The crisis of trust in the digital society: a conceptual dimension of the problem

Abstract

The relevance of the chosen problem lies in the study of the phenomenon of the crisis of trust in modern society of the 21st century; in the need to analyze the process of transformation of the phenomenon of trust under the influence of digital technologies and algorithmic mediation of social relations; in the need to develop the interdisciplinary nature of the problem, combining existential phenomenology, social philosophy and philosophy of technology.

The purpose of the study is to outline the conceptual contours of the problem of the crisis of trust in modern society. To achieve the goal, the following tasks were solved: an existential-phenomenological analysis of the transformation of trust in a digital society was carried out; the thesis was substantiated that the modern crisis of trust is not just a quantitative decrease in trust in social institutions, but a qualitative erosion of existential trust, the destruction of the attitude of openness to the Other.

Research results. As a result of the research, trust was considered as an existential aspect of human existence, rooted in the intersubjective relations I–Thou (M. Buber), in the feeling of security (O. F. Bolnov) and in the communicative openness of existence (K. Jaspers). It is shown that the systemic distinction between “trust” and “confidence” (N. Luhmann) acquires new sharpness in the digital society, where algorithms replace personal contact with instrumental calculation. The transition from the crisis of trust of the Modern era (A. Seligman) to a qualitatively new form is analyzed – the erosion of existential trust, in which not only confidence in social institutions is destroyed, but also the very ability of the subject to a personal attitude towards the Other. It is substantiated that overcoming this crisis requires the restoration of communicative rationality (Y. Habermas) and the actualization of the philosophy of hope (E. Bloch) as an ontological project of openness to the future. The article is interdisciplinary in nature, combining existential phenomenology, social philosophy and philosophy of technology.

Conclusions. The generalization of scientific approaches and theoretical concepts makes it possible to come to the following conclusions. The analysis allows us to formulate several basic propositions. Thus, trust, as noted by thinkers of the 20th century, is an existential of human existence, and not just a social mechanism or psychological attitude. From the point of view of philosophical anthropology, it constitutes the basic security of being-in-the-world, enables a dialogical encounter with the Other and is a condition for existential communication. The digital society gives rise to a qualitatively new form of a crisis of trust - this is the erosion of existential trust, which differs from the institutional crisis of the Modern era. Algorithmic mediation systematically replaces the “I–Thou” relation with the “I–It” relation, which creates “trust without a subject” and introduces ontological opacity into the structure of social relations of modern society.

Thus, overcoming the erosion of existential trust requires not only institutional reforms based on the transparency of algorithms, the regulation of artificial intelligence, but also the philosophical restoration of the conditions for personal intersubjectivity, communicative rationality, the ontology of hope, and the practices of “I–Thou” dialogue. The key resource for countering algorithmic determinism is the philosophy of hope, since it is it that affirms the ontological openness of the future and the subjectivity of man as an agent of the new as opposed to the reduction of the subject to the object of predictive modeling.

Thus, the outlined contours of the problem combine existential phenomenology, social philosophy, and philosophy of technology in a joint project of understanding trust as a fundamental condition of human coexistence, a condition that requires protection and conscious reproduction in the age of artificial intelligence, which threatens the disappearance of trust.