Luhmann frames trust as an individual’s mechanism for reducing complexity.

Evidence

Carol Heimer (2001) sees trust as a way in which actors in social relationships can cope with the uncertainty and vulnerability that pervade relationships. Niklas Luhmann (1980, 8) more elaborately wishes to explain the existence of trust by its value to us in causing good things. “Where there is trust,” he says, “there are increased possibilities for experience and action.” In this view, the function of trust is that it gives us the present sense of understanding and reducing complexity. Complexity is the central problem, because the individual cannot know enough to handle everything and must therefore rely on others as agents for some matters (Luhmann 1980, 15, 5). At least casually, these claims sound like a functional explanation for the existence, rise, or maintenance of trust. Such explanations are often shallow metaphors without genuine explanatory content. Let us unpack this one to see what it contains. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 665

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives the precise Luhmann definition of trust’s function — reducing complexity by relying on others as agents — that grounds the reader’s integration with Saramago.
• XREF: This is the Luhmann ‘familiarity’ concept the reader explicitly wants to integrate with Saramago: blindness removes observability, and with it the ability to reduce complexity through trust.