_BMC Medical Ethics_ is an open access journal publishing original peer-reviewed research articles in relation to the ethical aspects of biomedical research and clinical practice, including professional choices and conduct, medical technologies, healthcare systems and health policies. _BMC __Medical Ethics _is part of the _BMC_ series which publishes subject-specific journals focused on the needs of individual research communities across all areas of biology and medicine. We do not make editorial decisions on the basis of the interest of a study or (...) its likely impact. Studies must be scientifically valid; for research articles this includes a scientifically sound research question, the use of suitable methods and analysis, and following community-agreed standards relevant to the research field. Specific criteria for other article types can be found in the submission guidelines. _BMC series - open, inclusive and trusted_. (shrink)

Not so long ago, being reasonably trustworthy was good enough. But soon only the extremely trustworthy will thrive. In the age of smartphones and social networks, every action an organization takes can be exposed and critiqued in real time. Nothing is local or secret anymore. If you treat one customer unfairly, produce one shoddy product, or try to gouge one price, the whole world may find out in hours, if not minutes. The users of Twitter, Yelp, and similar outlets show (...) little mercy for bad behavior. The bar for trustworthiness is higher than ever and continues to rise. Bestselling authors Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D., argue that the only sane response to these rising levels of transparency is to protect the interests of customers proactively—even if that requires spending extra money in the short run to preserve your brand reputation in the long run. The payoff of generating extreme trust will be worth it. With a wealth of fascinating research as well as practical applications, this book will show you how to earn—and keep—the extreme trust of everyone your company interacts with. (shrink)

Shares strategies for maintaining business competitiveness in an increasingly transparent world, revealing the importance of professional honesty, solution-driven practices and integrity-based customer support. By the authors of The One-to-One Future. 20,000 first printing.

The authors argue that an urgent leadership issue has arisen which is strongly, but not favorably, influencing our professional culture--a hostility toward religion and its correct expressions within the military. Setting aside the role of Chaplains as a separate issue, the focus here is on the role religion may play in the moral character of individual soldiers--especially leaders--and how their personal morality, faith-based or not, is to be integrated with their profession's ethic so they can serve in all cases "without (...) reservation" as their oath requires. Related products: Expeditionary Culture Field Guide: Latvia can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-000-01225-3 Expeditionary Culture Field Guide: Turkey can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-000-01223-7 Expeditionary Culture Field Guide: Lithuania is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-000-01224-5 Expeditionary Culture Field Guide: Chad is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-000-01226-1 Aspects of Leadership: Ethics, Law and Spirituality is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-055-00255-9 Faith and Hope in a War-Torn Land: The US Army Chaplaincy in the Balkans, 1995-2005 eBook available from Google Play eBookstore. Please use ISBN: 9780160872792 to search their platform for this product; Paperback format available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-029-00440-2. (shrink)

The study of social norms sprawls across all of the social sciences but the the concept lacks a unified conception and formal theory. We synthesize an account that can be applied generally, at the social scale of analysis, and can be applied to empirical evidence generated in field and lab experiments. More specifically, we provide new analysis on representing norms for application in empirical political science, and in parts of economics that do not follow the recent trend among some behavioral (...) economists to build models of the cognitive and motivational states of individuals taken “one at a time”. Foundational sources for our project are Bicchieri (2006, 2017), Kuran (1995), and Stirling (2012, 2016). From Bicchieri take that a norm exists in a social structure when a significant networked subset of individuals share descriptive and injunctive expectations that it regulates their interactions. From Kuran we take the insight that prevailing norms may come to be widely disliked by participants in networks but survive because norm suppress public displays of disenchantment. From Stirling we apply conditional game theory (CGT) to provide the technical resources for building our model of a norm-regulated social interaction. The example we use is a multi-player Investment/Trust Game. (shrink)

The way in which humans deal with physical objects has been formed by extensive interaction and, according to the theory of embodied cognition, has led to conceptualization and interpretation that is grounded in physical interaction of the body with elements in the environment. Digital objects are immaterial and cannot show similar external properties as physical objects, and further, they are representational in nature. Specific problems related to their immaterial nature are those of permanence, location, and ownership. In this paper the (...) differences between material and immaterial objects are analyzed with respect to human interaction. Three issues are highlighted: the lack of transparency of digital document handling, security of digital information and accessibility of digital information. It is concluded that the importance of the distinction between direct physical objects and immaterial objects has been vastly underestimated, at the cost of usability, trust and security. (shrink)

