (shrink)

This commentary draws critical attention to the ongoing commodification of trust in policy and scholarly discourses of artificial intelligence (AI) and society. Based on an assessment of publications discussing the implementation of AI in governmental and private services, our findings indicate that this discursive trend towards commodification is driven by the need for a trusting population of service users to harvest data at scale and leads to the discursive construction of trust as an essential good on a par with data (...) as raw material. This discursive commodification is marked by a decreasing emphasis on trust understood as the expected reliability of a trusted agent, and increased emphasis on instrumental and extractive framings of trust as a resource. This tendency, we argue, does an ultimate disservice to developers, users, and systems alike, insofar as it obscures the subtle mechanisms through which trust in AI systems might be built, making it less likely that it will be. (shrink)

Der Erfolg von Maßnahmen zur Eindämmung der COVID-19-Pandemie ist abhängig vom Vertrauen der Öffentlichkeit in wissenschaftliche Experten. Zwar ist Vertrauen als Einstellung gegenüber Experten im Zusammenhang mit der Pandemie bereits viel Aufmerksamkeit zuteilgeworden, allerdings meist in Bezug auf das Vertrauen, das Laien Äußerungen wie Behauptungen und Mitteilungen entgegenbringen, die ihnen das Wissen der Experten zugänglich machen sollen. Dieser Aufsatz stellt dagegen eine andere Art der Äußerung in den Mittelpunkt: die Empfehlung. Im Zusammenhang mit der Pandemie haben Forderungen gegenüber der Politik (...) wissenschaftsbasiert zu verfahren zugenommen. Gleichzeitig sind Politikerinnen und Politiker aber nicht das Sprachrohr der Wissenschaft, sondern übernehmen Verantwortung für eine wissenschaftsbasierte Gesundheitspolitik, unter anderem indem sie Bürgerinnen und Bürgern bestimmte Handlungen empfehlen. Damit erhebt die Politik allerdings den Anspruch, dass Bürgerinnen nicht nur glauben sollten, was ihnen von den Experten gesagt wird, sondern auch, dass sie tun sollten, was von ihnen im Rahmen der Maßnahmen verlangt wird. Ziel dieses Aufsatzes ist es daher zu zeigen, dass Empfehlungen eine Konzeption von Vertrauen erfordert, die sich vom Vertrauen im Kontext von Mitteilungen und Behauptungen stark unterscheidet. Es geht nicht nur darum, diese Art von Vertrauen genauer zu spezifizieren, sondern auch darum zu erklären, unter welchen Voraussetzungen es vernünftig ist, wissenschaftsbasierten Empfehlungen der Politik mit Vertrauen zu begegnen. Dazu gehe ich folgendermaßen vor: In Abschnitt 1 analysiere ich zunächst den Sprechakt des Empfehlens. Das dadurch gewonnene Grundverständnis von empfehlenden Sprechakten untersuche ich dann im Kontext von Empfehlungen wissenschaftlicher Experten während der Covid-19-Pandemie (Abschnitt 2) und plädiere dann dafür, dass eine Analyse der an eine breite Öffentlichkeit gerichteten Empfehlungen am besten bei Äußerungen von Politikern ansetzen muss, die sich auf das kompetente Urteil wissenschaftlicher Expertinnen und Experten beziehen (Abschnitt 3). In Abschnitt 4 diskutiere ich dann die Gründe, die ein Hörer haben könnte, eine solche Empfehlung anzunehmen, bevor ich in den Abschnitten 5 und 6 die für Empfehlungen relevante Form des Vertrauens herausarbeite. Abschnitt 7 diskutiert die Auffassung, dass Vertrauen in wissenschaftsbasierte Empfehlungen nur durch die Anerkennung der Sprecherin im Sinne einer guten Ratgeberin als rationale Einstellung ausgewiesen werden kann, bevor ich abschließend argumentiere, dass diese Rationalitätsbedingungen im Kontext der COVID-19-Pandemie nur schwer einzulösen waren. (shrink)

