Trust is a state of knowledge distinct from acting on it

Evidence

That trusting someone and acting on that trust are different is trivially evident. For example, I may trust you in various ways but never have reason to act on that trust. Against this distinction, Jane Mansbridge (1999) argues for “altruistic trust,” which implicitly runs trust into action. To speak of altruistic trust is implicitly to say that it is not trust, that one acts cooperatively beyond what one would do if one acted only from the degree of trust one had in another. One acts altruistically despite lack of sufficient trust to justify the action. Hence to speak of altruistic trust is to make trust a term of action rather than of knowledge. That is peculiar because, again, I could trust you very much without having occasion to act on my trust. It is also true that I can easily act cooperatively toward others even when I do not trust them and I am not even confident that they will reciprocate or will take my interests into account. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 302

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes Hardin’s core definitional split: trust as knowledge (a belief about another’s incentives) versus action taken on that belief — altruistic cooperation without trust is possible and not trust at all.
• XREF: Crucial for the Saramago/Luhmann/Hardin synthesis the reader is building: the doctor’s wife, having privileged knowledge (sight), trust others in a way the blind can’t. In Luhmann 1979 or the trust-familiarity chapter, the blind can only act, not trust.