Rational Trust

According to doxastic accounts of trust, trust requires a belief, for example, the belief that the trustee will do as trusted. This view has been variously criticized on the grounds that trust and belief interact differently with evidence. One oft-mentioned but rarely examined way to explicate this criticism appeals to the tension between trust and evidence gathering: Gathering evidence to support one’s trusting belief erodes one’s trust but not this belief. In this talk, I appeal to recent developments in zetetic epistemology to address this ‘problem of undue inquiry,’ aiming (a) to show why trust erodes when evidence is gathered, and (b) to defend the doxastic account of trust. I shall argue that both belief and trust erode through evidence gathering, if, and only if, it springs from certain interrogative attitudes such as ‘doubting’ or ‘wondering.’ Consequently, in direct opposition to the initial statement of the problem, evidence gathering erodes trust if, and only if, evidence gathering erodes one’s trusting belief.