Trust is a kind of knowledge grounded in trustworthy evidence

Evidence

Acting on the incentive for trustworthiness is to be trustworthy on the encapsulated-interest account of trust. In his functional explanation of the maintenance of trust in a complex society, Luhmann does not make the direct mistake of confusing trust and trustworthiness. Nevertheless, it is much easier to account directly for trustworthiness, which then begets trust. It begets trust because trust is essentially in the category of knowledge, and evidence of trustworthiness ultimately defines trust. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 682

Categorization

• DEFINE: Hardin’s capsule definition: trust is epistemic — knowledge — and trustworthiness is what constitutes it; a clean key for the Saramago reading where sightedness = knowledge.
• XREF: Trust-as-knowledge speaks directly to the reader’s project: in Blindness, the wife’s observability actually generates knowledge of trustworthiness, restoring order. — connects to: All knowledge depends on fiduciary trust in some community, including conspiracist belief — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 282