Epistemic Trust: The Nature, Scope and its Applications

Despite the importance of trust in epistemology, there is no consensus about its nature and issues. Some consider it a cognitive attitude and some think it an emotional attitude. The combination of cognitive and emotional elements is another point of view chosen by Linda Zagzebski. The combination of the two elements of belief and feeling, plus the element of behavior and its explanation in the context of virtue theory, distinguishes Zagzeski's view from the rest. This article focuses on Zagzebski's point of view and analyzes the nature, scope, and applications of epistemic trust. While accepting two types of self-trust and trust to others, she established a special commitment between these two and extended the scope of cognitive self-trust as a pre-reflective feature, according to the principle of equality, to trust others. Validity of testimony in justifying beliefs, exemplarist theory, and a new interpretation of the Consensus Gentium argument is among the applications of epistemic trust discussed in the article. Despite Zagzebski's effort to provide a more accurate explanation of epistemic trust and its application in various fields of epistemology, philosophy of religion, and moral philosophy, there are still ambiguities and weaknesses in her view that make it difficult to justify the role of epistemic trust.