Trust is a matter of knowledge and belief, not of choice or action.

Evidence

Commonplace claims that one chooses to trust entail mistaken implications that trusting is a matter of acting. Kenneth Arrow (1974, 26) speaks of the “agreement to trust each other.” John Dunn (1988, 73, see also 80) says that trust is “a more or less consciously chosen policy for handling the freedom of other human agents or agencies.” Annette Baier (1986, 244) speaks of “conscious trust the truster has chosen to endorse and cultivate.” Luhmann (1980, 24) speaks, as do many others, including Baier (1986) and Virginia Held (1984, 65), of trust as a gamble, a risky investment. Held (1968, 158) also says that one may be obligated to trust. All of this is wrong. I just do or do not trust to some degree, depending on the evidence I have. I do not, in an immediate instance, choose to trust, I do not take any risk in trusting. Only actions are chosen—for example, to act as I would if I did in fact trust or to take a chance on your being trustworthy beyond any evidence I have that you will be trustworthy. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 305

If, on your own knowledge, I seem to be trustworthy to some degree with respect to some matter, then you do trust me with respect to that matter. Similarly, if I seem to be untrustworthy, then you do distrust me. There is no act of choosing to trust or distrust—your knowledge or beliefs about me constitute your degree of trust or distrust of me. If trust has grounds of particular kinds, we may expect distrust to have correlative grounds. Moreover, distrust is, like trust, a three-part relation: A distrusts B with respect to X. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 429

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the reader’s integration with Luhmann’s ‘familiarity’ concept: Saramago’s blindness also is a cognitive/knowledge state, not a chosen act.
• DEFINE: Resolves trust into the category of knowledge/belief vs. action/behavior — the exact distinction that anchors Hardin’s framework being integrated.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 305; Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 429