The Entrusted Concerns Hypothesis can, unlike the Coordination Hypothesis, explain our intuitions about Football (Mother and Son). But I haven’t yet shown that it explains our intuitions about the other cases we have considered. It is easy to see that the Entrusted Concerns Hypothesis makes the right predictions about Flat (Preferences), Retail, and Football (John and Well-Wisher). These are not cases of robust non- cognitive disagreement, and in none of them is it plausible that an appropriate trust relationship exists between the parties.84 It is less obvious that the hypothesis can explain our intuitions about Stevenson’s other cases.
Among Stevenson’s cases, showing that the football case meets conditions (i)- (vii) of the Entrusted Concerns Hypothesis is a relatively simple business. For, in the
83 Two caveats. First, the Entrusted Concerns Hypothesis does require that such ascriptions
involve judgements of about the trust-based obligations and entitlements of the parties, and I am not able to completely rule out the possibility that these are ‘genuinely’ normative judgements. Second, it is still possible, that some version of the Reason-to-Consider Hypothesis is what explains why the disagreements predicted by the Entrusted Concerns Hypothesis seem to be disagreements, and that this version of the Reasons-to-Consider Hypothesis does turn disagreement judgements into normative judgements.
84 The hypothesis makes no predictions about Rival Hostesses, for the clash of preferences in
61 football case, it is clear who must be the entrusting party and who the entrusted party. In the invitation and restaurant cases this is not clear. I propose that in these cases the parties share two entrusted concern relationships; each party stands in a relevant ‘entrusting’ relation to the other. They disagree about two pairs of options: whether or not party X is to assent to party Y’s preferred course of action, and whether or not Y is to assent to X’s preferred course of action.
I will start by testing the hypothesis against Stevenson’s invitation case. It is natural to suppose that Mr. and Mrs. A have entrusted various concerns to each other, because this is something husbands and wives generally do, and because it presumably makes living together more tolerable. Mr. A and Mrs. A plausibly entrust to each other concerns for their health and welfare, and for the prosperity of their household. It may not seem obvious that these are concerns to accommodate desires—our evidence for this is that it would seem natural for them to assert their demands as parties to these trust relationships by voicing wants and preferences. It is also plausible to suppose that they have entrusted to each other concerns to accommodate their more selfish desires, concerning choices affecting them both (e.g. choices about what furniture to buy). Thus it would not be far-fetched to suppose that Mr. A trusts Mrs. A to give weight to his desire that they should honour their old friendships in her decisions, or that Mrs. A trusts Mr. A to give weight to her desire that their social status be improved in his. Given the Entrusted Concerns Hypothesis, it is easy to see how each of these trust relationships could make a robust disagreement of their clashing preferences in Invitation.
When the prospective diners in Stevenson’s restaurant case agree to dine together, we plausibly assume that they entrust certain concerns to each other, and make corresponding commitments to give weight to these concerns in their decision-making. Prospective diner A plausibly entrusts to prospective diner B a concern to make their dinner pleasant and convenient for A, insofar as A desires such attentiveness from B; and vice versa. In other words, they trust each other to be considerate. B’s entrusted concern to make A’s dining experience a pleasant one gives her reason to listen to A’s preference to go to a restaurant with music (say), and to give it special weight when deciding which restaurant to agree to go to. This entrusted concern is, however, lenient, and permits B to give weight to her own preference not to hear music. The Entrusted Concerns Hypothesis thus plausibly predicts that A and B robustly disagree in preference when they voice mutually unsatisfiable preferences about where to eat. (Of
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course all that I have just said regarding B’s relationship to A also applies in the other direction, for A’s preference and her entrusted concern mirror B’s in all relevant respects. But the hypothesis predicts robust disagreement even when this fact is ignored.)
Could we think up versions of Stevenson’s restaurant and invitation cases that elicited intuitions of disagreement, but whose features discouraged us from attributing an entrusted concern relationship to the parties? We haven’t yet considered any cases in which two people who have little reason to trust each other nonetheless have strong motivation to reach an agreement on some coordinated course of action. Suppose that A is a blackmailer, and wants to meet B at a restaurant that she owns, late at night, so that she can exchange her scandalous photographs of B for money. B wants to make the exchange at a more public venue, perhaps because he fears that A will rob him of his money without giving him the photographs. We should not expect A and B to have much trust for each other. A and B do not agree about where to make the trade, and they cannot easily reach agreement. But do they disagree? I find it odd to suppose this; intuitively, the supposition represents their relationship as being implausibly civilized and respectful.
What happens if we dramatize their clash of preferences in a dialogue, as I did with Stevenson’s cases? It is in fact hard to do this without giving the case distractingly odd features which would interfere with any intuitions of disagreement it might otherwise have elicited. We can easily imagine A and B demanding to meet at different places, and being unable to reach agreement. Consider:
Restaurant (Blackmail I)
A: Meet me at my restaurant after closing time, and we’ll make the trade.
B: I don’t think so. It’s got to be a public place, somewhere neutral. Let’s meet at
Minims at seven.
A: This isn’t a negotiation. Come to my restaurant, or I send the pictures to the press. B: No way. We disagree.
The exchange of demands, ultimatums, and refusals here seems natural enough, and I think that B’s disagreement claim seems odd.
But suppose instead that A and B have the following exchange:
Restaurant (Blackmail II)
A: Meet me and we’ll make the trade. I’d prefer that we met at my restaurant after closing time.
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B: I’d rather we met in a public place, somewhere neutral. How about Minims at seven?
A: I’d really prefer that we met at my restaurant. B: We disagree.
This whole exchange seems strange given its context. Why would the parties be reporting and listening to each other’s preferences as if they were concerned to accommodate them? Admittedly B’s disagreement claim is not the strangest feature of the case, and perhaps we lack a clear intuition that A and B don’t disagree. But this is, I suggest, partly because the general strangeness of the case is distracting, and partly because A’s and B’s exchange of preference reports gives us some evidence that, bizarrely, each party is concerned to accommodate the other’s opposing preferences. I can’t claim that Restaurant (Blackmail II) gives resounding support to the Entrusted Concerns Hypothesis, but I don’t think it undermines it either.85
1.2.5 Are Cases of Imperative Disagreement Counterexamples to the Hypothesis?