Trust in the Digital Age: Friends, Justice, and the Good Life
Abstract
A more complex definition of trust is required to better understand the Aristotelian virtues of friendship and justice, especially in the digital age. Within this argument, I develop and make use of two distinct notions, specific trust and broad trust, that together describe all potential trust scenarios. An agent exhibits specific trust when counting on a certain individual, and in cases of broad trust, an agent is trusting in a conglomerate of unknown individuals. What results from a decision to trust, in either dimension, may lead to stable cooperation among participants or lead to the evolution of norms and institutions to rebalance incentive structures. This model of trust was developed by James A. Coleman and later coined by Philip J. Nickel as the Explanatory Constraint Theory (ECT) of trust. When applied to the Aristotelian virtues, ECT yields valuable insight into the formation of friendship and just political action. I argue that specific trust and broad trust can be understood as the antecedent conditions for action, resulting in cooperation among participants (friendship) or rebalanced incentives (justice). As the techno-mediated mode of communication becomes more prevalent, the way individuals trust changes. I claim that ECT is effective in pinpointing the origin of these changes. If new technology allows for efficiency within the “good life”, the ECT model explains why it fails in doing so, to the extent that the “good life” entails a sense of trust and depends on friendship and justice.
Citation
Ramirez, Andrew Todd (2019). Trust in the Digital Age: Friends, Justice, and the Good Life. Undergraduate Research Scholars Program. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /194470.