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Trust, Trustworthiness, and the Moral Consequence of Consistency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2015

JASON D'CRUZ
JASON D'CRUZ*
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY AT ALBANYjdcruz@albany.edu
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Abstract:

Situationists such as John Doris, Gilbert Harman, and Maria Merritt suppose that appeal to reliable behavioral dispositions can be dispensed with without radical revision to morality as we know it. This paper challenges this supposition, arguing that abandoning hope in reliable dispositions rules out genuine trust and forces us to suspend core reactive attitudes of gratitude and resentment, esteem and indignation. By examining situationism through the lens of trust we learn something about situationism (in particular, the radically revisionary moral implications of its adoption) as well as something about trust (in particular, that the conditions necessary for genuine trust include a belief in a capacity for robust dispositions).

Keywords

ethicsmoral psychologynormative ethicsphilosophy of mindagencyresponsibility
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , Fall 2015 , pp. 467 - 484
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2015 

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