Abstract
It is now popular to think that promissory obligation is grounded in an invitation to trust. I object that there are important differences between invitations and promises; appealing to trust faces one of the main problems alleged to face appealing to expectations; and whatever puzzles afflict promissory obligation afflict the obligation not to renege on one’s invitations.
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Notes
I try to defend the expectation view in Shaver (forthcoming).
Encarnacion (2014, p. 120) gives this as an objection to expectation views; I have substituted “trust you” for “form expectations”.
A referee noted that one might hold that invitations misfire only when they invite what is (in some sense) impossible. Since one might hold that promises to do the impossible also create no obligation, there would be no problem for the invitation to trust view. I suspect that we think invitations misfire in wider circumstances than impossibility. But more importantly, if you promise me to do something possible, such as cut my lawn, and I accept, that it may be impossible for me to trust you does not take away your obligation to cut my lawn.
I am not denying that, where I (in some sense) can trust or expect, I can accept an invitation to trust, and so produce a promissory obligation, without in fact trusting or expecting. My concern is cases where I cannot trust or expect. (My concern has been that the invitation misfires, but the concern might also be applied to whether I can accept. Southwood and Friedrich suggest that if I do not trust you “at all”, I cannot accept, and so again there is no promissory obligation (Southwood and Friedrich 2009, p. 279n22).)
For the suggestion, see Friedrich and Southwood (2011, p. 292n16). They note both Jones and Holton.
Southwood and Friedrich take the trust involved in promises to be trust in one’s agency rather than in one’s epistemic abilities. (They are worried that, just as expectation views face the objection that when I make a claim about what I will do, I produce expectations without producing a promissory obligation, invitation views face the objection that when I make a claim about what I will do, I invite trust without producing a promissory obligation. Their idea is that an invitation to trust my epistemic abilities is not the invitation relevant to promises (Friedrich and Southwood 2011, pp. 288–289).) This opens the possibility that if I cannot trust your agency, but do trust your epistemic ability, your invitation again misfires even though I expect you to do what you have promised.
Again, Southwood and Friedrich agree: (2009, p. 277).
Hence Darwall treats invitations and promises on a par, rather than using one to explain the other (2011, pp. 270, 273). (He thinks promises and invitations differ in that the obligation of the promisor is not conditional on any past action, whereas the obligation of the invited (to come to a wedding, say) is conditional on the past invitation. This seems to overlook the obligation of the inviter (to host the wedding), which is also not conditional on any past action).
By a “gratuitous” promise, Pink means a promise “made not as part of an exchange but, it seems, for nothing in return” (Pink 2009, p. 406).
This is less clear for the case of a promise to a friend. One might think that the obligation is very stringent, even if what is promised to the friend is trivial. But if so, this may be because breaking the promise is bad not, mainly, because the promised good fails to appear, but because it endangers the good of the friendship itself.
As a referee rightly noted, this leaves open the possibility that there are other explanations of why accepted invitations to trust create obligations to follow through—explanations that could be applied to promises. Perhaps if I accept an invitation to trust you, I become vulnerable to you, and you have an obligation not to take advantage of this vulnerability. One worry is that the explanatory obligation may not fit all cases of promissory obligation. I might accept your promise, but take steps to make myself invulnerable to your non-performance. That I have taken these steps does not relieve you of your promissory obligation.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Joyce Jenkins, Jeff Verman, Sandy Vettese, an anonymous referee, and to members of my 2017 and 2019 seminars on promising, especially R. J. Leland and Sarah Hannan.
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Shaver, R. Promises as invitations to trust. Philos Stud 177, 1515–1522 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01271-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01271-7