What does all this have to do with interpersonal trust? The possibility of belief-emotional incongruence suggests that belief (including trust beliefs) is insufficient for interpersonal trust. Karen Jones (2012) argues that cognitive features are insufficient for self-trust.234
Believing oneself trustworthy without displaying certain feelings (or emotions) rules out self-trust on that occasion. Jones imagines a traveler who, like many of us, compulsively
checks her luggage for her passport on the way to the airport, in the airport, on the plane, and just about anywhere else she could possibly lose it. The traveler, we might further suppose, is meticulous and thorough—a fact of which she is keenly aware. After checking numerous times, it seems that at some point, comes to believe she brought, and continues to possess, the passport, even if she initially believed she left it home, contrary to her normal mode of operation.235
This example assumes the possibility of belief-emotional incongruity. It’s not as if the traveler neither believes she is trustworthy nor that the passport is safely in her possession. Instead, the traveler does not feel trusting toward herself.236 So, plausibly, the
traveler does not trust herself.237 This example not only calls into question the sufficiency
of trust beliefs for self-trust; it strongly suggests the necessity of trusting feelings toward one’s self. Again, non-cognitivists typically identify such feelings with optimism, confidence, or security.
Jones’s case also has implications for interpersonal trust: namely, that trust beliefs are insufficient for the attitude. The case is really a counterexample to cognitivism generally—both of the intrapersonal and interpersonal trust variety. If Jones is right, believing that others are trustworthy without certain feelings (or emotions) also implies a lack of interpersonal trust. We could imagine two travelers this time: traveler X and traveler Y. Traveler X and traveler Y assume certain responsibilities before the trip. One of traveler
235 This does not mean the traveler knows at any time that she brought the passport, especially if the possibility that she didn’t or that it somehow got lost since her last check is salient in the midst of her compulsive checking.
236 Zagzebski (2012, p. 44) also discusses Jones’s case, but applies its lessons for some other purpose. 237 Obviously, the traveler is not trusting herself in the action sense, given she constantly checks up on herself, so to speak. This does not seem to be Jones’s concern.
Y’s many responsibilities is to keep track of both X’s and Y’s passports in one carry-on bag. On departure day, traveler X constantly asks traveler Y if Y has the passports. A simple affirmative answer, though, is insufficient for traveler X. Traveler X demands traveler Y to check each time. This example is structurally similar to Jones’s single traveler who allegedly believes herself trustworthy. If it’s possible for the single traveler to believe herself trustworthy, though not trust herself, then it stands to reason that traveler X might believe that traveler Y is trustworthy (with respect to bag packing), but not trust traveler Y. If so, then trust beliefs are insufficient for interpersonal trust.238
Two plausible responses are available to the cognitivist. First, the cognitivist might concede that Jones’s counterexample applied to the case of interpersonal trust (i.e., the dual traveler case) shows that trust beliefs are insufficient for this attitude. Perhaps interpersonal trust is a complex of attitudes, belief being only one. In that case, strong cognitivism fails. This response leaves weak cognitivism in tact and it is consistent with my defense of cognitivism in Chapter 4.
Second, the cognitivist could argue that both traveler cases are underdescribed and what intuition is supported depends on how their details are fleshed out. I’ll focus on the interpersonal case. On the one hand, if the interpersonal case represents one-off (or rare instances of) doubt and anxiety—maybe due to rare circumstances—then the cognitivist could say that traveler X interpersonally trusts traveler Y. Perhaps traveler X is disposed to feeling confident that traveler Y will fulfill Y’s travel responsibilities, but for some reason fails to manifest confidence on this occasion. Thick interpersonal attitudes of trust do not require believing that others are perfect, and so, occasional non-trusting feelings or
thoughts are perfectly consistent with this attitude. The result would be that traveler X has trust in traveler Y, but apparently does not trust that traveler Y has fulfilled Y’s necessary travel responsibilities on this occasion. Maybe traveler X believes that, despite traveler Y’s trustworthiness (e.g., traveler Y is extremely thorough), even trustworthy people are subject to occasional failure and that this would be a terrible time for such an occasion.
On the other hand, if the doubting and anxious traveler’s feelings (and behavior) represents a trend, then it seems highly implausible to say that traveler X interpersonally trusts—or trusts in any sense for that matter—traveler Y. Traveler X lacks the confidence (or security) necessary for belief that traveler Y is trustworthy. That is, X lacks that feeling non-cognitivists argue constitute interpersonal trust.
To conclude, the objection just discussed challenges strong cognitivism—the view that interpersonal trust just is a matter of holding trust beliefs. The objection will not work against weak cognitivism, however. For weak cognitivism is merely the view that trust beliefs are necessary for interpersonal trust. I now move to an objection to weak cognitivism.
5.2 The Argument from Voluntariness
In this section I discuss two considerations philosophers have noted to show that trust does not necessarily involve belief—i.e., that trust is non-cognitive. First, unlike belief- formation, one can voluntarily decide to trust.239 Some philosophers consider the
voluntariness claim as reason enough to reject cognitivism.
Second, some have pointed to the fact that we obviously can, and regularly do, trust others without believing they are trustworthy, as reason to reject cognitivism. The two considerations, and the objections based on them, are isomorphic. Trust is voluntary to the extent that it does not involve belief; and trust involves belief only to the extent that it’s involuntary. A successful response to one objection should therefore work for the other.
One might respond to the two considerations above by denying that trust is ever voluntary or by arguing that trust always involves belief. This would be a mistake, which I hope will become apparent below. I show that the two considerations (whether taken individually or jointly), even if true, do not imply that no other form of trust ever involves belief that others are trustworthy (i.e., trust beliefs). I conclude that cognitivists may concede the voluntariness claim without problem. Cognitivism, both weak and strong forms, should be understood as accounts of trust attitudes, not exhaustive accounts of trust. I already argued for this point in Chapter 2, so I will not attempt to do so again here. Before presenting the argument against cognitivism based on considerations of voluntariness, it would be beneficial to consider doxastic involuntarism in a bit more detail than we did in Chapter 4.