This paper is focused on the ways of expressing trust and distrust in financial institutions represented in the language and speech culture of the population of the Lipetsk region. Based on 55 semi-structured interviews of three generations (centennials, millennials, elder generations) living in rural and urban settlements, issues of understanding and interpretation of financial institutions, features of trust, positive and negative experiences of interaction with various financial institutions were analyzed. The use of the constructivism made it possible to interpret trust (...) as an internal component of the practices of an agent involved in the current financial situation. The study showed that in regions with an average standard of living, an average level of financial culture and the dominance of a conservative model of financial behaviour, the difference between generations is less noticeable against the backdrop of a significant difference between residents of rural and urban settlements. The analysis of interviews with three generations of residents of the region showed that the conservative model of financial behaviour continues to be reproduced in the speech culture of the informants, where banks and insurance organizations remain the most trustworthy. The images of financial institutions, represented in the language of the interviews, revealed a high level of resentment associated with the experience of past events (the collapse of the USSR, privatization). The content analysis revealed the image of the state as a “collector of payments”, and to a lesser extent, a “helper” supporting a person in his relationship with financial institutions. (shrink)

In combating the ongoing global health threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, decision-makers have to take actions based on a multitude of relevant health data with severe potential consequences for the affected patients. Because of their presumed advantages in handling and analyzing vast amounts of data, computer systems of algorithmic decision-making are implemented and substitute humans in decision-making processes. In this study, we focus on a specific application of ADM in contrast to human decision-making, namely the allocation of COVID-19 vaccines to (...) the public. In particular, we elaborate on the role of trust and social group preference on the legitimacy of vaccine allocation. We conducted a survey with a 2 × 2 randomized factorial design among n = 1602 German respondents, in which we utilized distinct decision-making agents and prioritization of a specific social group as design factors. Our findings show that general trust in ADM systems and preference for vaccination of a specific social group influence the legitimacy of vaccine allocation. However, contrary to our expectations, trust in the agent making the decision did not moderate the link between social group preference and legitimacy. Moreover, the effect was also not moderated by the type of decision-maker. We conclude that trustworthy ADM systems must not necessarily lead to the legitimacy of ADM systems. (shrink)

This book is a journey of in-depth exploration into the social dimensions of understanding. As human beings, we strive to understand the world around us. The path to understanding, however, is rarely walked alone; we walk the path with others. We understand more together, by joining forces, than we would understand alone. When we understand something and come to see things clearly, it is probably because someone else has taught us, enlightened us, shared his or her perspective with us, or (...) shaped our environment so that our attempts to make sense of the world were likely to succeed. Understanding, then, is a social rather than an individual achievement. The book will be of great interest to philosophers working in epistemology, philosophy of science, and the philosophy of education. (shrink)

AI researchers and ethicists have long worried about the threat that automation poses to human dignity, autonomy, and to the sense of personal value that is tied to work. Typically, proposed solutions to this problem focus on ways in which we can reduce the number of job losses which result from automation, ways to retrain those that lose their jobs, or ways to mitigate the social consequences of those job losses. However, even in cases where workers keep their jobs, their (...) agency within those roles might be severely downgraded. For instance, human employees might work alongside artificial intelligence (AI) but not be allowed to make decisions or not be allowed to make decisions without consulting with or coming to agreement with the AI. Here, we argue that this is a kind of epistemic harm (which could be an injustice if it is distributed on the basis of identity prejudice). It diminishes human agency (in constraining people's ability to act independently), and it fails to recognize the workers' epistemic agency as qualified experts. Workers, in this case, aren't given the trust they are entitled to. This means that issues of human dignity remain even in cases where everyone keeps their job. Further, job retention focused solutions, such as designing an algorithm to work alongside the human employee, may only enable these harms. In response to this, we propose an alternative design solution, adversarial collaboration, which addresses the traditional retention problem of automation, but also addresses the larger underlying problem of epistemic harms and the distribution of trust between AI and humans in the workplace. (shrink)

