JUSTIFICATION IN THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL CONCEPTION OF TRUST Benedict Michael, PhD & Edoh Sunday Odum Abstract The concept of trust is not new in philosophy; it has been used in different times and epoch, first as transactional virtue in The Republic of Plato and multilateral virtue in Aristotle's Habituation Ethics as essential commodity in the formulation of friendship as brotherhood. In John Dewey's Democracy and Education, trust is the value that individuals posses for social cooperation and mutual dialogue for the growth and development of any society, while Francis Fukuyama consider trust as aspect of social capital necessary for both economic and political growth and development. In essence the extant theorist, have examined trust from the dimensions of political, economic, culture, moral and social dimensions. In this study, we shall examine the epistemological notion of trust. Traditionally, epistemology is based on genuine knowledge beliefs (Justified Truth Belief) acquired by trusting others either by rational belief as argued by the rationalist or sense impressions as held by the empiricist. Only a small aspect of our knowledge is generated from our personal experience. Relaying on what others say is one of the fundamental ways to acquire knowledge, not only about the external world, but also about who we are, for instance about when and where we were born. Epistemic trust is the examination of first the authority, source and the pragmaticality of our knowledge claims, content of our communication in the process of justifying our knowledge. Key words: Philosophy, Epistemology, Trust, Justification, Traditional Epistemology, INTRODUCTION Epistemology is one of the major branches in philosophy. The term epistemology is derived from two Greek words, “episteme” which means “knowledge” and “logos” which means logic or rationale. However, in contemporary usage it has come to mean theory of knowledge (Everit and Fisher 1995). What then is knowledge? There are three ways of looking at the question of what knowledge is. First, we have capacity knowledge which is referred to as knowledge know how. This type of knowledge refers to the ability of the individual knowing how to do something. For instance, knowing how to put on the television, radio, how to drive a car. The second type of knowledge is knowledge by acquaintance. This type of knowledge deals with the kind of knowledge of what exist in space and time, for example you can know a country, a building, a river or a painting. The third type of knowledge is propositional knowledge. In propositional knowledge, knowledge is defined as Justified Truth Belief. That is, for any piece of information to be called knowledge, it must satisfy these three conditions which are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for any knowledge claims. For example to make statement that A knows P, it means that for the 40 Nnamdi Azikiwe Journal of Philosophy, Vol.12(1), 2020 truth of A knows that P. they are: 1. P is true 2. A believes that P 3. If A can justify that it is P. The first condition, is called the truth condition, it states that you cannot know that something is true, if in fact, it is false. To know that p means that P must be true for example I know that Lokoja is the capital of Kogi State, it will be false to say that Lokoja is not the capital. The second condition, the condition that A believes that P. The fact that A believes P requires explanation. It is possible for A to know that Makurdi is the capital of Benue state. But the knowledge A has comes from uncertain source. The concept believe only signifies that the source of knowledge could be faulty, which means that our knowledge could be inclusive. However, epistemically, believe stands for the fact that the strength of conviction still remains undetermined by the second condition. The third condition A justifies that P. the third and final condition is stipulating , that is, the requirement of knowledge is that it must justified here our believe about our statement of fact that Makurdi is the capital of Benue State is justified because it left the level of believe to justification of the fact the statement is true. In the 21st century, most discourses in epistemology; genuine knowledge is based on beliefs acquired by trusting others. Knowledge or rational belief, as opposed to opinion, is ultimately based on individuals held clear and distinct ideas as Rene Descartes puts it in his First Meditations and sense impressions as John Locke argued in his Treatise of Human Knowledge together with sound relations among these ideas. In the contemporary debate individualistic stance or arguments in the contemporary debate, claims that individually held reasons and individual cognitive states are the ground of justification of our beliefs. At the same time a number of social phenomena such as the role of expertise in public decisions within societies, collaborative work in the sciences and other aspects in the academe, most especially in the information sciences due to new media and technologies have made a part of contemporary epistemology to incorporate social notions such as trust, deference and authority. This coincides with the period in which our epistemic dependence on other people's knowledge is a key ingredient of our cognitive life, the role of trust in this dependence is much more open to debate. What is the relationship between other types of trust and epistemic trust? How do we arrive at epistemic trust? These shall be the focus of the paper. The paper apart from its introduction is divided into three parts, the first attempts at conceptualizing trust, the next section evaluate the various notion of trust and its relationship with epistemic truth. While the third part looks at the epistemological arguments of the notion of trust. The last aspect of the paper is the conclusion. Conceptual Elucidation of Trust Trust is a multifaceted concept that is very ambiguous to define. This is because various people define it to suit their ideological coloration. For Peri Blind, trust is a complex interpersonal and organizational construct. According to him, trust occurs when parties holding certain favourable perceptions of each other allow the relationship to reach the expected outcomes (17). Mark Karsperson, on the other hand, views trust as a subjective 41 Michael & Odum Justification in the Episteological Conception of Trust evaluation of a relationship (791). This relational approach to trust is much more common in social research. He further contends that trust is a rational evaluation of social situations along four dimensions. A person who trusts (the subject) implies that he or she thinks that the object of trust meets certain requirements: the object would be competent, intrinsically committed (caring), extrinsically committed (accountable because of encapsulated interest) and predictable. Competence suggests that the subject of trust thinks the object of trust has the ability to perform according to expectations or in the subject's interest. Commitment implies that the subject thinks the object will act in the best interests of the subject for either of two reasons. First, the object would have an intrinsic need to act in line with the subject's interest, because they care for each other or share the same goals. Kasperson labels this aspect as care. Second, the subject's ability to enforce the object's actions, if only through threat so as to punish untrustworthy behaviour by denying future support. The third dimension of the social nature of trust is accountability. That is, trust can be held accountable in the sense that the subject binds the object to his or her interests: the interests of the subject become encapsulated self- interests of the object (801). Fourth is reliability or predictability. This has to do with the extent to which the object's past behaviour is consistent. Trust plays a pivotal role in the unity or cohesion of any society; this is considered to be the main function of trust in this constellation of definitions. According to Simmel, trust is one of the most important synthetic forces within society (91). To some other scholars, such as Gambatta, Saligman and Misztal, trust is an economic perspective of human relations and interactions (5). According to these scholars, trust is the main component of social capital, and social capital is the necessary condition of social integration, social economic efficiency and democratic stability. Russell Hardin, in the same light, believes that trust is an “encapsulated interest” (27). This definition of trust stipulates that “we trust you because we think you can take our interest to heart and encapsulate into your own” (7). Trust makes it possible to maintain peaceful and stable social relations that are the basis for collective behaviour and productive cooperation. On the other hand, Luhmann contends that although trust involves risk, it transcends economic encapsulated risk to political risks. This is because trust, he contends, is the transformation of the Hobbesian state of nature from being nasty, brutish, and short, to being a more pleasant, more efficient, and altogether peaceful society. Social life without trust would be intolerable and, most likely, quite impossible, he concludes (18). Sociologically trust is the basis for cooperation at all levels of human interactions. Arising from the above is the indication that there are various types of trust, they include: i. Moral trust ii. Political trust iii. Economic trust iv. Cultural trust v. Epistemic trust However in this paper we shall divide the various types of trust into epistemic and non epistemic trust, while epistemic trust stands on its own, moral, cultural, political and economic trusts constitute the non epistemic trust. Non Epistemic Notion of Trust Epistemic authority and trust are not just philosophical topics; they are important aspects of human social life.