Prior studies suggest that firms headquartered in areas with strong religious social norms have higher ethical standards. In this study, we examine whether the ethical standards associated with local religious norms influence the M&A announcement returns. We document that the M&A announcement returns of acquirer firms increase with the strength of religious social norms in the area surrounding firms’ headquarters. We also document that the relationship is attenuated when acquirer firms have strong corporate social responsibility credentials, is amplified when public (...) trust that firms act in the best interest of stakeholders suffers a negative shock and when the M&A deal has greater economic significance for the acquirer, and manifests predominantly in the lower tail of the distribution of M&A returns. Our findings are consistent with investor assessments of firms’ ethical standards driving the relationship between local religious social norms and M&A announcement returns. We find no evidence for the competing explanation—that investor assessments of firms’ risk preferences drive the documented relationship. (shrink)

Until recently, psychologists have conceptualised and studied trust in God (TIG) largely in isolation from contemporary work in theology, philosophy, history, and biblical studies that has examined the topic with increasing clarity. In this article, we first review the primary ways that psychologists have conceptualised and measured TIG. Then, we draw on conceptualizations of TIG outside the psychology of religion to provide a conceptual map for how TIG might be related to theorised predictors and outcomes. Finally, we provide a (...) research agenda for future empirical work in this area, as well as practical applications for counsellors and religious leaders. (shrink)

Within a liberal, ‘law of things’ understanding of property, the donative trust is seen as a species of gift. Control over trust property passes from the hands of settlors to beneficiaries, from owners to owners. Trust property, like all other property, is silent and passive, its fate determined by its owners. This article questions this understanding of the trust by showing how beneath the facade of ownership, the trust inverts the relation between owner and (...) owned, person and thing. It analyses the relation that trustees, beneficiaries and settlors have to the trust property and argues that the role of each of these parties can be shown to consist in furthering the interests of the trust property rather than their own. It claims that this protects things from their owners at the same time as it ensures these owners’ ongoing care towards the things they own. This raises questions about the trust’s status within the institution of private property, justified as it is by the human autonomy it is said to enable. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify the extent to which relationships between Human Agents (HAs) and Artificial Agents (AAs) can be adequately defined in terms of trust. Since such relationships consist mostly in the allocation of tasks to technological products, particular attention is paid to the notion of delegation. In short, I argue that it would be more accurate to describe direct relationships between HAs and AAs in terms of reliance, rather than in terms of trust. (...) However, as mediums of human actions to which tasks are delegated, AAs indirectly mediate trust between users and other social actors involved in their design, manufacture, commercialisation and deployment. In this sense, AAs mediate social trust. My conclusion is that relationships between HAs and AAs are thus to be understood directly in terms of reliance and indirectly in terms of social trust mediation. (shrink)

BackgroundAs the use of AI becomes more pervasive, and computerised systems are used in clinical decision-making, the role of trust in, and the trustworthiness of, AI tools will need to be addressed. Using the case of computational phenotyping to support the diagnosis of rare disease in dysmorphology, this paper explores under what conditions we could place trust in medical AI tools, which employ machine learning.MethodsSemi-structured qualitative interviews with stakeholders who design and/or work with computational phenotyping systems. The method (...) of constant comparison was used to analyse the interview data.ResultsInterviewees emphasized the importance of establishing trust in the use of CP technology in identifying rare diseases. Trust was formulated in two interrelated ways in these data. First, interviewees talked about the importance of using CP tools within the context of a trust relationship; arguing that patients will need to trust clinicians who use AI tools and that clinicians will need to trust AI developers, if they are to adopt this technology. Second, they described a need to establish trust in the technology itself, or in the knowledge it provides—epistemic trust. Interviewees suggested CP tools used for the diagnosis of rare diseases might be perceived as more trustworthy if the user is able to vouchsafe for the technology’s reliability and accuracy and the person using/developing them is trusted.ConclusionThis study suggests we need to take deliberate and meticulous steps to design reliable or confidence-worthy AI systems for use in healthcare. In addition, we need to devise reliable or confidence-worthy processes that would give rise to reliable systems; these could take the form of RCTs and/or systems of accountability transparency and responsibility that would signify the epistemic trustworthiness of these tools. words 294. (shrink)

