This chapter highlights an important but neglected type of evidence for Christianity: the content of the Christian revelatory claim. This content consists, at its core, of scriptures and definitive statements of doctrine; these are structured, vivified, and interpreted through various media. Though evidence of this sort is neglected by natural theologians, it has substantial evidential value in the minds of ordinary believers, underwriting both God’s existence and Christianity itself. The chapter offers beginning defenses of three theses: (1) The content of a revelatory claim may provide evidence enabling an inquirer to assent simultaneously to the revelatory claim and the embedded proposition that God exists; (2) Aquinas’s systematic unfolding of Christian revelatory content can enhance the plausibility, both for agnostic inquirers and for believers, of the claim the content was revealed; and (3) An argument from revelatory content can reasonably persuade agnostic inquirers that assent to theism and Christianity is personally obligatory.

The chapter reviews the essentials of Seneca’s positions in moral psychology as compared to those of earlier Stoics whose works he might have studied. On the material nature of the mind (or soul); on the mechanisms of thought, belief, and action; and on the nature and management of the emotions, Seneca’s views are consonant with those of his Stoic predecessors; however, his knowledge of the system is not necessarily complete, and his emphases are sometimes different. Thus, he shows some awareness of earlier discussions of phantasia (impressions) but does not explore the topic deeply; on the other hand, he gives assent and impulse the same kind of significance in ethics as Chrysippus had. Contrary to some earlier studies, this chapter does not find Seneca to be innovative as concerns volition (voluntas) or the will. Likewise, his analysis of the emotions and of involuntary emotional response finds parallel in earlier texts. For the good emotions (eupatheiai) of the Stoic sage, he seems to know only that part of the analysis that concerns joy, to which he assigns an important role in his own ethics.

The chapter traces statements on Cicero’s philosophical position from his earliest treatise (on rhetorical theory) to the philosophical works of the 40s bce, while attending to the literary form of Cicero’s oeuvre. It argues that Cicero’s stance is stable over time, that it exhibits a number of features that would warrant calling it mitigated skepticism, but that, given the way different Academic positions are conceptualized in Cicero’s texts, notably the Academica, his position is formally one of radical skepticism. The chapter tries to identify features of the evidence from Cicero which are distinctive compared to other texts (e.g. by Sextus Empiricus and Numenius), notably an unusual wealth of comments on the practice of Academic skepticism (i.e. on what being an Academic skeptic was like, at least on Cicero’s construal and to what extent it was compatible with being a fully functioning Roman of a certain social class and with a particular occupation).

Unlike privacy law discourse, which has primarily explored questions related to others’ knowledge, access, and use of information about us, commercial law’s central focus has been on issues related to trade involving persons, merchants, and entities. In the commercial law context, questions about knowledge and information are primarily connected to the exchange and disclosure of information needed to facilitate transactions between parties.1 This distinct historical focus has likely contributed to commercial law’s failure to adequately account for and address privacy, security, and digital domination harms. In some cases, commercial law also defers to corporate commercial practices as well.

This chapter discusses Aquinas’s account of the freedom of the judgment of choice. It claims that, on his view, this judgment is free because it is up to us whether or not we assent to its propositional content, which Aquinas takes to be a means-end-relating precept. It examines what explains our ability to freely assent to a precept. It argues that this is explained by the logical structure of the precept that the agent assents to. In particular, the precept in question must fail to establish a necessary relation between a given means and the ultimate end. A precept fails to do this if it (1) relates an expedient, but non-necessary means to a non-ultimate end, or (2) a necessary means to a non-ultimate end, or (3) an expedient, but non-necessary means to the ultimate end. It also argues that the logical structure of the precept alone is not enough to guarantee our freedom of assent. An agent must also understand that a precept fails to establish a necessary relation between a means and the ultimate end in order to freely assent to it. To grasp this structure, the agent has to engage in a kind of higher-order judgment.

Kant’s moral argument for faith in God aims not at converting unbelievers but at offering those who believe a reason for principled assent to the existence of God on moral grounds. It is based on a rational connection between purposive action and assent that applies not only to religious belief but to many other purposes as well, such as what Royce called “loyalty to a lost cause.” The argument in the Critique of Pure Reason differs significantly from its presentation in later works. Kantian moral faith is in tension with Cliffordian evidentialism but not inconsistent with it, and the two together constitute the doxastic virtue lying between the twin vices of uncritical credulity and stubborn incredulity; together they enable us to avoid the complacencies of both despairing resignation and overconfidence.