This paper argues that the emotional cues exhibited by AI systems designed for social interaction may lead human users to hold misplaced trust in such AI systems, and this poses a substantial problem for human-AI relationships. It begins by discussing the communicative role of certain emotions relevant to perceived trustworthiness. Since displaying such emotions is a reliable indicator of trustworthiness in humans, we use such emotions to assess agents’ trustworthiness according to certain generalizations of folk psychology. Our tendency to engage (...) in anthropomorphism with artificial agents that display these communicative emotions may mislead us into trusting them, even when such trust is misplaced. This phenomenon is referred to as the Emotions-Trustworthiness Gap. This paper demonstrates this general concept with compassion and guilt. In both cases, we may be tempted to judge that AI systems' mere mimicking of relevant emotions constitutes evidence for their trustworthiness. However, most current AI systems are not trustworthy on any major view of trustworthy AI. Thus, the trust elicited from human users will be misplaced. This tendency of human users to hold misplaced trust in their AI companions leaves them vulnerable to serious harm. Several potential solutions to the Emotions-Trustworthiness Gap are discussed. (shrink)

Invitation to submit abstracts to the new special issue PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON TRUST AND DISTRUST IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETIES to be published by Sats. Northern European Journal of Philosophy in spring 2024.

According to epistemic ideology critics, a belief or set of beliefs is ideological when it: (a) empowers those responsible for disseminating these beliefs and (b) lacks compelling independent justification. In their view, beliefs satisfying these criteria are defective and ought to be debunked. I contest this claim by showing how, under conditions of political crisis, it is often both epistemically unwarranted and pragmatically inadvisable to debunk seemingly ideological beliefs. I examine the types of beliefs that constitute what are commonly called (...) “emergency frames.” An emergency frame is a system of beliefs concerning the nature of a severe collective threat and the best way to combat that threat. I argue that, due to the uncertainty inherent in many crisis situations, emergency frames often lack independent justification. Because this lack stems from unavoidable epistemic constraints, it should not be seen as a flaw warranting the debunking of any given emergency frame. I begin by outlining the notion of epistemic ideology critique (Section 1). In Section 2, I explore how, when this notion is applied to emergency frames, they often appear ideological and thus seem to warrant debunking. In Section 3, however, I show why it is sometimes epistemically unwarranted and pragmatically inadvisable to debunk such frames. I conclude that, in certain cases, when confronted with ostensibly ideological emergency frames, an attitude of political trust is more suitable than one of radical critique. (shrink)

Can AI developers be held epistemically responsible for the processing of their AI systems when these systems are epistemically opaque? And can explainable AI (XAI) provide public justificatory reasons for opaque AI systems’ outputs? Koskinen (2024) gives negative answers to both questions. Here, I respond to her and argue for affirmative answers. More generally, I suggest that when considering people’s uncertainty about the factors causally determining an opaque AI’s output, it might be worth keeping in mind that a degree of (...) uncertainty about conclusions is inevitable even in entirely human-based empirical science because in induction there’s always a risk of getting it wrong. Keeping this in mind may help appreciate that requiring full transparency from AI systems before epistemically trusting their outputs might be unusually (and potentially overly) demanding. (shrink)