Is there a problem with believing based on moral testimony? The intuition that there is a problem is a starting point for much research on moral testimony. To arbitrate between various attempts to account for intuitions about moral testimony, we need to know the exact nature of those intuitions. The current study investigates this empirically. The study confirms an asymmetry in the way we think about testimony about moral and descriptive matters and explores the extent to which this asymmetry is (...) explained by different metaphysical beliefs about the relevant domains, or beliefs about the relative background levels of deception or disagreement. (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)

Fodor argued that learning a concept by hypothesis testing would involve an impossible circularity. I show that Fodor's argument implicitly relies on the assumption that actually φ-ing entails an ability to φ. But this assumption is false in cases of φ-ing by luck, and just such luck is involved in testing hypotheses with the kinds of generative random sampling methods that many cognitive scientists take our minds to use. Concepts thus can be learned by hypothesis testing without circularity, and it (...) is plausible that this is how humans in fact acquire at least some of their concepts. (shrink)

This article examines recent developments in the regulation of the medical profession in England, with particular reference to doctors working in the National Health Service (NHS). It is argued that the Health Act 1999 and associated government policies are bringing about a shift from a «light touch», self-regulatory paradigm to a government-driven, interventionist approach. It is suggested that the reason for the change is not simply a governmental concern with the quality and nature of care provided by doctors, but more (...) significantly, a concern with the cost of that care. The article offers a critique of the new regime, drawing on the socio-legal literature on regulation. Some aspects of the reforms ignore the need to persuade doctors to comply, and may therefore result in cheating or «creative compliance»; other aspects of the reforms provide doctors with opportunities to «neutralize» their impact. It concludes with an examination of the wider significance of the change in regulatory paradigm, and of the agenda for future research in this field. (shrink)

People don't always speak the truth. When they don't, we do better not to trust them. Unfortunately, that's often easier said than done. People don't usually wear a ‘Not to be trusted!’ badge on their sleeves, which lights up every time they depart from the truth. Given this, what can we do to figure out whom to trust, and whom not? My aim in this paper is to offer a partial answer to this question. I propose a heuristic—the (...) “Humility Heuristic”—which is meant to help guide our search for trustworthy advisors. In slogan form, the heuristic says: people worth trusting admit to what they don't know. I give this heuristic a precise probabilistic interpretation, offer a simple argument for it, defend it against some potential worries, and demonstrate its practical worth by showing how it can help address some difficult challenges in the relationship between experts and laypeople. (shrink)

This article seeks to address current debates comparing polls and opinion mining as empirically based figuration models of public opinion in the light of in-depth intellectual debates on the role and nature of public opinion that began after the French Revolution and the controversy over public opinion spurred by the invention of polls. Issues of historical quantification and re-conceptualisation of public opinion are addressed in four parts. The first summarises the history of the rise and fall of the concept of (...) public opinion. The second re-examines the key controversies in the debates on the theoretical, empirical and social implications and consequences of the invention of polling. The third part scrutinises the datafication of public opinion that started with polling industry and continues in the age of big data and data mining. The final section discusses the controversial potentials of opinion-mining technology and suggests ways in which social scientists could critically respond to the big data and opinion-mining challenges in order to reintegrate the ideas of publicness, the public and public sphere into public opinion research. (shrink)

With new technologies come new ethical challenges. Often, we can apply previously established principles, even though it may take some time to fully understand the detail of the new technology - or the questions that arise from it. The International Commission on Radiological Protection, for example, was founded in 1928 and has based its advice on balancing the radiation exposure associated with X-rays and CT scans with the diagnostic benefits of the new investigations. They have regularly updated their advice as (...) evidence has accumulated and technologies have changed,1 and have been able to extrapolate from well-established ethical principles. Other new technologies lend themselves less well to off-the-peg ethical solutions. In several articles in this edition the ethical challenges associated with the use of artificial intelligence in medicine are addressed. Although multiple ethical codes and guidelines have been written on the use and development of AI, Hagendorf noted that many of them reiterated a ‘ deontologically oriented, action-restricting ethic based on universal abidance of principles and rules’. 2 Applying pre-existing ethical frameworks to artificial intelligence is problematic for several reasons. In particular, AI has two characteristics which are very different from the current clinical practice on which traditional medical ethics are based: 1. The so called ‘black box’ of deep learning, whereby a deep neural network is trained to iteratively adapt to make …. (shrink)

Americans today don't trust each other and their institutions as much as they once did, fueling destructive ideological conflicts and hardened partisanship. In Trust in a Polarized Age, political philosopher Kevin Vallier argues that to build social trust and reduce polarization, we must strengthen liberal democratic institutions--high-quality governance, procedural fairness, markets, social welfare programs, freedom of association, and democracy. These institutions not only create trust, they do so justly, by recognizing and respecting our basic rights.

