Expertise and the Ethics of Trust - A Review

This review paper on the ethical issues surrounding trust in experts focuses on epistemic trust and its ethical implications. The aim is to provide a useful background material for more discussions of public policy issues in this volume and also to provide resources for philosophical thinking relevant to the theme of Trust and Hope in a Time of Crisis, the research topic of the ETICA Horizon Europe. This paper is divided into four headings: Part I maps key philosophical discussions of trust; Part II discusses the breakdown of trust; Part III focuses on the core issue in the ethics of trust and is divided into four subsections; Part IV deals with the question of distrust. We conclude with some suggestions for creating the conditions in which both trust and distrust have a socially, epistemic, and morally useful place, in the context of a climate of trust.