First trust paper published

Today, 'Commitment in cases of trust and distrust' found its way into the December issue of Thought.  This is the first paper I've had published on trust. It feels a little weird to be publishing in an area that's so far removed from most of the work that I do in metaphysics. Still, it's fun to stretch! 

The basic gist of the paper is that some things that Katherine Hawley says in her (excellent) 'Trust, Distrust and Commitment', aren't quite right and need a little tweak. I look to provide the tweak, too. In particular, I argue that we should think about distrust as follows:

"To distrust someone to do something is to believe that she has a commitment to doing it, and yet not rely upon her to meet that commitment because of reservations about whether or not they can be relied upon to do it."

This is intended as the first in a series of papers about trust. One theme I’m particularly interested in is the connection between the philosophical literature and the business literature. I was genuinely staggered when I started looking at the business literature at how much of it there is, and (I think) how many places we might be able to usefully offer philosophical intervention. So, alongside the usual nonsense about metaphysics, I’m trying to provide some of those interventions. I hope to have more to say about some of that soon.