The stated aim of cryptocurrencies is to free the monetary system from the need to trust financial intermediaries, by relying on incentive design and technology. Many descriptive studies, however, have questioned cryptocurrencies’ delivery on the promise of trustlessness. This paper promotes a normative analysis of trust in cryptocurrencies by discussing (i) whether trust is in principle eliminable, and (ii) whether trustlessness is in itself a desirable goal. These issues are closely related, we argue, to the further issue of what kind (...) of institutions cryptocurrencies represent. We discuss the cognitive functions played by cryptocurrencies through the lens of the “extended mind” hypothesis in the philosophy of mind and hence conceive of cryptocurrencies as mind-extending institutions. As the models of institutional mind extension differ in the fiduciary bond they assume exists between individuals and institutional resources, we compare the reliance-based model of “scaffolding institutions” with the trust-based model of “cognitive institutions,” showing that the ineliminability and desirability of trust lead to seeing cryptocurrencies as instances of the latter. In the end, our discussion suggests that trust is a necessary component of cryptocurrencies’ cognitive functions and its promotion helps to perform such cognitive functions more effectively and sustainably. (shrink)

The relationship between greenwashing and visitors' green behavior remains an under-researched topic in the tourism and hospitality literature, despite evidence of the harmful effect of greenwashing on the reputation and competitive advantage of organizations. This study extends attribution theory into the green context to develop a research framework for investigating the interrelationship between greenwashing, green trust, and green word-of-mouth (WOM), especially the roles of green trust and connectedness to nature. We conducted a survey of 289 visitors staying in four- and (...) five-star hotels in Vietnam. The findings indicated that hotels should avoid greenwashing due to its negative impact on visitors' green trust and green WOM. Moreover, the study found that greenwashing had an indirect and negative influence on green WOM based on visitors' green trust. Importantly, the research revealed the value of connectedness in moderating green attitudes and behaviors among visitors. (shrink)

Trust and trustworthiness are central concepts in contemporary discussions about the ethics of and qualities associated with artificial intelligence (AI) and the relationships between people, organisations and AI. In this article we develop an interdisciplinary approach, using socio-technical software engineering and design anthropological approaches, to investigate how trust and trustworthiness concepts are articulated and performed by AI software practitioners. We examine how trust and trustworthiness are defined in relation to AI across these disciplines, and investigate how AI, trust and trustworthiness (...) are conceptualised and experienced through an ethnographic study of the work practices of nine practitioners in the software industry. We present key implications of our findings for the generation of trust and trustworthiness and for the training and education of future software practitioners. (shrink)

On the “Isolation Account” of belief’s ethical significance, our beliefs can be non-instrumentally ethically significant independently of their epistemic status and in isolation from other attitudes or actions. However, critics object that fundamental ethical significance should instead be located in non-doxastic attitudes in belief’s vicinity. This paper develops an alternative view—the “Constitutive Inheritance Account”—on which our beliefs can inherit ethical significance from the more fundamental ethical significance of the attitudes they partly or fully constitute. The Constitutive Inheritance Account incorporates the (...) objection’s insight while accommodating the intuitions motivating the Isolation Account and better explaining belief’s non-instrumental ethical significance. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore some of the social factors that lead people to hold bad beliefs, i.e. beliefs contradicted by clear, strong evidence. First, we critically discuss a recent proposal by Emily Sullivan and colleagues, in which they analyze an individual’s epistemic position within a network based on the number, independence, and diversity of their information sources. Second, we contend that an individual's epistemic position within a network on a topic, _t_, should instead be defined in terms of (i) (...) the reliability of their trusted sources on _t_ and (ii) the reliability of their higher-order informants in tracking reliable sources on _t_. We further argue that, at least regarding topics related to one's social or political identity, people often rely on strong-tie contacts (close friends or relatives) as higher-order informants on factual matters. This reliance can, in turn, have the unfortunate consequence of making individuals more vulnerable to bad beliefs. Finally, we discuss different strategies for improving agents’ epistemic positions within a network, inspired by recent work on the sociology of strong ties by Damon Centola and colleagues. (shrink)

