Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Part One Intellectual Trust in Oneself
- 1 The Importance of Intellectual Self-Trust
- 2 Intellectual Self-Trust, Rational Belief, and Invulnerability to Self-Criticism
- 3 Empirical Challenges to Self-Trust
- Part Two Intellectual Trust in Others and in One's Own Future and Past Self
- Conclusion
- Index
1 - The Importance of Intellectual Self-Trust
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Part One Intellectual Trust in Oneself
- 1 The Importance of Intellectual Self-Trust
- 2 Intellectual Self-Trust, Rational Belief, and Invulnerability to Self-Criticism
- 3 Empirical Challenges to Self-Trust
- Part Two Intellectual Trust in Others and in One's Own Future and Past Self
- Conclusion
- Index
Summary
CLASSICAL FOUNDATIONALISM AND INTELLECTUAL TRUST
To what extent should we intellectually trust ourselves? Questions of trust arise about our opinions, and they also arise about the faculties, practices, and methods that generate these opinions. Moreover, there is a relation between the two. If I have trust in the reliability of my faculties, practices, and methods, I will tend also to have trust in the overall accuracy of my opinions, and vice-versa. Trust in one tends to transfer to the other.
Questions of intellectual trust also arise about other people's opinions and faculties, and they can even arise about one's own past or future opinions and faculties. Moreover, there is a relation between these questions and question of self-trust, for whenever one's current opinions conflict with those of others, or with one's own past or future opinions, there is an issue of whom to trust: one's current self, or the other person, or one's past or future self? However, one of the central claims of this work is that there is also an interesting theoretical relation between the two sets of questions. I argue in Part Two that the trust it is reasonable to have in one's current opinions provides the materials for an adequate account of the trust one should have in the opinions of others and in one's own past and future opinions. But in Part One, my focus is more limited.
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- Information
- Intellectual Trust in Oneself and Others , pp. 3 - 24Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001