This paper discusses the normative structure of principles that require belief-revision in the face of disagreement, the role of self-trust in our epistemic lives, and the tensions that arise between the two. Section 2 argues that revisionary principles of disagreement share a general normative structure such that they prohibit continued reliance upon the practices via which one came to hold the beliefs under dispute. Section 3 describes an affective mode of epistemic self-trust that can be characterised as one’s (...) having an attitude of optimism about the reliability of the practices via which one forms beliefs. The availability of affective self-trust is crucial to being able to rationally resist doubts about those practices. However, as argued in the final section of the paper, following revisionary principles of disagreement can render such trust psychologically unavailable. Consequently, attempts to follow such principles can have doxastic consequences that predictably exceed their normative implications. (shrink)

Our life with art is suffused with trust. We don’t just trust one another’s aesthetic testimony; we trust one another’s aesthetic actions. Audiences trust artists to have made it worth their while; artists trust audiences to put in the effort. Without trust, audiences would have little reason to put in the effort to understand difficult and unfamiliar art. I offer a theory of aesthetic trust, which highlights the importance of trust in aesthetic (...) sincerity. We trust in another’s aesthetic sincerity when we rely on them to fulfill their commitments to act for aesthetic reasons — rather than for, say, financial, social, or political reasons. We feel most thoroughly betrayed by an artist, not when they make bad art, but when they sell out. This teaches us something about the nature of trust in general. According to many standard theories, trust involves thinking the trusted to be cooperative or good-natured. But trust in aesthetic sincerity is different. We trust artists to be true to their own aesthetic sensibility, which might involve selfishly ignoring their audience’s needs. Why do we care so much about an artist’s sincerity, rather than merely trusting them to make good art? We emphasize sincerity when wish to encourage originality, rather than to demand success along predictable lines. And we ask for sincerity when our goal is to discover a shared sensibility. In moral life, we often try to force convergence through coordinated effort. But in aesthetic life, we often hope for the lovely discovery that our sensibilities were similar all along. And for that we need to ask for sincerity, rather than overt coordination. (shrink)

Are doctors right when they tell us vaccines are safe? Should we take climate experts at their word when they warn us about the perils of global warming? Why should we trust science when so many of our political leaders don't? Naomi Oreskes offers a bold and compelling defense of science, revealing why the social character of scientific knowledge is its greatest strength--and the greatest reason we can trust it. Tracing the history and philosophy of science from the (...) late nineteenth century to today, this timely and provocative book features a new preface by Oreskes and critical responses by climate experts Ottmar Edenhofer and Martin Kowarsch, political scientist Jon Krosnick, philosopher of science Marc Lange, and science historian Susan Lindee, as well as a foreword by political theorist Stephen Macedo. (shrink)

This study uses a Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies methodology to provide the first systematic analysis of how trust is discursively constructed in crypto-drug markets. The data come from two purpose-built corpora. One comprises all the forum messages posted on the flag ship crypto-drug market Silk Road during the years in which it traded on the hidden net. The other corpus comprises all the reports published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime during the same period. Our analysis (...) of trust focuses on the identities of those buying and selling drugs. The findings reveal that the Silk Road community members regularly discussed vendors’ identities alongside a continuum of trust–risk calculation, explicitly identifying both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ practices and hence engaging in self-regulatory discourses, and mainly constructed drug users’ identities in relation to values of expertise, integrity and benevolence. The findings also suggest that hard law enforcement activity, such as crypto-drug market closure, may encourage technological innovation within these markets. Moreover, our results show a disconnect between the discursive reality of the policy-making documents we examined and the very crypto-drug markets that they seek to legislate. (shrink)