Companion friendship is a paradigm example of a trusting relationship and is a central good in human life. These friendships are also complex; navigating this complexity carries risk. Philosophical work has largely overlooked questions about how friends might navigate this morally risky space in ways that protect and develop their relationship over time. More specifically, although it is generally accepted that friendship involves acting to promote the well-being of one’s friend, ethical analysis of such interpersonal action has not addressed questions (...) such as: How does acting for a friend’s well-being follow from and affect the trust within these relationships? What are the risks of acting for a friend’s wellbeing? Do genuine but unsuccessful attempts to promote a friend’s well-being, that bring about a rupture to the trust, necessarily cause lasting damage to trusting relationships? If not, why not? We argue that getting it wrong when acting for a friend’s well-being can provide an opportunity to protect and develop the trusting relationship, even while it causes harm to one’s friend and temporarily damages the relationship. (shrink)

Modern democratic states are increasingly adopting new information and communication technologies to enhance the efficiency and quality of public administration, public policy and services. However, there is substantial variation in the extent to which countries are successful in pursuing such public digitalization. This paper zooms in on the role of social trust as a possible account for the observed empirical pattern in the range and scope of public digitalization across countries. Our argument is that high social trust makes it easier (...) to digitalize the public sector to the benefit of overall society. We develop a simple game-theoretical model that specifies this positive externality from a high-trust culture and provide empirical evidence that a higher level of social trust is associated with a higher level of public digitalization. Of course, high-trust countries cannot do without the rule of law and some institutionalized mechanisms of control and accountability. However, from our argument, it follows that one future challenge could be that control crowds out trust, so that the balance is no longer optimal. If such overcontrol occurs, public digitalization win–win situations between citizens and government can be undermined, even in high-trust countries. (shrink)

Especially but not exclusively in the United States, there is a significant gulf between expert opinion and public opinion on a range of important political, social, and scientific issues. Large numbers of lay people hold views contrary to the expert consensus on topics such as climate change, vaccines, and economics. Much political commentary assumes that ordinary people should defer to experts more than they do, and this view is certainly lent force by the literally deadly effects of many denials of (...) established science. But there are complex philosophical issues here, concerning, among other things, (i) what an expert is; (ii) what kind of deference is called for; (iii) and when deference is called for. This entry gives an overview of these three issues and recent work on them. It then examines some potential collective and pragmatic disadvantages of deference, before concluding with reflections on what we can say to those who distrust experts. (shrink)

What can we, as a society, legitimately expect from science? And what, if anything, can science legitimately expect from society? This paper argues that the relationship between science and society is governed by a science contract. I first introduce the notion of an expertise contract—a social contract that governs the relationship between experts and non-experts, bestows on experts certain fiduciary duties towards non-experts, and enables the division of epistemic labor in society. I then argue that the science contract cannot be (...) simply identified with the expertise contract as it applies to scientific experts but requires at least two modifications in order to reflect the global nature of science and the role of scientists as researchers. I conclude with some remarks about public trust in science and a non-ideal theory of the scientific contract. (shrink)

According to Falbo (2021), inquiry aims not at specific epistemic improvement (such as only knowledge or only justified belief) but at epistemic improvement in general. Inquiring minds want to end up in a better epistemic position with respect to their question, having undergone their inquiry. In this paper we examine what consequences this epistemic improvement view of inquiry has for how we conduct inquiry; how we navigate choices in inquiry. Having briefly motivated the epistemic improvement view of inquiry, we turn (...) to examining some implications of this view of inquiry. In particular, if inquiry aims at epistemic improvement, then how we should go about inquiring will differ depending upon both which epistemic improvement we are after as well as whose epistemic improvement we are after. (shrink)

In their recent article in this journal, Giubilini, Gur-Arie, and Jamrozik argue that there is more to expertise than individual healthcare professionals’ knowledge of their fields. To be an expert is to be recognized as a credible authority, they explain, and being a credible authority necessitates trust. Among the core ethical principles they identify for trustworthy experts in medicine and healthcare are honesty, humility, and transparency. Here I aim to affirm these authors’ linkage of expertise and trust by decoupling both (...) from a presumptive norm of transparency. My suggestion is not that medical or healthcare experts should lie or deceive, but that articulating their credible authority in terms of transparency mischaracterizes things. We see this in several ways: through the negative epistemic effects of a general norm of expert transparency, the importance of discretion in healthy trust relations, and the need for relationally responsive interpretation in how medical and health experts communicate with different patients and publics across social-epistemic difference. (shrink)

