Differences in capacity to trust are epistemological rather than psychological

Evidence

In many accounts of trust, including Coleman’s (1990, chapter 5) strictly rational account, one might suppose those who are to trust are all interchangeable in the following sense: given the same incentives (potential objective payoffs), we would all trust to the same degree. There is an important prior element, however, that some might think of as psychological: we may have different capacities for trust. This issue should not be treated as psychological in the sense of irrational or not rationally justifiable but, rather, as essentially epistemological and hence as pragmatically rational. The sometime claim that there is a psychological dimension to trust that is different from the cognitive or calculative or rational may be little more than nascent recognition of this epistemological problem (see Aguilar 1984). — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 598

Categorization

• DEFINE: Hardin redefines the apparent ‘psychological’ dimension of trust as an epistemological one — individual differences in what one knows, not in dispositional irrationality.
• XREF: Directly connects to the Saramago reading: the doctor’s wife’s ‘capacity to trust’ derives from what she alone observes — epistemological access, not psychology; also links to Luhmann’s familiarity-as-knowledge.
• QUESTION: If capacity for trust is epistemological, does the wife’s sightedness make her trust ‘pragmatically rational’ in a way the blind cannot attain? Worth exploring for the integration.