2017-03-02, Lahno, Bernd

Trust as an emotional attitude includes a participant attitude and a feeling of connectedness to the trusted person by shared aims, values, or norms. Starting from an analysis of collective agency as given by the theory of team reasoning, this chapter argues that such trust is an essential element of what it means to act as part of a collective. In particular, ‘trust in integrity’ is vital for the realization of a complex collective project. It is often encapsulated in routines and based on a normative framework that is produced by the group’s social structure and its institutional background. Forming a collective agent may be associated with the problematic form of ‘categorical trust’ when sharing values and norms degenerates to unconditional and blind submission to the group’s rule.

2013, Lahno, Bernd

2011, Lahno, Bernd

Trust is a complex phenomenon consisting of behavioral as well as cognitive and affective elements.

2010, Lahno, Bernd

2016-01-01, Lahno, Bernd

This paper presents a survey on contemporary RC accounts of norms. The characteristic common feature of these accounts is that norms are understood as equilibrium selection devices. The most sophisticated positions driven by this idea are Herbert Gintis’ theory of norms as choreographers and Cristina Bicchieri’s theory of norms as solutions to mixed motive games. In order to give a comprehensive account of social norms, though, RC theory needs to be substantially extended. In particular, it seems to be impossible in principle to fully understand the concept of normativity and the motivating power of norms within a traditional, pure RC framework.

2013, Lahno, Bernd

2011, Kliemt, Hartmut, Lahno, Bernd

2014-12-01, Lahno, Bernd

The majority rule has caught much attention in recent debate about the aggregation of judgments. But its role in finding the truth is limited. A majority of expert judgments is not necessarily authoritative, even if all experts are equally competent, if they make their judgments independently of each other, and if all the judgments are based on the same source of (good) evidence. In this paper I demonstrate this limitation by presenting a simple counterexample and a related general result. I pave the way for this argument by introducing a Bayesian model of evidence and expert judgment in order to give a precise account of the basic problem.

2012-01-01, Lahno, Bernd

Communication is an inherently strategic matter. This paper introduces simple game theoretic models of information transmission to identify different forms of uncertainty which may pose a problem of trust in testimony. Strategic analysis suggests discriminating between trust in integrity, trust in competence, trust in (the will to invest) effort and trust in honesty. Whereas uncertainty about the sender's honesty or integrity may directly influence a rational receiver's readiness to rely on sender's statements, neither uncertainty about the competence of a sender nor uncertainty about his willingness to invest effort has any direct impact on rational reliance on its own. In this regard, trust in honesty and trust in integrity appear to be more basic than trust in competence or effort.

2010, Lahno, Bernd