Evolutionary accounts explain trustworthiness, not trust itself

Evidence

Frank (1988, 57, 11) poses his “commitment model” as counter to the “self-interest model.” It seems, on the contrary, to be a simple matter of self-interest as intelligently weighed. In any case, his account is a resolution of the problem of my capacity to be trustworthy; it is not an account of trust. If there is an evolutionary account of trust, it is presumably roughly that of the infant “trust” argument of Baier and others. The infant must accept offered sustenance or die. Hence infants of species that survive tend to accept it. They at least act as if they trusted, although it would be perverse to say that a cognitively undeveloped infant bird or human actually does trust. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 620

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharply separates trust from trustworthiness — a distinction central to Hardin’s whole framework that also maps onto Saramago: trustworthiness may be evolvable/dispositional, but trust proper is relational and cognitive.
• XREF: The infant-trust argument (Baier) parallels Hardin’s encapsulated interest account; also connects to the novice-acceptance dynamic in Saramago where the sighted wife must act as the civilizational adult whose actions the blind must entrust themselves to or die.