531. Trust And Trustworthiness Without The Myth Of The Free Will
Rational trust depends on the other person's trustworthiness. Blind trust is irrational and risky.
Rational trust depends on the other person's trustworthiness. Blind trust is irrational and risky.
Unfortunately, there is a logical problem concerning the assessment of who can be trusted and how much. Only a person's untrustworthiness can be clearly proven by the evidence of at least one transgression. One single act of betrayal and breaking the trust is enough to refute the transgressor's claim to be trustworthy and to deserve trust.
But no such unambiguous evidence of trustworthiness is logically possible. Trustworthiness cannot be assessed any better than as a probability of expecting trustworthy behavior in the future, whenever an available alternative option to transgress is not chosen. Experiencing the absence of untrustworthy behavior justifies nothing more than the estimation of a high probability of trustworthiness. Rational trust only grows according to experience.
Experiencing no transgressions cannot be attributed with certainty to a personality trait of absolute trustworthiness. It can equally be attributed to the mere absence of an occasion to transgress. It is not possible to know, if a man not cheating does this by an innate preference for monogamy or because his animal instincts have not yet been tempted badly enough by any female body triggering him to transgress.
The assessment of trustworthiness by only extrapolating previous behavior is a retrospective method without a chance to avoid being harmed. People gamble with their own vulnerability, when due to lacking enough information they trust by trial and error, until they get wise only when hurt by a transgression.
Consciously discarding the myth of the free will includes also discarding the concept of a person's absolute trustworthiness as a trait and being trustworthy by a free decision. This leads to the alternative concept of the prospective assessment of a person's relative trustworthy behavior in the framework of the specific relationship between two persons.
This concept does not expect anybody to be equally trustworthy to all people, independent of how much the person benefits from transgressions. In this concept, the estimation of another person's possible relative trustworthiness is based upon two limitations:
- Both persons agree on shared definitions of transgressions.
When two persons have promised monogamy and exclusivity to each other, cheating is clearly a transgression and proof of untrustworthiness.
But when two persons like for example Sartre and Beauvoir agree on the commodification of others, then their sleeping around like alley dogs is for both not a transgression. They were trustworthy to each other but instead they did break the trust of all those, whom they hurt by the denial of exclusivity.
- The choice of preferring non-transgressing behavior over the transgression is ultimately beneficial for both. This choice is determined (as outlined in more details in entry 512) by factors as these.
2.1. Direct impacts by the specific kind and strength of needs for homeostasis and the individual specific sensitivity of the pleasure center. Nobody has a reason to indulge in a transgression, unless it either reduces dishomeostasis or causes pleasure.
2.2. Indirect cognitive impacts by the consideration and anticipation of long-term consequences of the tempting transgression, either by the calculation of comparing the immediate benefits with expected external punishments and rewards or by the awareness of the cognitive consequences of either preventing self-punishment by feeling guilty or enhancing self-rewarding by feeling good due to acting in accordance with the own value system and ideal self.
It is a frequent fallacy to expect another's trustworthiness as a consequence of an alleged free will to act according to the rules of a religion, social norm or other extrinsic motivations. Relative trustworthiness can most reliably be expected, when the behavior expected by the trusting person is intrinsically motivated as being also most beneficial to the own needs.
Therefore trial and error with haphazard partners is not a rational method for the goal of finding a trustworthy partner for commitment. The rational method is choosing carefully a partner, for whom the trustworthy behavior is innately more beneficial than transgressions would be.
It is many women's foolish mistake to get involved with a man, merely because he is attracted to their body and promises, whatever seems to lead to his homeostasis. This does not justify women's irrational hope, that he will never again touch another woman. This is trial and error and more often than not ends with the woman being hurt by a cheating jerk.
It is many women's foolish mistake to get involved with a man, merely because he is attracted to their body and promises, whatever seems to lead to his homeostasis. This does not justify women's irrational hope, that he will never again touch another woman. This is trial and error and more often than not ends with the woman being hurt by a cheating jerk.
A wise woman chooses the man, who succeeds to convince her, that monogamy and exclusivity are his own innate preference and needs, that being trustworthy to her expectations of commitment is also what is most beneficial for himself.
Allowing herself to be convinced of a man's trustworthiness is of course also only a question of correctly estimating the probability. A man afflicted with dishomeostasis may lie, he may be in denial of some of his tendencies, he may overestimate his self-control, he may mistake his ideal-self for his real self and there are more such hazards. What a main claims as his attitudes, values, resolutions and aspirations towards a woman concerns mainly the cognitive indirect impacts. But these alone do not suffice as a reliable basis for the assessment of his trustworthiness.
Allowing herself to be convinced of a man's trustworthiness is of course also only a question of correctly estimating the probability. A man afflicted with dishomeostasis may lie, he may be in denial of some of his tendencies, he may overestimate his self-control, he may mistake his ideal-self for his real self and there are more such hazards. What a main claims as his attitudes, values, resolutions and aspirations towards a woman concerns mainly the cognitive indirect impacts. But these alone do not suffice as a reliable basis for the assessment of his trustworthiness.
The soundest assessment is derived from his predispositions concerning the direct impacts. A man with high instinctive needs for those homeostations and stimulations of the pleasure center, which he can obtain best by transgressions, is a hazard, no matter, how convincing he appears to be otherwise.
The less a man is determined by his instincts towards the objectification of women's bodies, the more he can be trusted to treat women without abuse and objectification, without hurting their dignity.
While a careful choice of a man, who shares the most benefits by reciprocally fulfilling each other's needs, is no guarantee against transgressions, it is at least a method to reduce the risk.