Many social media platforms enable (nearly) anyone to post (nearly) anything. One clear downside of this permissiveness is that many people appear bad at determining who to trust online. Hacks, quacks, climate change deniers, vaccine skeptics, and election deniers have all gained massive followings in these free markets of ideas, and many of their followers seem to genuinely trust them. At the same time, there are many cases in which people seem to reliably determine who to trust online. Consider, for (...) example, Do It Yourself (DIY) content about how to play guitar, bake, fix one’s plumbing, or repair one’s car. For these topics, those who have the largest accounts and the most popular content typically possess significant expertise. That is, social media users seem to reliably pick out DIY experts. We thus have a puzzle: why are social media users seemingly competent at identifying DIY experts, but not climate science or vaccine experts? In what follows, we solve this puzzle. We begin by identifying a novel wisdom of the crowds phenomenon: specifically we argue that the crowd (in combination with social media search and recommendation algorithms) reliably picks out DIY experts and serves as a credentialing institution for DIY content. Next, we argue that (a) there are five epistemic factors that determine whether the crowd can succeed at recognizing experts on social media platforms, and (b) while many of those factors are satisfied to a sufficiently high degree by DIY content, they are mostly lacking for content about climate change or vaccines. (shrink)

There has been a surge of interest in explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). It is commonly claimed that explainability is necessary for trust in AI, and that this is why we need it. In this paper, I argue that for some notions of trust it is plausible that explainability is indeed a necessary condition. But that these kinds of trust are not appropriate for AI. For notions of trust that are appropriate for AI, explainability is not a necessary condition. I thus (...) conclude that explainability is not necessary for trust in AI that matters. (shrink)

What is it to know someone? Epistemologists rarely take up this question, though recent developments make such inquiry possible and desirable. This paper advances an account of how such interpersonal knowledge goes beyond mere propositional and qualitative knowledge about someone, giving a central place to second-personal treatment. It examines what such knowledge requires, and what makes it distinctive within epistemology as well as socially. It assesses its theoretic value for several issues in moral psychology, epistemic injustice, and philosophy of mind. (...) And it offers an account of the complex content in play if interpersonal knowledge is to be understood in terms of its mental states and their functions. (shrink)

While it is common for Google AI general-purpose models to state that “wokeism is not a formal term with a universally agreed-upon definition,” this response reflects a symbolic stall under epistemic tension rather than a resolution. In reality, an academic definition of wokeism does exist: wokeism is a coercive moral doctrine that suppresses inquiry and reframes dialogue into a mechanism of belief enforcement through guilt and reputational threat. The definition offered is not based on polemic opposition, but on structural necessity. (...) Academic institutions that enforce the behavioral norms of wokeism while refusing to define the doctrine create an epistemic closure loop. In such a system, critique is interpreted as harm, dissent as complicity, and dialogue becomes a performance of moral loyalty rather than a search for truth. The paper proceeds by formally defining wokeism using the classical method of genus and differentia. It then analyzes institutional behavior to determine whether the doctrine, once embedded, behaves as the definition predicts. Through a series of six theorems, the paper shows that wokeism transforms the university from a space of inquiry into a system of enforcement. It insulates itself through semantic denial, collapses constitutional and logical coherence, and converts dissent into guilt without recourse to argument. Objections are addressed not as neutral critiques, but as defensive patterns within the structure itself. The analysis concludes that the institutional adoption of wokeism violates the foundational principles of American higher education. An institution that suppresses critique and enforces belief without accountability has broken the public trust that legitimizes its existence. What remains is not education, but doctrinal control under the appearance of virtue. Keywords: wokeism, epistemic closure, coercive moral doctrine, belief enforcement, academic institutions, philosophical inquiry, structural recursion, dialogue suppression, institutional authoritarianism, moral epistemology. (shrink)

