In general, it is important to note that one may neither trust nor distrust another or a government with respect to some issue. As noted in chapter 4, this is contrary to the vernacular sense of not trusting. A person who says, "I do not trust him," very likely means that he or she actively distrusts him. However, we are often ignorant of another's intentions or likely behavior, and therefore we are in a state of neither trust nor distrust toward that other.

DEFINE: Distinguishes the vernacular 'not trusting' (active distrust) from the formal sense of a neutral third state of neither trust nor distrust, often arising from ignorance.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 1000