This overview chapter introduces philosophical tools that can be used to aid managers in making decisions in situations which go beyond simple cost/benefit analyses. Value terms such as right, wrong, fair, justice, beneficence, responsibility, eco-consciousness, and discrimination are discussed and illustrated using real-world examples. Starting with the world’s worst industrial disaster in Bhopal, India and the contemporary aftermath, it examines the complexities such situations present and assesses the usefulness of creating a theoretical framework that can lead to principled and defensible policies and actions. The challenges of exclusive self-interest and ethical relativism are examined, where morality simply echoes personal preference. Immediate profit maximization is compared to a more subtle long-term and more encompassing stakeholder approach. Reliance on the law is shown to be an insufficient ethical guide, while principle-based approaches that can be applied across a wide range of cases are more successful in working out what we should do in novel and difficult situations.

Recent advancements in psychology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience have shown the human pursuit of knowledge to be an essential aspect of human cognition. It drives intellectual development, is integral to social interactions, and is crucial for learning, decision-making, and goal-directed behavior. Information appears to be valuable in and of itself, even when it has no apparent use, whereas at other times, instrumental information is actively and paradoxically avoided. With this complex role, a wide range of neural mechanisms can be deployed to assign value to information and drive decisions to seek (or avoid) information. Evidence points toward key roles for the mesolimbic system and the prefrontal cortex in these processes. Specifically, two different networks appear to be involved in the implementation of information-seeking behaviors. One network, overlapping with areas involved in processing primary and monetary rewards, appears to drive a general preference for information, as well as valence-dependent information-seeking. The other network, independent of reward processing, is recruited when information is acquired to reduce uncertainty. In this chapter, we review some of the most recent discoveries in the field to provide an overview of the neural basis of information-seeking.

In this chapter we discuss the psychological function of “the drive for sense-making,” or our innate desire to make sense of the world. We start by discussing why sense-making generates a drive, similar to those associated with the primary reinforcers of food, water, sleep, sex, shelter, and air. In our account, the drive for sense-making fills a critical gap in purely goal-oriented cognition by motivating us to continue investing in knowledge even when we cannot foresee exactly how it will benefit us. We then examine three different factors that shape the particular form sense-making takes: (1) the practical utility of holding accurate beliefs for attaining concrete goals, (2) the motivational significance of some beliefs, which generates a desire to make sense of the world in a way that feels good, and (3) the impact of computational limitations on the sense-making process, especially our limited ability to explicitly predict what information will turn out to be useful. Finally, we turn our attention to how these factors help to explain aberrant sense-making phenomena such as conspiracy theories, science denial, and political polarization.

Chapter 7 deals with the relation between the case of the nominal (or adjectival) predicate and semantics. First, we consider instrumental predicates in such Slavic languages as Russian and Polish (and the instrumental/nominative alternation), essive predicates in Uralic languages and translative case in Finnish. This contrast has been linked to the distinction between stage-level and individual-level predicates, but also to additional semantic oppositions, e.g. between predicational and identity readings of predicate nominal sentences. Further, we consider the approach according to which this case alternation results from the existence of two types of small clauses, one of which is deficient in some sense. The chapter then turns to the essive case in Uralic languages. Like the Slavic predicate instrumental, it is associated with stage-level readings and with additional types of relativization, e.g. relativization to a facet/role of the argument or to a specific possible world. Finally, translative predicates are investigated. These predicates are strongly associated with the notion of change, but their compatibility with such verbs as jäädä ‘remain’ and jättää ‘leave’ challenges this link. An alternative analysis is described, formulated within a force-theoretic framework. Under this analysis, a translative predicate signals force exertion, rather than change.

The social organization of capitalism in the twenty-first-century is radically different from in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Scholars from multiple disciplines and theoretical perspectives present this historical transition as a shift from a manufacturing to a finance-based economy. Although scholars from several disciplines examine dimensions of the transition to financialization, they tend to focus on outcomes and give limited attention to the political process of enacting policies and laws that made this transition possible. As a result, the transition to financialization is often assumed to be the outcome of an inevitable historical process moving toward economic equilibrium or the actions of an autonomous state. In contrast, conflict perspectives in political sociology focus on process and demonstrate how the emergent social structure is an outcome of conflict among different power holders.

One of the starting assumptions of this book is that the decline of trust in medicine is a negative development and a reason for concern. This claim is only tenable if it can be demonstrated that trust has an intrinsic value. Despite the fact that there is no convincing empirical evidence for the usefulness of trust in the sense of a positive patient welfare outcome, the authors claim that trust has an instrumental value: (1) because it helps patients cope with uncertainty and risk and reduces the transaction costs caused by the inherent risk, (2) because it reduces uncertainty by inducing trustworthiness in physicians, and (3) because it reduces complexity. Moreover, because neither regulations and controls (which are often instituted to compensate for the decline of trust) nor contracts can compensate for the loss of trust or replace trust in the patient–physician relationship, trust is, in the final analysis, inevitable.