Where does entitlement to trust come from? When we trust someone to φ, do we need to have reason to trust them to φ or do we start out entitled to trust them to φ by default? Reductivists think that entitlement to trust always “reduces to” or is explained by the reasons that agents have to trust others. In contrast, anti-reductivists think that, in a broad range of circumstances, we just have entitlement to (...) class='Hi'>trust. even if we don’t have positive reasons to do so. In this paper, we argue for a version of anti-reductivism. Roughly, we argue that we have default entitlement to trust someone to φ so long as there is an operative norm that requires S to φ. At least in such circumstances (and absent defeaters), we don’t need any positive reasons to trust S to φ. (shrink)

It is common to think of the attitude of trust as involving reliance of some sort. For example, Annette Baier argues that trust is reliance on the good will of others, and Richard Holton argues that trust is reliance from a participant stance. However, it is puzzling how trust could involve reliance, because reliance, unlike trust, is responsive to practical reasons: we rely in light of reasons that show it worthwhile to rely, but we don’t (...) trust in light of reasons that show it worthwhile to trust. To address the puzzle, I sketch an account of reliance, according to which reliance consists in action, and I sketch an account of trust, according to which trust consists in belief held from a participant stance. I conclude that it is plausible to see trust as the grounds for reliance. (shrink)

Some infamous memoirs have turned out to be chock-full of fibs. Should we care? Why not say—as many have—that all autobiography is fiction, that accurate memory is impossible, that we start lying as soon as we start narrating, and that it doesn’t matter anyway, since made-up stories are just as good as true ones? Because, well, every part of that is misleading. First, we don’t misremember absolutely everything; second, we have other sources to draw on; third, story form affects only (...) significance, not facts; fourth, fiction and nonfiction offer different affordances, benefits, and delights. And since we need both kinds of writing, we have to insist on honesty in memoir; we have to stop saying that everything is invention and that fibs don’t matter. If memoirs could never be trusted, who would still read them? In a world without truth, what exactly would we speak to power? (shrink)

Is there a circular relationship between trust and ethics? Is it possible to alter their relationship, changing the perception that social actors have of them? How has trust changed in the transition from modernity to post-modernity and how does it change in times of crisis? Starting from the epistemological assumption that progress in the social sciences is determined by the change in the theoretical horizon produced by “a reformulation of metaphysical assumptions” [1] and combining this path with the (...) relational perspective, according to which “not the facts, but the relationship between the facts is what requires analysis” [2], we will examine definitions, meanings, functions and relationships between trust and ethics. Following the theoretical logical method, we will understand that trust and ethical behaviour are particular forms of gift [3] that co-own each other. As such, they are ambivalent in nature and their circle can also produce dysfunctional outcomes that depend on the ability of social systems to modify collective perceptions through forms of communication, in the awareness that distrust constitutes an ineliminable and, paradoxically, preparatory element for the restoration of the trust circle. The relational circle between gift, trust, collective ethics and personal morality does not end with distrust, but changes in a contingent way, determining perverse effects: correct behaviour could produce, unintentionally, a disaster; incorrect actions could generate unforeseen positive effects.The perverse effects cannot be defined as exceptional - as is believed in the theory of rational choice - but recurrent because daily practices are marked by an intuitive, emotional and moralistic trust circle that prevails over logical reasoning, as ascertained by both relational theory and behavioural economics. Functionalist paradigms cannot engineer and optimise the performance of trust. [1] See J. Alexander's strong programme in S. Segre, Le teorie sociologiche contemporanee, Carocci, Rome, 2019, p. 12. It is not enough to observe reality, it is necessary to interpret it, taking into account theories and traditions whose foundations have a metaphysical character. [2] F. Ferrarotti, La sociologia come analisi critica della società, in R. Cipriani, Nuovo Manuale di Sociologia, Maggioli, Sant’Arcangelo di Romagna, 2018 p. 24. [3] The classical meaning in M. Mauss, Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés archaïques, 1ª ed. 1925, revisited by G. Satta, L’ambiguità del dono. Note su dono, violenza e potere nell’ Essai di Mauss, in V. Rasini, Aggressività. Un’indagine polifonica, Mimesis, Milano 2011. (shrink)

