1. competence,

Competence is a standardized requirement for an individual to properly perform a specific job.

It encompasses a combination of knowledge, skills and behavior utilised to improve performance.

More generally, competence is the state or quality of being adequately or well qualified, having the ability to perform a specific role.


2. trustworthiness

When considering whether someone, or an institution, is trustworthy or not we make assessments of them/it along three main dimensions:

(a) ability or competence (can they carry out the functions we expect of them effectively?),

(b) benevolence (do they have benign motives toward us, in their dealings with us?)

(c) integrity

(do they adhere ot a set of moral principles we find acceptable,

such as honesty,

fair treatment,

and a consistency between their 'talk' and their 'actions').

The person or entity is trustworthy if these three assessments exceed a threshold beyond which we feel we can have

"confident positive expectations"

about their future behavior, or conduct, toward us.

(i) 'Confidence' is important here to distinguish 'trust' from mere hopefulness, blind faith, or gullibility;

(ii) 'positive' is important to distinguish trust from distrust (which is "confident negative expectations"),

(iii) 'expectations' is important to distinguish trust from certainty

(there will always be an element of risk in deciding that someone is trustworthy,

which is why the degree of confidence is important).

It makes sense to base these assessments, therefore, on

tangible evidence such as

what happened during prior interactions with the trustee: were they

competent,

benevolent or benign, and

honest?

Sometimes evidence is not available, and so we must rely on alternative cues, such as reputational effects, and the presence of constraining mechanisms (regulations, sanctions, incentives, etc) that mean we can judge the person or entity to be trustworthy by proxy.

For example, we may have no direct evidence of the trustworthiness of the surgeon who operates on us at hospital, but we can expect, NOT know,

that (s)he is likely to be qualified (i.e. have ability),

has trained to become a doctor to improve people's health (i.e. be benevolent)

and that it is difficult, but not impossible, to be a dishonest or corrupt doctor (i.e. have integrity).

Sometimes, though rarely, not even these cues are available, in which case we are left with our own pre-disposition to trusting others.

This can range from an all-consuming paranoia about others' motives and disadain for their abilities, through to a near-unquesitoning faith in the goodness of strangers.

Somewhere between the two sit most people, making judgements based on evidence:

acting as "intuitive auditors" of people's conduct (both specific persons and strangers).


3. dynamism.

Dynamism is term of philosophy and science coined by Gottfried Leibniz (1646—1716) and developed into a full system of cosmology.

The Dynamism idea in metaphysical cosmology explains the material world in terms of active, pointlike forces, with no extension but with action at a distance.

Dynamism describes that what exists are simple elements, or for Leibniz, monads, and groups of elements which have only the essence of forces.

It was developed as a reaction against the passive view of matter in philisophical mechanism.

Interaction between elements takes place without contact, through modes or even harmonics of motion, yielding all phenomena in the Universe.