The moral obligations of trust

Abstract

Moral obligation, Darwall argues, is irreducibly second personal. So too, McMyler argues, is the reason for belief supplied by testimony and which supports trust. In this paper, I follow Darwall in arguing that the testimony is not second personal ‘all the way down’. However, I go on to argue, this shows that trust is not fully second personal, which in turn shows that moral obligation is equally not second personal ‘all the way down’.

Keywords:

• moral obligation
• trust
• testimony
• second person
• reasons

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Naomi Eilan, Will Small, Matt Soteriou, Bob Stern, Daniel Viehoff and the audience at the University of Warwick.

Notes on contributor

Paul Faulkner is a senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of Knowledge on Trust (OUP 2011).

Notes

1. Second person reasons are agent relative: only the person addressed has them. The reason provided by your inconvenience is third person agent neutral: any person with access to my car keys has this reason to move my car and let you go home. While the reason provided by the regulations is third person agent relative: it is my parking in the way I have that is prohibited, but the rules apply to all users of the car park.

2. Darwall is clear that there can be both kinds of reason for the same action, see Darwall (2007, 60).

3. McMyler correctly observes this distinction is that between what I term, respectively, affective and predictive trust, McMyler (2011, n.6, 119) and Faulkner (2011, ch6§2). Although, we disagree, as will become clear, as to whether ‘X trusts Y to ϕ’ implies ‘X believes Y will ϕ’.

4. This challenge is pressed forcefully by Lackey (2008, ch.8). I address it in Faulkner (2011, ch.6§5). Nickel (2012) and Fricker (2012) also provide responses.

5. Darwall (2006, 57) continues, ‘Someone can address reasons for belief, therefore, only if we take him to have some epistemic authority, or, at least, only if we don't take him to have none.’ But this second disjunct is too weak: the claim that a believed lack of epistemic authority can undermine the second personal reason a telling provides does not challenge the idea that such a second person reason suffices for warrant, other things being equal.

6. This case also illustrates why trust does not entail belief. The shopkeeper can bracket her beliefs that raise a doubt as to her employees trustworthiness, in order to trust, but she could not bracket these beliefs in order to believe her employee trustworthy. I discuss this case further in Faulkner (2011, 117).

7. This also follows Anscombe who says, ‘we can see that believing someone (in the particular case) as trusting him for the truth – in the particular case’ (1979, 151).

8. Where this is true, in my view, because there are norms of trust. See Faulkner (2011, ch.7§3).

9. Things are slightly more complex. What generates any obligation X has to ϕ is Y's need that he do so. However Y's trusting X can generate this need. To take an example of Løgstrup's: if John has lent me a book, my reason for returning it should just be that John needs it. But John might only need that I return his book because he trusted me with it in the first place. But then if trust generates the need, why does not it generate the obligation? The answer, I think, is that trust merely alters the non-normative facts that determine what the trusted has moral reason to do – in David Enoch's terms, trust is ‘triggering reason’ rather than a ‘robust reason’, see Enoch (2011). Y's attitude of trust does not itself X give a moral reason to ϕ, but it might give X an instrumental reason to do so (see the second entailment described in §6).

10. This is the response Darwall gives to Wallace who raises a parallel objection: there can be obligations even when no demand is addressed. Yes, says Darwall, because it would be addressed by the moral community. See Wallace (2007, 26) and Darwall (2007, 64).

11. Similarly, Wallace observes that a downtrodden individual could further ‘have the misfortune of living in a community which nobody else can get exercised about those indignities either’. Wallace (2007, 27).