Background: Informed consent is regarded as a contract between autonomous and equal parties and requires the elements of information disclosure, understanding, voluntariness and consent. The validity of informed consent for critically ill patients has been questioned. Little is known about how these patients experience the process of consent.Objective: The aim of this study was to explore critically ill patients’ experience with the principle of informed consent in a clinical trial and their ability to give valid informed consent.Design: 11 stroke patients (...) who had been informed about thrombolytic treatment and had been through the process of deciding whether or not to participate in a thrombolysis trial went through repeated qualitative semistructured interviews.Results: None of the patients had any clear understanding of the purpose of the trial. Neither did they understand the principles of randomisation and voluntariness. Reasons for giving or not giving consent were trust, conceptions of benefits and risks and altruism. Several patients found it immoral to involve patients in the consent procedure and argued that this was the doctors’ responsibility. Others argued that it is a duty to question patients and perceived it as a sign of being treated with respect and dignity. A majority of the patients found the consent process vague and ambiguous.Conclusions: The results indicate that the principle of informed consent from critically ill patients cannot be seen as a contract between equal and autonomous parties. Further studies are needed to explore critically ill patients’ experiences with the process of informed consent. (shrink)

Sometimes justifiably, we stop trusting someone’s testimony when we catch that person repeatedly on a lie. But what is the reason why we assign less credibility to someone if nothing justifies the lack of trust? When we give a person less credibility than she deserves because she belongs to a particular social group, we are committing a testimonial injustice. Is this due to factors that are individual (explicit prejudices and implicit biases) or structural (social norms and conventions, institutions and (...) material reality)? These two approaches differ both in their versions of the causes of these injustices and how to intervene to resist them. However, they can be easily integrated. (shrink)

Background: Informed consent is regarded as a contract between autonomous and equal parties and requires the elements of information disclosure, understanding, voluntariness and consent. The validity of informed consent for critically ill patients has been questioned. Little is known about how these patients experience the process of consent.Objective: The aim of this study was to explore critically ill patients’ experience with the principle of informed consent in a clinical trial and their ability to give valid informed consent.Design: 11 stroke patients (...) who had been informed about thrombolytic treatment and had been through the process of deciding whether or not to participate in a thrombolysis trial went through repeated qualitative semistructured interviews.Results: None of the patients had any clear understanding of the purpose of the trial. Neither did they understand the principles of randomisation and voluntariness. Reasons for giving or not giving consent were trust, conceptions of benefits and risks and altruism. Several patients found it immoral to involve patients in the consent procedure and argued that this was the doctors’ responsibility. Others argued that it is a duty to question patients and perceived it as a sign of being treated with respect and dignity. A majority of the patients found the consent process vague and ambiguous.Conclusions: The results indicate that the principle of informed consent from critically ill patients cannot be seen as a contract between equal and autonomous parties. Further studies are needed to explore critically ill patients’ experiences with the process of informed consent. (shrink)

In her target article, Burt revives a by now ancient debate on nature and nurture, and the ways to measure, disentangle, and ultimately trust one or the other of these forces. Unfortunately, she largely dismisses recent advances in behavior genetics and its huge potential in contributing to a better prediction and understanding of complex traits in social sciences.

Situations of fundamentally opposing interests are such that, without some degree of trust, they will fail to advance. In this paper I consider war and the achievement of peace through a series of reciprocal steps as the primary setting in which to examine trust, its terms, and its limits. A surprising point that transpires is that, in the attempt to resolve situations that are fundamentally conflictive, there is often a tendency to take steps to promote something else, superficially (...) resembling trust, sometimes counterproductively at the expense trust. An analysis of trust consisting of three elements is offered: (1) Vulnerability: the truster expresses an inclination to put himself in a vulnerable position with respect to the trusted. (2) Benefit: for the purpose of some gain that will befall the truster if the trusted does not exploit this vulnerability. (3) Reciprocity: with the expectation that the trusted will be sufficiently motivated to reciprocate at least partly due to the fact that truster’s behaviour is informed by such an expectation. The problem of trust is then presented as the idea of overcoming the “trust gap”. It is this: given the trust gap, and the rational-prudential basis to distrust – what could after all enable trust? Overcoming the gap may be achieved in one of two ways. Metaphorically speaking, we can narrow the gap, making the risks involved less worrisome, even if not eliminating them all together. Thus, encouraging cooperation on the basis of self-regarding prudential reasons. Or we can bridge the gap, leaving the risks as they are while procuring non-prudential resources to encourage cooperation. Only the latter can be truly classified as trust. Three ways in which the gap may be bridged are specified: Non-prudential reasons to reciprocate trust (Empathy, Fairness, and Reciprocity) correspond to the three components of trust (Vulnerability, Benefit, Reciprocity). The three reasons are introduced with the help of a minor thought experiments the results of which get further support from psychological experimental literature. It is then shown how these features of the situation provide a moral reason and, therefore, an expectation to act trustworthily, and as such facilitate trust. The possibility of trust is thus explained on the basis of an idea of reasonableness, rather than instrumental rationality, sentiment, or faith. Finally, it is argued that narrowing the gap might detrimentally affect bridging the gap. Confidence building measures (guarantees, incentives, and sanctions), designed to narrow the trust gap and facilitate cooperation, may unwittingly demolish the foundations for bridging the gap. Some policy implications are tentatively proposed: (1) Don’t focus exclusively on narrowing the gap. (2) Manufacture “common knowledge”. (3)Take care when narrowing the gap not to thwart bridging the gap. (shrink)

