"Trust, but Verify!"

I said:

Perhaps the greatest diplomatic line of all time was uncorked by Ronald Reagan in his confrontation with Mikhail Gorbachev, he of the Evil Empire: "Trust, but verify!"

The Reagan riposte makes sense diplomatically but not semantically. If I trust you, I do not verify what you say or do. If you think otherwise, then you do not know  what 'trust' means.

Dmitri  replies:

This expression "Trust, but verify" is, among other things, a literal translation of a very popular saying in Russian. I am sure this is part of the reason Reagan used it.

 

And you can trust and still verify, because the person or institution you trust could be worth your overall trust, but err on occasion. In short, you can understand the meaning of trust and, at times, verify a trusted party at the same time.

I counter-respond:

I didn't know that the expression translates a popular Russian saying. Thank you for informing me of that.

On the point of disagreement, I persist in my contention.  Set aside institutions and other objects of  potential trust/distrust. Consider an interpersonal situation with exactly two persons. Suppose that person A says to person B: "I trust you with respect to your assertion that p, but I must verify that p." This was the situation between Reagan and Gorbachev. Gorbachev had made a specific assertion and Reagan said in effect that he trusted Gorbachev's veracity but but still had to make sure that what Gorbachev had asserted was true.

That is what I am claiming makes no semantic or conceptual sense. If I trust that what you are saying is true, then I cannot consistent with that trust verify what you are saying. I am making a simple point about the concept trust.  If you were to deny that there is a unitary concept trust expressible in different languages, then I would say that I am making a simple point about the meaning of  the word 'trust' in English. 

But if I deem a person overall trustworthy with respect to what he asserts, I may, consistent with that overall trust, tell the person that I need to verify a specific assertion that the person makes. So in the end I don't think Dmitri and I are in disagreement.

Various philosophical questions wait in the wings. What is the difference between the meaning or sense of a word and the concept the word expresses, assuming the word, on an occasion of use,  expresses a concept? What is a concept? Are concepts mind-dependent? Are they all general, or are some irreducibly singular?  Should we distinguish between the concept trust and the essence of trust where essences are mind-independent ideal or abstract objects that exist or subsist in splendid independence of minds and language? Is a linguistic prescriptivist committed to the existence of essences?   

Comments

[Dmitri]

Hi Bill

I agree that at the end we don't disagree much -- I did have in mind a point similar to your expression that "if I deem a person overall trustworthy with respect to what he asserts, I may, consistent with that overall trust, tell the person that I need to verify a specific assertion that the person makes."

I'll elaborate a bit further. I followed your narrowing down of "trust" to interpersonal situation. But I think it is relevant to remember for the specific Reagan-Gorbachev talks (and in many real life situations) that there are institutions behind individuals and their words - CIA, KGB and other military and political institutions provided a lot of content for the leaders (remember WMD in Iraq?). If Gorbachev said "Russia disarmed its atomic warheads as agreed" Reagan can believe that he is sincere, that he tells the truth as he knows and understands it, but Reagan is justified in not automatically believing that Gorbachev's statement reflects the truth on the ground. For example, Russian military intelligence could have interpreted the requirement to disarm warheads in a way that allows their re-armament in 15 minutes. Or the Soviet implementation of disarmament ignored a large stockpile stored in a Novosibirsk base (and it was concealed from Gorbachev).

Consider math: it took many months a large group of mathematicians to verify that Perelman's proof of Poincare's conjecture is true. They trusted him, but had to verify the proof. And the point is not peculiar to proofs and math. Looking for second opinions in medicine is also, at times, an illustration of "trust, but verify". Trustworthy B asserting that p may simply be not in a position to have a justified true belief that p -- p may be too complicated or too novel or too important to A to just trust B's assertion that it is true.

Just in case for the future: "Trust, but verify" is "Доверяй, но проверяй".