ABSTRACT
Epistemic trust helps secure knowledge, and so does intellectual humility. They do so independently; but they can also support each other, and this chapter discusses how. Epistemic trust, at least the form discussed here, is trust in oneself or another person for knowledge. It involves a norm-governed relationship with positive affective and volitional attitudes, and is effective at securing knowledge when directed toward a trustworthy person. Intellectual humility is a character virtue that involves caring about epistemic ends and promotes accurate insight into those of one’s own cognitive, affective, and volitional faculties that are relevant to acquiring knowledge. Intellectual humility, I argue, promotes effective epistemic trust in oneself and in others. It promotes effective epistemic self-trust by yielding insight into one’s own epistemic trustworthiness, and by ensuring that one is motivated to epistemically self-improve if necessary. It promotes effective epistemic trust in others, at least in the context of testimony, by helping a hearer assess whether he needs outside epistemic assistance, and how apt he is at selecting trustworthy testifiers; and by helping a speaker be epistemically trustworthy.
