Earning Trust, Not Just Attention

What unites these various responses is the presence of trust and its kin. Richard Holton notes that there are characteristic normatively-laden attitudes which surround trust: ‘When you trust someone to do something, you rely on them to do it, and you regard that reliance in a certain way; you have a readiness to feel betrayal should it be disappointed, and gratitude should it be upheld’ (Holton 1994, p. 67). And, in aesthetic life, we are not simply surprised when an artist lets us down; we can feel betrayed. When somebody mistrusts our recommendations when we think we have earned their trust, we are hurt. When I discover some hidden perfect subtlety, buried deep in the innards of some labyrinthine novel, I feel gratitude that the author had trusted their audience enough to place it there. But the role of trust in art—in our relationships to artists, audiences, critics, and fellow appreciators—has been relatively under-explored, at least in philosophical aesthetics. Philosophers of art have focused their attentions on one very specific kind of trust: the sort involved in the acquisition of aesthetic knowledge via testimony. They have debated, at great length, whether and why there is really a problem with acquiring aesthetic judgment strictly through testimony. But there are many other kinds of aesthetic trust. Artists create subtle, complex works, trusting their audiences to discover those works’ more esoteric qualities. Audiences invest their time and energy in those works, trusting artists to have created with dedication and sincerity” (Nguyen, 2021).

I found this article by C. Thi Nguyen to be particularly interesting because of how it comments on the idea of trust and how factors of art can go beyond the art world and be used in other areas, such as finance. One of the major topics that is discussed in the article is the idea of aesthetic sincerity, how we are able to gain trust in a product or piece of work when it does more than just be performative. In order to fully gain the trust of the users, it is best to truly believe in the underlying intentions and values that are presented.

Applying this to the financial industry with online banking apps, we can create a trust structure within the digital system that provides the users with a clear intention. This article provides a useful insight into interpreting the relationship of trust between both sides of a product.

References:

Nguyen, C. T. (2021). Trust and sincerity in art. Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy, 8(2). https://doi.org/10.3998/ergo.1139

Ai was not used in this article