All of us get opinions from other people. And not just a few. We acquire opinions from others extensively and do so from early childhood through virtually every day of the rest our lives. Sometimes we rely on others for relatively inconsequential information. Is it raining outside? Did the Yankees win today? But we also depend on others for important or even life preserving information. Where is the nearest hospital? Do people drive on the left or the right here? We (...) acquire opinions from family and close acquaintances but also from strangers. We get directions from and heed the warnings of individuals we’ve never met, and likewise read books and articles and listen to television and radio reports authored by individuals we don’t know personally. Moreover, we undertake inquiries in groups in which the group relies on the conclusions of the individuals making up the group. In some of these collective efforts everyone knows one another, for example, a set of neighbors taking a census of birds in the neighborhood. But others, such as the effort to understand gravity, are not so nearly self-contained. Indeed, many of the most impressive human intellectual accomplishments are the collective products of individuals far removed from another in location (and sometimes even over time) who rely on each other’s conclusions without feeling the need to re-confirm them. (shrink)

Business success depends on the ability to build trust. Trusted brands succeed and sustain. Trusted leaders inspire followers, grow companies, revenues, and futures. But sadly, deceit has infected business and become widespread. Far too many leaders now use their own 'alternative facts', to mislead and mis-inform their customers, colleagues, and communities. The skilfulness and ease with which some leaders now lie has become a Lie-Ability. And when customers stop trusting the products, services, or the stories a leader tells, then (...) the business suffers. If business leaders don't lead a truth renaissance, we are all lost. People no longer trust politicians or the media. And many of the institutions and professions we used to turn to have also lost trust. The only people that can really save us now are business leaders. We need to become truth advocates and activists. We must re-establish a new norm where we tell the truth to ourselves, to our employees, to our shareholders, to our customers and to society at large. This book explores the 7 Deadly Lies that business tells itself, the 7 Dark Arts of Deception that are still used with monotonous regularity to manipulate the narrative. We offer C-suite leaders and senior managers a clear path out of deceit. We offer a solution to the Lie-Ability of some leaders by developing a deeper understanding of truth, how to reclaim it and how to build back trust. (shrink)

In this paper, I am going to be concerned with the capacity of human beings to act jointly. In particular, I will focus on the phenomenal aspect of collective action. I shall suggest that the experience of being jointly engaged with another is complex: it comprises both a practical grasp of oneself and of the other person as single agents participating in the joint pursuit, and an experience of collective immersion in the activity, which includes a sense of joint control. (...) This suggestion gives rise to a number of puzzles: firstly, what is the relation between jointly engaged agents' awareness of self and other and their sense of a joint engagement? Secondly, how are we to substantiate the idea of a sense of joint control if it is also obviously true that I don't, however close our psychological and bodily attunements, have control over your doings? I shall argue that a satisfactory solution to these puzzles is possible only if we take seriously the notion of a perceptually constituted “intersubjective perspective” that is shared by the participants in joint activities and gives rise to an attitude of mutual trust. (shrink)

Anyone who has ever found herself or himself at odds with a boss, a board, a committee, a pastor, family member - or with any other institutional setting of which she or he my be a part - will find this book full of help and insight and wisdom. Conflicting Agendas is an invaluable guide to sorting out the complexities of individual moral existence in an increasingly complex and complicated world.

