Because general optimism about the trustworthiness of others enables us to enter mutually beneficial relations, we might readily conclude that a utilitarian should encourage such optimism. It does not follow that the utilitarian should be more trusting, however, because a person's degree of trust is determined by the knowledge that the person has. I speak in this chapter of the street-level epistemology of trust, which is the knowledge—good or bad—that a person develops through ordinary life experiences. That knowledge includes the capacity to assess the trustworthiness of others in light of relevant evidence. This epistemology is subjective in the sense that it is a theory of the knowledge of a particular person rather than of the correctness of claims of knowledge in the abstract, which is the usual focus of philosophical epistemology. All that the utilitarian should do is encourage pessimistic distrusters to take risks on cooperating with others up to the level that the utilitarian thinks is justified in the relevant population. In the model discussed in this chapter, one might go somewhat further and say that the utilitarian should encourage people to take somewhat greater risks than what the utilitarian, on present expectations, thinks correct, because the more open person will have greater opportunity to learn from experience than the less open person. Hence erring on the side of optimism is more readily corrected than erring on the side of pessimism.

DEFINE: Introduces 'street-level epistemology of trust' as the subjective knowledge of trustworthiness a person builds through ordinary experience.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 529