Trust and Fiduciary Power

This paper analyzes an aspect of trust relatively less explored by political philosophers, namely, the legal conception of trust. As I explain in Sect. 1, the legal conception of trust refers to trust as a moral and/or legal obligation of power. It is distinct from trust understood as confidence and from trustworthiness; nonetheless, I offer that trust as confidence is constitutive of trust as obligation. In Sect. 2, I briefly recount the origin of the trust and the development of the legal metaphor of trust in 17th century England, most notably in the work of John Locke. In Sect. 3, I turn to examining the contemporary fiduciary political theory proposed by Evan Fox-Decent, which is a literalist transposition of private fiduciary principle to the public sphere. One notable aspect of Fox-Decent’s theory is its attempt to justify the State’s legitimacy on the basis of its fiduciary relationship with its subjects. Fox-Decent thus offers an alternative to all consent-based theories, primarily contesting A. John Simmons’s voluntarism. As I explain in Sect. 4, fiduciary political theory is based on a “presumption of trust” and appeals to Annette Baier’s conception of an “unconscious, automatic” trust in order to explain the fiduciary relation between the individual and the irresistible administrative power of the State. In Sect. 5, I present the main objections to fiduciary political theory and explore the compatibility of the fiduciary principle with Simmons’s voluntarism

Understanding particle dynamics in erosion testers: a review of influences of particle movement on erosion test conditions

An understanding of particle dynamics is important when determining material erosive wear in any erosion tester, because particle impact conditions are primarily influenced by particle acceleration. Abetter understanding of particle dynamics in the testers will aid the control of erosion test conditions and therefore improve the accuracy of measurement. In this paper, particle dynamics in the two most popular erosion testers, the centrifugal erosion tester and the gas-blast erosion tester, has been discussed in detail. Mechanisms of particle acceleration in the two types of testerswere explored and computational models of particle dynamics were described briefly. A review of the experimental determination of important characteristics of particle dynamics (such as particle velocity, particle trajectory, particle dispersion and particle rotation) showed how they influenced particle movement and therefore the particle impact conditions. In addition, comparison of the particle dynamics in the two types of erosion testers showed that differences of particle acceleration may lead to significantly different results at identical pre-set test conditions. It may be concluded that it is not possible to directly compare the results obtained in different types of erosion testers even under notionally identical test conditions