The article substantiates the necessity of psychoanalytical and existential methodology in interpreting Lesia Ukrainka’s drama Kaminnyi hospodar, including the works of José Ortega y Gasset and Miguel de Unamuno on Don Quixote, Albert Camus on absurd characters, and Jacques Lacan’s The Mirror Stage. Biographical data testify to the critical attitude of the writer to world treatments of the legend. Her challenge to tradition was bold and conscious. It is regarded that the main point of Lesia Ukrainka’s polemics with tradition concerns (...) Don Juan apologetics, introduced by romantics and developed by modernists. Exploring Don Juan’s psychological makeup provides the opportunity to show that all participants of the legend have become victims of Don Juan apologetics. The Don Juan myth has played an integral role in the image of the Person being accepted by characters as a trustful image of the Self. Interpretation of the Mirror Image in The Stone Host and its crucial role in the final scene allows for justifying that the mirror serves the narcissistic characters’ admiration of themselves and shows them not only an attractive appearance but an ideal version of the Self, created by myth. (shrink)

There is much to learn from Durán and Jongsma’s paper.1 One particularly important insight concerns the relationship between epistemology and ethics in medical artificial intelligence. In clinical environments, the task of AI systems is to provide risk estimates or diagnostic decisions, which then need to be weighed by physicians. Hence, while the implementation of AI systems might give rise to ethical issues—for example, overtreatment, defensive medicine or paternalism2—the issue that lies at the heart is an epistemic problem: how can physicians (...) know whether to trust decisions made by AI systems? In this manner, various studies examining the interaction of AI systems and physicians have shown that without being able to evaluate their trustworthiness, especially novice physicians become over-reliant on algorithmic support—and ultimately are led astray by incorrect decisions.3–5 This leads to a second insight from the paper, namely that even if some AI system happens to be opaque, it is still not built on the moon. To assess its trustworthiness, AI developers or physicians have different sorts of higher order evidence at hand. Most importantly, …. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to advance a new understanding of gender as a routine accomplishment embedded in everyday interaction. To do so entails a critical assessment of existing perspectives on sex and gender and the introduction of important distinctions among sex, sex category, and gender. We argue that recognition of the analytical independence of these concepts is essential for understanding the interactional work involved in being a gendered person in society. The thrust of our remarks is toward theoretical (...) reconceptualization, but we consider fruitful directions for empirical research that are indicated by our formulation. (shrink)

C. L. Hardin has argued that the colour opponency of the vision system leads to chromatic subjectivism: chromatic sensory states reduce to neurophysiological states. Much of the force of Hardin's argument derives from a critique of chromatic objectivism. On this view chromatic sensory states are held to reduce to an external property. While I agree with Hardin's critique of objectivism it is far from clear that the problems which beset objectivism do not apply to the subjectivist position as well. I (...) develop a critique of subjectivism that parallels Hardin's antiobjectivist argument. (shrink)

In this paper, we show that God is portrayed in the Hebrew Bible and in the Rabbinic literature—some of the very Hebrew texts that have influenced the three major world religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—as One who can be argued with and even changes his mind. Contrary to fundamentalist positions, in the Hebrew Bible and other Jewish texts God is omniscient but enjoys good, playful argumentation, broadening the possibilities for reasoning and reasonability. Arguing with God has also had a (...) profound influence upon Jewish humor, demonstrating that humans can joke with God. More specifically, we find in Jewish literature that humor’s capacity to bisociate between different domains of human experience can share a symbiotic relationship with argumentation’s emphasis on producing multiple, contested perspectives. Overall, once mortals realize that figures such as God can accept many perspectives through humor, teasing, arguing, criticism, and in at least one case, even lawsuits, a critical point emerges: citizens should learn to live, laugh, and reason with others with whom they disagree. (shrink)

A growing number of patients make up their minds about some medical issue before they see their provider, either by googling their symptoms or asking a friend. They’ve made up their minds before coming in, and they resist their provider’s recommendations even after receiving information and advice from their provider. This is a new kind of medical autonomy problem; it differs from cases of standard consent, futility, or conscientious refusal. Providers sometimes call this problem “Dr. Google.” I call it premature (...) consent. Providers may wonder whether these patient decisions command the same deference and respect as other patient decisions. The answer is “no,” for these patients are neither fully competent nor properly informed. They typically appear to be competent, but competence includes the ability to deliberate, and they are not deliberating well when they make up their minds before consulting a qualified provider. They seem informed, especially after talking to their provider, but they are misinformed about what sources of medical advice to trust. Moreover, being informed requires believing the information one has received, and these patients sometimes don’t believe the information their provider gives them. (shrink)