Trust and Its Betrayal under Three Representational Strategies
Trust is a propositional attitude of a distinctive kind: to trust is to rely on another under conditions where reliance could be disappointed, and the disappointment of trust---betrayal---differs qualitatively from the disappointment of a prediction. We treat trust as a \emph{subjunctive} epistemic state: $A$ trusts $B$'s competence when $A$ believes that \emph{were $P$ true, $B$ would know it}, and $B$'s integrity when $A$ believes that \emph{were $B$ to know $P$, he would disclose it to $A$}. We develop three representations of this state---as lexicographic \emph{assumption} as \emph{ordinal closeness} in a Lewis--Stalnaker sphere system , and as \emph{strong belief} in a conditional pr...
| Authors | Mihnea C. Moldoveanu, Joel A. C. Baum |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 31 July 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 31 July 2026 |
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