How does trust relate to faith? We do not know of a theory-neutral way to answer our question. So, we begin with what we regard as a plausible theory of faith according to which, in slogan form, faith is resilient reliance. Next, we turn to contemporary theories of trust. They are not of one voice. Still, we can use them to indicate ways in which trust and faith might both differ from and resemble each other. This is what we do. Along the way, we evaluate substantive issues related to these possible differences and similarities.

Does God trust human persons? Very little in philosophy of religion has been written about God's trust, which seems striking for two joint considerations. First, many of the Abrahamic faith traditions posit that union and close personal relationship with God is the telos of human life. Second, trust seems to be an essential element in ideal, close relationships between persons. While there is much in the faith literature that emphasizes the role of trust on the human side of the divine–human relationship, there is very little on divine trust. To fill this lacuna, this article addresses the conceptual issue of how divine trust could be understood within the Abrahamic faith traditions (particularly in Christianity and Judaism). I begin by examining whether an account of divine trust can be developed alongside divine attributes like divine foreknowledge. After identifying some plausible conditions of trust within the philosophical literature, I present a couple of trust scenarios as a means of demonstrating that divine trust is not only conceptually plausible (i.e. compatible with divine foreknowledge), but that divine trust is best construed as a particular trust type – therapeutic trust. That is, I argue that divine trust aims at inspiring humanity's trustworthiness.

For decades, the research community called for streamlined Institutional Review Board (IRB) review processes for multisite studies. Department of Health and Human Services and National Institutes of Health (NIH) recognized this need and implemented single IRB (sIRB) of record mandates. However, announcing mandates without sufficient operational guidance and tools is insufficient to foster the desired change. Nearly 4 years into implementation of the NIH’s sIRB mandate, operational challenges remain. Fortunately, NIH supports a web-based sIRB platform, the IRB Reliance Exchange (IREx), to facilitate sIRB communication and documentation. IREx has received continuous NIH funding supporting its evolution since 2011 and is now used by over 5,000 Human Research Protection Program and research personnel, 35 sIRBs, and 415 participating sites to operationalize sIRB review and approval on over 400 studies. IREx supports over 2300 reliance relationships with an average of 7 sites per study. The platform is continually used by sIRBs and relying sites, providing a valuable centralized portal for promoting a harmonized sIRB review process. IREx can promote transparency, standardize practice, minimize workflow variation, and mitigate the need for sIRBs to implement significant technical changes to their local electronic systems. IREx has proven to be nimble and adaptable with practice and policy changes over the past decade, as evidenced by continually increasing platform utilization.

What are faith and faithfulness, and how are they related? We consider two views that express very different answers to these questions. On our view, faith and faithfulness are distinct and yet complement each other. Faith is resilient reliance and faithfulness is resilient reliability, both of which involve conative and/or affective elements. In contrast, while Jonathan Kvanvig also holds that faith involves conative and/or affective elements, he identifies faith with a disposition to act in service of an ideal in the face of difficulty. However, this view of faith leads to some puzzling claims about how faith relates to faithfulness. We evaluate several claims suggested by what Kvanvig says, arguing both that his view loses sight of the distinctness of faith and faithfulness and that the inferences he wants to draw from faithfulness or faithful behaviour to faith are unjustified. Instead, we aim to show how the insights he calls to our attention can be better accommodated and explained by a more comprehensive, unified theory of faith and faithfulness and their relations.

In this article I attempt to provide a conceptual framework for thinking about reliance in a systematic way. I argue that reliance is a cognitive attitude that has a tighter connection to the guidance of our thought and action than ordinary belief does. My main thesis is that reliance has a ‘constitutive aim’: namely, it aims at guiding our thought and action in a way that is sensible from the standpoint of practical or theoretical ends. This helps explain why reliance is, in contrast to belief, typically formed and revised in response to pragmatic considerations.

This article explores certain key features of the tort of deceit which, if looked at only superficially, are apt to mislead as to the gist, nature, and province of this tort. In particular, the article addresses three main issues. The first is the way in which the reliance test used in this tort comes apart from a simple (more familiar) test of causation, and why this has important theoretical ramifications. Secondly, the article seeks to reveal the true gist and province of this tort. In this regard, it is argued that it is a mistake – made by many – to suppose that the infliction of economic loss forms the gist of deceit. Instead, it is suggested that the tort is better seen as being rights-based and that, consequently, it ought not to be seen as a specifically economic tort, but rather as one which protects the victim's decision-making autonomy. Lastly, the article unearths the juristic explanation for the curious fact that, in the tort of deceit, the operation of the contributory negligence defence is excluded while the mitigation principle is applied openly. (The incoherence here inheres in the fact that both these principles are animated by the self-same concern: a desire to exclude the recovery of losses that are attributable to an unreasonable lack of self-regard on the part of the claimant.) The juristic explanation I unearth is then subjected to critical analysis in the course of which I suggest that we ought not to confuse explanation with justification. I conclude that there is no sound reason of principle to exclude the operation of the contributory negligence defence in this tort.

This article argues that some familiar principles, like the protection of reasonable expectations or fair play, can justify the normative force and binding character of some types of customary international practices. We have no reason to think that any one of those principles can justify all customary practices that are typically taken to have such force. Accordingly, instead of proposing a unifying justification for all customary international law-making, I will suggest that the impact of past international practices on the normative situation of international agents is determined not by one master principle, but by a range of different normative principles, each applicable in different situations. If this is correct, i.e., if the principles that give customary practices their normative force vary depending on the kind of principle governing the practical problem that those practices are meant to respond to, both the critique and the defence of customary law-making must proceed on what I will call a ‘disaggregative’ basis.