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not of the other notion of trust as a preliminary mental attitude and evaluation. Since this
crucial distinction is considered as a semantic ambiguity, rather than a valuable insight
into the internal articulation of this complex phenomenon, it is still lacking the theory of
the logical and causal relationships between these two aspects of trust: the mental attitude
and the decision to act upon it (see Chapter 2).
1.3 Intentional Action and Lack of Controllability:
Relying on What Is Beyond Our Power
In any intentional action
α
exerted upon the external world, there is one part of the causal
process triggered by the action and necessary for producing its intended and defining result
(the goal of the action) which is beyond the direct executive control of the agent of
α
. Whenever
an agent is performing
in the real world, there is always some external condition or process
P that must hold for the action to be successful, and the agent does not have direct executive
control over such an external feature - although he might have foreseen, exploited, or even
indirectly produced it. Therefore, the agent while performing
α
is objectively making reliance
on these processes in order to successfully realize the whole action and thus achieve his goal.
This objective reliance holds in both of the following cases:
α
when the agent is aware of this fact, models this act of reliance in his mind, and even
expects it;
when the agent does not understand the process, he is not aware of it, or at least he does not
explicitly represent it in his plan (although in principle he might be able to do so).
on some external
process, and counts upon such a process P , which does not depend completely and directly
on him, we can say that the reliance has become delegation . Delegation (Castelfranchi and
Falcone, 1998; Falcone and Castelfranchi, 2001) is a type of reliance, which is subjective
(i.e. aware) and decided by the agent; it consists of the act of 'counting upon' something or
someone, which is both a mental disposition and a practical conduct. 6
In contrast, reliance in general can be merely objective or also subjective, e.g. like in
delegation. When reliance is subjective, it can (like delegation) be correct or wrong and
illusory: e.g., the beliefs on which it is based may be false, it may not be true that that expected
process will be there or that it is responsible for the desired effect (like happens, for instance,
with a placebo).
It is worth noticing that, although the presence of P (due to Y ) is a necessary pro-
cess/condition for the achievement of X 's own goal, it is not sufficient. X has also to do
(or abstain from doing) something of his own , and thus he has to decide something : regardless
that X is counting on Y for P or not, he still has to take his own decision on whether to pursue
When the subject is aware of the reliance that he is making for his action
α
6 Here we use 'delegation' in its broader and non-organizational meaning: not only and not necessarily as dele-
gation of powers, or delegation of institutional/organizational tasks from one role to another (involving obligations,
permissions, and other deontic notions). Our use of delegation is more basic, although strictly related to the other: to
delegate here means to allocate, in my mind and with reference to my own plan, a given action that is part of the plan
to another agent , and therefore relying on the performance of such an action by the other agent for the successful
realization of my own plan.
 
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