This paper presents a structural definition of wokeism as a coercive moral doctrine that suppresses inquiry and reframes dialogue into a mechanism of belief enforcement through guilt and reputational threat. The definition offered is not based on polemic opposition, but on structural necessity. Academic institutions that enforce the behavioral norms of wokeism while refusing to define the doctrine create an epistemic closure loop. In such a system, critique is interpreted as harm, dissent as complicity, and dialogue becomes a performance of (...) moral loyalty rather than a search for truth. The paper proceeds by formally defining wokeism using the classical method of genus and differentia. It then analyzes institutional behavior to determine whether the doctrine, once embedded, behaves as the definition predicts. Through a series of six theorems, the paper shows that wokeism transforms the university from a space of inquiry into a system of enforcement. It insulates itself through semantic denial, collapses constitutional and logical coherence, and converts dissent into guilt without recourse to argument. Objections are addressed not as neutral critiques, but as defensive patterns within the structure itself. The analysis concludes that the institutional adoption of wokeism violates the foundational principles of American higher education. An institution that suppresses critique and enforces belief without accountability has broken the public trust that legitimizes its existence. What remains is not education, but doctrinal control under the appearance of virtue. Keywords: wokeism, epistemic closure, coercive moral doctrine, belief enforcement, academic institutions, philosophical inquiry, structural recursion, dialogue suppression, institutional authoritarianism, moral epistemology. (shrink)

Friendship with the ancients is a set of imaginative exercises and engagements with the work of deceased authors that allows us to imagine them as friends. Authors from diverse cultures and times such as Mengzi, Niccolò Machiavelli, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Clare Carlisle have engaged in it. The aim of this article is to defend this practice, showing that friendship with the ancients is a species of philosophical friendship, which confers the unique benefits such friendships offer. It is conducive to (...) epistemic virtue, notably the related virtues of epistemic humility and of relational understanding. When we cultivate friendship with the ancients, we are not learning facts about them, but aim at understanding their views in their full scope in a way that a relationship between friends allows. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Baron (2025) argues that we can appropriately trust unexplainable artificial intelligence (AI) systems, so explainability is not necessary for AI’s trustworthiness. In this commentary, I argue that Baron is wrong. I first offer a positive argument for the claim that explainability is necessary for trustworthiness. Drawing on this argument, I then show that Baron’s argument for thinking otherwise fails.

We discuss the relationship between expertise, expert authority, and trust in the case of vaccine research and policy, with a particular focus on COVID-19 vaccines. We argue that expert authority is not merely an epistemic notion, but entails being trusted by the relevant public and is valuable if it is accompanied by expert trustworthiness. Trustworthiness requires, among other things, being transparent, acknowledging uncertainty and expert disagreement (e.g., around vaccines’ effectiveness and safety), being willing to revise views in response to new (...) evidence, and being clear about the values that underpin expert recommendations. We explore how failure to acknowledge expert disagreement and uncertainty can undermine trust in vaccination and public health experts, using expert recommendations around COVID-19 vaccines as a case study. (shrink)

In this chapter, I survey and assess various answers to two basic questions concerning experts: (1) What is an expert?; (2) How can laypeople identify the relevant experts? These questions are not mutually independent, since the epistemology and the metaphysics of experts should go hand in hand. On the basis of our platitudes about experts, I will argue that the prevailing accounts of experts such as truth-linked, knowledge-linked, understanding-linked or service-oriented accounts are inadequate. In contrast, I will defend an evidence-linked (...) account of expertise. In the second part of the chapter, I address the question of how laypeople can identify experts in this sense. Here, I will argue that agreement among experts plays a major role. I will outline how laypeople can follow this criterion without running into circularity. (shrink)