ABSTRACT
Self-trust comes in different sizes and shapes. One can have trust in one’s physical abilities, social skills, technical know-how, mathematical competencies, and soon. The most fundamental and encompassing kind of self-trust, however, is intellectual – an attitude of confidence in one’s ability to acquire information about the world, process it and arrive at accurate judgments on the basis of it. It is trust in the overall reliability of one’s intellectual efforts. Intellectual conflicts with others raise issues of self-trust analogous to those raised by empirical evidence about mistakes that people in general make. An interpersonal foundationalism of this sort is an intriguing possibility, but for purposes here the more fundamental point is that the materials for an adequate account of trust in the opinions of others are to be found in intellectual self-trust. Intellectual self-trust in this way radiates outward and creates an atmosphere of presumptive trust within which our mutually dependent intellectual lives take place.
