Children learn a great deal from other people, including history, science and religion, as well as language itself. Although our informants are usually well-intentioned, they can be wrong, and sometimes people deceive deliberately. As soon as children can learn from what others tell them, they need to be able to evaluate the likely truth of such testimony. This book is the first of its kind to provide an overview of the field of testimony research, summarizing and discussing the latest findings into how children make such evaluations – when do they trust what people tell them, and when are they skeptical? The nine chapters are organized according to the extent to which testimony is necessary for children to learn the matter in question – from cases where children are entirely dependent on the testimony of others, to cases where testimony is merely a convenient way of learning. Chapters also consider situations where reliance on testimony can lead a child astray, and the need for children to learn to be vigilant to deception, to ask questions appropriately, and to evaluate what they are told. With an international range of contributors, and two concluding commentaries which integrate the findings within a broader perspective of research on child development, the book provides a thorough overview of this emerging sub-field. Trust and Skepticism will be essential reading for researchers, academic teachers and advanced students working in the areas of cognitive development and language development, and will also be of great interest to educationists concerned with nursery and primary education.

What to Say, How to Say It, Why It Matters If you're trying to sell something-whether it's a product, a service, or an idea-you are facing a new era of consumers who listen less and question more. The Language of Trust is for anyone who must sell ideas, products, services, or even themselves to a public that just doesn't want to hear it. Based on pioneering consumer research, The Language of Trust shows you how to regain the confidence of your clients and customers and communicate with them on their terms. You'll learn what words to use, what words to lose, and how to structure your message to overcome skepticism and build and keep the trust of your audience.

Why the social character of scientific knowledge makes it trustworthy Are doctors right when they tell us vaccines are safe? Should we take climate experts at their word when they warn us about the perils of global warming? Why should we trust science when so many of our political leaders don't? Naomi Oreskes offers a bold and compelling defense of science, revealing why the social character of scientific knowledge is its greatest strength—and the greatest reason we can trust it. Tracing the history and philosophy of science from the late nineteenth century to today, this timely and provocative book features a new preface by Oreskes and critical responses by climate experts Ottmar Edenhofer and Martin Kowarsch, political scientist Jon Krosnick, philosopher of science Marc Lange, and science historian Susan Lindee, as well as a foreword by political theorist Stephen Macedo.

"Anybody who cares about the people who will shape our future should read this book!" --A. Scott Henderson, PhD, Professor of Education, Furman University Parenting in today's society is complex. Dr. Saul knows that parenting requires instruction and constant tinkering as we learn what we did right and what we need to improve. Conscious Parenting: Using the Parental Awareness Threshold provides a basic framework, a map, for such a process. Using real-life vignettes from infancy through adolescence that are drawn from a lifetime of work with children and parents, Dr. Saul seeks to give parents the learned ability to understand their interactions with their children and to change their responses to maximize positive results and minimize negative results. Parents will find numerous examples and suggestions on ways to enhance those opportunities at all ages. Brief and right to the point, Conscious Parenting: Using the Parental Awareness Threshold can be referred to again and again, day in and day out.

Gives an extended argument for epistemic authority from the implications of reflective self-consciousness. Epistemic authority is compatible with autonomy, but epistemic self-reliance is incoherent. The book argues that epistemic and emotional self-trust are rational and inescapable, that consistent self-trust commits us to trust in others, and that among those we are committed to trusting are some whom we ought to treat as epistemic authorities, modelled on the well-known principles of authority of Joseph Raz. Some of these authorities can be in the moral and religious domains. The book investigates the way the problem of disagreement between communities or between the self and others is a conflict within self-trust, and argue against communal self-reliance on the same grounds as the book uses in arguing against individual self-reliance. The book explains how any change in belief is justified--by the conscientious judgment that the change will survive future conscientious self-reflection. The book concludes with an account of autonomy. -- Información de la editorial.

All over Europe and the World communication scientists reflect questions on trust in journalism and media. A large scale of analysis and research gives new perspectives of reasons, impacts and consequences of trust or mistrust in media and journalism. This anthology provides an overview on empirical research to trust in media and journalism, new perspectives, methodological approaches and current results, discussed among communication scientists at European and international scientific conferences.

We know a lot about the world and our place in it. We have come to this knowledge in a variety of ways. And one central way that we, both as individuals and as a society, have come to know what we do is through communication with others. Much of what we know, we know on the basis of testimony. In Knowledge on Trust, Paul Faulkner presents an epistemological theory of testimony, or a theory that explains how it is that we acquire knowledge and warranted belief from testimony. The key questions addressed in this book are: what makes it reasonable to accept a piece of testimony? And what warrants belief formed on this testimonial basis? Faulkner argues that existing theories of testimony largely fail because they do not recognise how issues of practical rationality motivate the first question, and this is what makes testimony distinctive as a source of knowledge. At the heart of the theory this book presents is the idea that trust is central to answering these two questions. An attitude of trust can make it reasonable to depend on another's testimony, but what warrants testimonial belief is not trust but the body of evidence the testimony originates from. Testimonial knowledge and testimonially warranted belief are formed on trust. Faulkner goes on to argue that our having a way of life wherein testimony can provide such a source of knowledge and warrant is dependent upon a society in which a certain kind of trust is possible.

Provides a sustained interpretation of Part 4 of Book 1 of Hume's Treatise, arguing that Hume uses our reactions to the sceptical arguments as evidence in favor of his model of the mind.

To what degree should we rely on our own resources and methods to form opinions about important matters? To what degree should we depend on various authorities, such as a recognized expert or a social tradition? In this provocative account of intellectual trust and authority, Richard Foley argues that it can be reasonable to have intellectual trust in oneself even though it is not possible to provide a defence of the reliability of one's faculties, methods and opinions that does not beg the question. Moreover, he shows how this account of intellectual self-trust can be used to understand the degree to which it is reasonable to rely on alternative authorities. This book will be of interest to advanced students and professionals working in the fields of philosophy and the social sciences as well as anyone looking for a unified account of the issues at the centre of intellectual trust.

Conventional wisdom holds that trust is essential for cooperation between individuals and institutions—such as community organizations, banks, and local governments. Not necessarily so, according to editors Karen Cook, Margaret Levi, and Russell Hardin. Cooperation thrives under a variety of circum-stances. Whom Can We Trust? examines the conditions that promote or constrain trust and advances our understanding of how cooperation really works. From interpersonal and intergroup relations to large-scale organizations, Whom Can We Trust? uses empirical research to show that the need for trust and trustworthiness as prerequisites to cooperation varies widely. Part I addresses the sources of group-based trust. One chapter focuses on the assumption—versus the reality—of trust among coethnics in Uganda. Another examines the effects of social-network position on trust and trustworthiness in urban Ghana and rural Kenya. And a third demonstrates how cooperation evolves in groups where reciprocity is the social norm. Part II asks whether there is a causal relationship between institutions and feelings of trust in individuals. What does—and doesn't—promote trust between doctors and patients in a managed-care setting? How do poverty and mistrust figure into the relations between inner city residents and their local leaders? Part III reveals how institutions and networks create environments for trust and cooperation. Chapters in this section look at trust as credit-worthiness and the history of borrowing and lending in the Anglo-American commercial world; the influence of the perceived legitimacy of local courts in the Philippines on the trust relations between citizens and the government; and the key role of skepticism, not necessarily trust, in a well-developed democratic society. Whom Can We Trust? unravels the intertwined functions of trust and cooperation in diverse cultural, economic, and social settings. The book provides a bold new way of thinking about how trust develops, the real limitations of trust, and when trust may not even be necessary for forging cooperation. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust