Connectionist networks excel at extracting statistical regularities but have trouble extracting higher-order relationships. Clark & Thornton suggest that a solution to this problem might come from Elman, but I argue that the success of Elman's single recurrent network is illusory, and show that it cannot in fact represent abstract relationships that can be generalized to novel instances, undermining Clark & Thornton 's key arguments.

Two leaders in the field offer a compelling analysis of the current state of the art and reveal the steps we must take to achieve a truly robust artificial intelligence. Despite the hype surrounding AI, creating an intelligence that rivals or exceeds human levels is far more complicated than we have been led to believe. Professors Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis have spent their careers at the forefront of AI research and have witnessed some of the greatest milestones (...) in the field, but they argue that a computer beating a human in Jeopardy! does not signal that we are on the doorstep of fully autonomous cars or superintelligent machines. The achievements in the field thus far have occurred in closed systems with fixed sets of rules, and these approaches are too narrow to achieve genuine intelligence. The real world, in contrast, is wildly complex and open-ended. How can we bridge this gap? What will the consequences be when we do? Taking inspiration from the human mind, Marcus and Davis explain what we need to advance AI to the next level, and suggest that if we are wise along the way, we won't need to worry about a future of machine overlords. If we focus on endowing machines with common sense and deep understanding, rather than simply focusing on statistical analysis and gatherine ever larger collections of data, we will be able to create an AI we can trust--in our homes, our cars, and our doctors' offices. Rebooting AI provides a lucid, clear-eyed assessment of the current science and offers an inspiring vision of how a new generation of AI can make our lives better. (shrink)

1 Cognitive Architectures 2 Multilayer Perceptrons 3 Relations between Variables 4 Structured Representations 5 Individuals 6 Where does the Machinery of Symbol Manipulation Come From? 7 Conclusions.

Cognitive scientists must understand not just what the mind does, but how it does what it does. In this paper, I consider four aspects of cognitive architecture: how the mind develops, the extent to which it is or is not modular, the extent to which it is or is not optimal, and the extent to which it should or should not be considered a symbol‐manipulating device (as opposed to, say, an eliminative connectionist network). In each case, I argue that insights (...) from developmental and evolutionary biology can lead to substantive and important compromises in historically vexed debates. (shrink)

Is the human tendency toward musicality better thought of as the product of a specific, evolved instinct or an acquired skill? Developmental and evolutionary arguments are considered, along with issues of domain‐specificity. The article also considers the question of why humans might be consistently and intensely drawn to music if musicality is not in fact the product of a specifically evolved instinct.

Ethics consultation is a commonly applied mechanism to address clinical ethical dilemmas. However, there is little information on the viewpoints of health care providers towards the relevance of ethics committees and appropriate application of ethics consultation in clinical practice. We sought to use qualitative methodology to evaluate free-text responses to a case-based survey to identify thematically the views of health care professionals towards the role of ethics committees in resolving clinical ethical dilemmas. Using an iterative and reflexive model we identified (...) themes that health care providers support a role for ethics committees and hospitals in resolving clinical ethical dilemmas, that the role should be one of mediation, rather than prescription, but that ultimately legal exposure was dispositive compared to ethical theory. The identified theme of legal fears suggests that the mediation role of ethics committees is viewed by health care professionals primarily as a practical means to avoid more worrisome medico-legal conflict. (shrink)

We give an overview of some remarkable connections between symmetric informationally complete measurements and algebraic number theory, in particular, a connection with Hilbert’s 12th problem. The paper is meant to be intelligible to a physicist who has no prior knowledge of either Galois theory or algebraic number theory.

The apparent very close similarity between the learning of the past tense by Adam and the Plunkett and Marchman model is exaggerated by several misleading comparisons--including arbitrary, unexplained changes in how graphs were plotted. The model's development differs from Adam's in three important ways: Children show a U-shaped sequence of development which does not depend on abrupt changes in input; U-shaped development in the simulation occurs only after an abrupt change in training regimen. Children overregularize vowel-change verbs more than no-change (...) verbs; the simulation overregularizes vowel-change verbs less often than no-change verbs. Children, including Adam, overregularize more than they irregularize; the simulation overregularized less than it irregularized. Interestingly, the RM model--widely criticized as being inadequate--does somewhat better, correctly overregularizing vowel-change verbs more often than no-change verbs, and overregularizing more often than it irregularizes. Although Plunkett and Marchman's (1993) state of the art model incorporated hidden layers and back-propagation, used a more realistic phonological coding scheme, and explored a broader range of parameters than Rumelhart and McClelland's model, their results are farther from psychological reality. It is unknown whether any connectionist model can mimic a child's performance without resorting to unrealistic exogenous changes in the training or input, but it is clear that adding a hidden-layer and back-propagation does not ensure a solution. (shrink)

This chapter examines an apparent tension created by recent research on neurological development and genetics on the one hand and cognitive development on the other. It considers what it might mean for intrinsic signals to guide the initial establishment of functional architecture. It argues that an understanding of the mechanisms by which the body develops can inform our understanding of the mechanisms by which the brain develops. It cites the view of developmental neurobiologists Fukuchi-Shimogori and Grove, that the patterning of (...) the part of the brain responsible for our higher functions is coordinated by the same basic mechanisms and signaling protein families used to generate patterning in other embryonic organs. Thus, what's good enough for the body, is good enough for the brain. (shrink)

The mere fact that a particular aspect of mind could offer an adaptive advantage is not enough to show that that property was in fact shaped by that adaptive advantage. Although it is possible that the tendency towards positive illusion is an evolved misbelief, it it also possible that positive illusions could be a by-product of a broader, flawed cognitive mechanism that itself was shaped by accidents of evolutionary inertia.

This commentary discusses the logic of inferring modularity or the lack of modularity from observed patterns of developmental disorders.

Rogers & McClelland's (R&M's) précis represents an important effort to address key issues in concepts and categorization, but few of the simulations deliver what is promised. We argue that the models are seriously underconstrained, importantly incomplete, and psychologically implausible; more broadly, R&M dwell too heavily on the apparent successes without comparable concern for limitations already noted in the literature.

Some spoken words are iconic, exhibiting a resemblance between form and meaning. We used native speaker ratings to assess the iconicity of 3001 English words, analyzing their iconicity in relation to part-of-speech differences and differences between the sensory domain they relate to. First, we replicated previous findings showing that onomatopoeia and interjections were highest in iconicity, followed by verbs and adjectives, and then nouns and grammatical words. We further show that words with meanings related to the senses are more iconic (...) than words with abstract meanings. Moreover, iconicity is not distributed equally across sensory modalities: Auditory and tactile words tend to be more iconic than words denoting concepts related to taste, smell and sight. Last, we examined the relationship between iconicity and systematicity. We find that iconicity in English words is more strongly related to sensory meanings than systematicity. Altogether, our results shed light on the extent and distribution of iconicity in modern English. (shrink)

Some spoken words are iconic, exhibiting a resemblance between form and meaning. We used native speaker ratings to assess the iconicity of 3001 English words, analyzing their iconicity in relation to part-of-speech differences and differences between the sensory domain they relate to. First, we replicated previous findings showing that onomatopoeia and interjections were highest in iconicity, followed by verbs and adjectives, and then nouns and grammatical words. We further show that words with meanings related to the senses are more iconic (...) than words with abstract meanings. Moreover, iconicity is not distributed equally across sensory modalities: Auditory and tactile words tend to be more iconic than words denoting concepts related to taste, smell and sight. Last, we examined the relationship between iconicity and systematicity. We find that iconicity in English words is more strongly related to sensory meanings than systematicity. Altogether, our results shed light on the extent and distribution of iconicity in modern English. (shrink)

Criteria that aim to dichotomize cognition into rules and similarity are destined to fail because rules and similarity are not in genuine conflict. It is possible for a given cognitive domain to exploit rules without similarity, similarity without rules, or both (rules and similarity) at the same time.

We find the theory of neural reuse to be highly plausible, and suggest that human individual differences provide an additional line of argument in its favor, focusing on the well-replicated finding of in which individual differences are highly correlated across domains. We also suggest that the theory of neural reuse may be an important contributor to the phenomenon of positive manifold itself.

Gary Marcus has written a very interesting book about mental development from a nativist perspective. For the general readership at which the book is largely aimed, it will be interesting because of its many informative examples of the development of cognitive structures and because of its illuminating explanations of ways in which genes can contribute to these developmental processes. However, the book is also interesting from a theoretical point of view. Marcus tries to make nativism compatible with (...) the central arguments that anti-nativists use to attack nativism and with many recent discoveries about genetic activity and brain development. In so doing, he reconfigures the nativist position to a considerable extent. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Coleridge, Schiller, and Aesthetic EducationGary PetersColeridge, Schiller, and Aesthetic Education, by Michael John Kooy. New York: Palgrave, 2002, 241 pp.Who reads Friedrich Schiller today? With the Aesthetic Education of Man struggling to remain in print in the English-speaking world (at least in the UK, from where I am writing this) it would seem fewer and fewer readers are prepared to engage with (or be educated by) this once (...) influential aestheticization of the world; and as for Marcuse on Schiller, or the young(er) Frederic Jameson on Schiller and Marcuse, they, too, seem to be speaking from another era, an ancient time when the humanist utopian promise could still be taken seriously. Promises are made to be broken, of course, especially the promesse de bonheur, but are we right to feel betrayed by the assorted Schillerians who so passionately raised our hopes, only to fall silent when they were so comprehensively dashed? Perhaps betrayal is putting it too strongly, but the fact remains that we seem to have ended up with a notion of aesthetic education that educates nobody, not even those within art education who need it more than most. But then perhaps the whole notion of aesthetic education as a promise is itself fundamentally flawed, the product of a political reading—the politicization of the aestheticization of the world—that casts the lessons of the aesthetic into the future rather than engaging with the event of the artwork as it erupts in a "now," which is aporetic in the extreme, and thus ill-equipped [End Page 119] to radicalize the unradic1al mind or mobilize the immobile.Clearly, Michael John Kooy reads Schiller today, but, having said that, it is never made entirely clear who he is writing for. Indeed, we may ask, does he have much of an audience at all or is he speaking too long and too late into the vacuum left by the collapse of humanist optimism? His own position is an interesting one, as both a literary theorist and a philosopher; one of the real strengths of the book is Kooy's pursuit of philosophical ideas in the body of Schiller's and Coleridge's dramatic and poetic work, often to good effect, but, to ask the question again, who is listening? Philosophers? Writers? Professional academics or the nonacademic audience that one would assume was always the intended beneficiary of the concept of aesthetic education?To attempt to think around some of these questions, without necessarily trying to answer them, we might start by considering who the philosophical audience for this book might be. My guess is that the philosophy of education, the subgenre of philosophy that might benefit from an aesthetic education itself, will be largely deaf to the message running through these pages. Long dominated by an ethical, religious, and liberal political agenda, the philosophy of education in its hegemonic Anglo-American guise has never made much room for the aesthetic, particularly in its "continental" radical incarnation—far too woolly, idealist, utopian, far too "arty." So, not much of an outlet here, but, having said that, the recent Anglo-American fascination with the very "continental" notion of Bildung might prove to be a fruitful point of contact, and Kooy does devote some useful pages and a substantial epilogue to a discussion of this thorny subject. There is a problem here, however, in that while Kooy is excellent when thinking through the dissonance between the teleological purposiveness of Schiller's and Coleridge's conceptions of universal history, so important to their notion of aesthetic education as a cultural model, and the very different self-substantiating autonomy of Bildung, he is much less engaged with the more fundamental pedagogical issues that arise within the particularity of the teaching encounter: How is the necessary autonomy of aesthetic education to be taught without thereby jeopardizing that very autonomy? It is at this point that a philosophical audience (one engaged in continental philosophy, that is) might have expected a more thorough account of the deeply problematical relationship between the Schillerian notion of aesthetic education and the aesthetics to be found in Kant's Critique of Judgement, its acknowledged source. This is not... (shrink)

Introduction: the use and abuse of Thomas Paine in the transatlantic world / Sam Edwards and Marcus Morris -- Part I. The image and idea(s) of Paine: origins, use and reuse -- The image of Tom: Paine in print and portraiture / W.A. Speck -- "I am made to say what I never wrote": deism, spiritualism and ventriloquizing Paine, c.1790s-1850s / Patrick W. Hughes -- All Paine: the American mind and the creation of the League of Nations and the (...) U.N. / Michael Holm -- The distortion of Thomas Paine's philosophy of government / Gary Berton -- Part II. Discovering and using Paine's radicalism -- "Revolutions are the order of the day": Atlantic fragments of Thomas Paine, c.1819-1832 / Matteo Battistini -- Posthumous Paine in the United Kingdom, 1809-1832: Jacobin or loyalist cult? / Matthew Roberts -- "The neglect of Paine seems particularly strange at the present political juncture": explaining British socialists' relationship to Paine, c. 1884-1914 / Marcus Morris -- Citizens of the world: Paine and the political prisoners transported to Australia / Tony Moore -- Part III. Remembering and remaking Paine -- Common sense on the Lower East Side: Thomas Paine and the era of immigration, c.1900-1950 / Louis Mazzari -- "A monument in every city?": Thomas Paine in memoriam / Theodore Marotta -- "He came from America didn't he?": the Thetford Statue controversy and the problem of Paine in transatlantic memory, c.1909-1970 / Sam Edwards -- Afterword: the struggle for Paine's memory and the making of American democracy / Harvey J. Kaye. (shrink)

Artificial Neural Networks have reached “grandmaster” and even “super-human” performance across a variety of games, from those involving perfect information, such as Go, to those involving imperfect information, such as “Starcraft”. Such technological developments from artificial intelligence (AI) labs have ushered concomitant applications across the world of business, where an “AI” brand-tag is quickly becoming ubiquitous. A corollary of such widespread commercial deployment is that when AI gets things wrong—an autonomous vehicle crashes, a chatbot exhibits “racist” behavior, automated credit-scoring processes (...) “discriminate” on gender, etc.—there are often significant financial, legal, and brand consequences, and the incident becomes major news. As Judea Pearl sees it, the underlying reason for such mistakes is that “... all the impressive achievements of deep learning amount to just curve fitting.” The key, as Pearl suggests, is to replace “reasoning by association” with “causal reasoning” —the ability to infer causes from observed phenomena. It is a point that was echoed by Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis in a recent piece for theNew York Times: “we need to stop building computer systems that merely get better and better at detecting statistical patterns in data sets—often using an approach known as ‘Deep Learning’—and start building computer systems that from the moment of their assembly innately grasp three basic concepts: time, space, and causality.” In this paper, foregrounding what in 1949 Gilbert Ryle termed “a category mistake”, I will offer an alternative explanation for AI errors; it is not so much that AI machinery cannot “grasp” causality, but that AI machinery (qua computation) cannot understand anything at all. (shrink)

In this book review essay, Justus discusses The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought (2004) by Gary Marcus. The review opens by contrasting the common architectural-blueprint metaphor for the genome with an alternative: the if-then statements of a computer program. The former leads to a seeming “gene shortage” problem while the latter are better suited to representing the cascades of genetic expression that give rise to exponential genotype-phenotype relationships. (...) The essay then develops three conceptual issues of interest to cognitive scientists in light of this small, data-compressed genome: (1) distinguishing dissociations in the developmental process from the domain-specificity of the resulting mental representations, (2) the observation that no gene is specific to a mental representation, a cortical region, or even the nervous system, and (3) the complications that a small number of genes present to the adaptationist programme in evolutionary psychology. The review concludes by questioning the utility of the Swiss Army knife as a metaphor for cognitive development and evolution. (shrink)

According to Ole Hjortland, Timothy Williamson, Graham Priest, and others, anti-exceptionalism about logic is the view that logic “isn’t special”, but is continuous with the sciences. Logic is revisable, and its truths are neither analytic nor a priori. And logical theories are revised on the same grounds as scientific theories are. What isn’t special, we argue, is anti-exceptionalism about logic. Anti-exceptionalists disagree with one another regarding what logic and, indeed, anti-exceptionalism are, and they are at odds with naturalist philosophers of (...) logic, who may have seemed like natural allies. Moreover, those internal battles concern well-trodden philosophical issues, and there is no hint as to how they are to be resolved on broadly scientific grounds. We close by looking at three of the founders of logic who may have seemed like obvious enemies of anti-exceptionalism—Aristotle, Frege, and Carnap—and conclude that none of their positions is clearly at odds with at least some of the main themes of anti-exceptionalism. We submit that, at least at present, anti-exceptionalism is too vague or underspecified to characterize a coherent conception of logic, one that stands opposed to more traditional approaches. (shrink)

Gary L. Francione is a law professor and leading philosopher of animal rights theory. Robert Garner is a political theorist specializing in the philosophy and politics of animal protection. Francione maintains that we have no moral justification for using nonhumans and argues that because animals are property—or economic commodities—laws or industry practices requiring "humane" treatment will, as a general matter, fail to provide any meaningful level of protection. Garner favors a version of animal rights that focuses on eliminating animal (...) suffering and adopts a protectionist approach, maintaining that although the traditional animal-welfare ethic is philosophically flawed, it can contribute strategically to the achievement of animal-rights ends. As they spar, Francione and Garner deconstruct the animal protection movement in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, and elsewhere, discussing the practices of such organizations as PETA, which joins with McDonald's and other animal users to "improve" the slaughter of animals. They also examine American and European laws and campaigns from both the rights and welfare perspectives, identifying weaknesses and strengths that give shape to future legislation and action. (shrink)

This book treats modal logic as a theory, with several subtheories, such as completeness theory, correspondence theory, duality theory and transfer theory and is intended as a course in modal logic for students who have had prior contact with modal logic and who wish to study it more deeply. It presupposes training in mathematical or logic. Very little specific knowledge is presupposed, most results which are needed are proved in this book.

This book argues that moral philosophy should be based on seven scientific principles of theory selection. It then argues that a new moral theory—Rightness as Fairness—satisfies those principles more successfully than existing theories. Chapter 1 explicates the seven principles of theory-selection, arguing that moral philosophy must conform to them to be truth-apt. Chapter 2 argues those principles jointly support founding moral philosophy in known facts of empirical moral psychology: specifically, our capacities for mental time-travel and modal imagination. Chapter 2 then (...) shows that these capacities present human decisionmakers with a problem of diachronic rationality that includes but generalizes beyond, L.A. Paul’s problem of transformative experience: a problem that I call “the problem of possible future selves.” Chapter 3 then argues that a new principle of rationality—the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative—is the only rational solution to this problem, as it requires our present and future selves to forge and uphold a recursive, bi-directional contract with each another given mutual recognition of the problem. Chapter 4 then shows that the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative has three identical formulations analogous but superior to Immanuel Kant’s various formulations of his ‘categorical imperative.’ Chapter 5 shows that these unified formulas jointly entail a particular test of moral principles: a Moral Original Position similar to John Rawls’ famous ‘original position’, but which avoids a variety of problems with Rawls' model. Chapter 6 then shows that the Moral Original Position generates Four Principles of Fairness, which can then be combined into a single principle of moral rightness: Rightness as Fairness. This new conception of rightness is shown to reconcile four dominant moral frameworks (deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics, and contractualism), as well as entail a new method of moral decisionmaking for applied ethics: a method of “principled fair negotiation” according to which applied ethical issues cannot be wholly resolved through principled debate, but must instead be resolved by actual negotiation and compromise. This method is then argued to generate novel, nuanced analyses of a variety of applied moral issues, including trolley cases, torture, and the ethical treatment of nonhuman animals. Chapter 7 then shows that Rightness as Fairness reconciles three leading political frameworks—libertarianism, egalitarianism, and communitarianism—showing how all three embody legitimate moral ideals that can, and should, be fairly negotiated against each other to settle the scope, and nature, of domestic, international, and global justice on an ongoing, iterated basis. Finally, Chapter 8 argues that Rightness as Fairness satisfies all seven of the principles of theory-selected defended in Chapter 1 more successfully than rival theories. (shrink)

Der Aufsatz behandelt den Zusammenhang zwischen Recht, Ethik und Moral in der MdS. Ausgangspunkt ist der Befund, daß Kants System der Pflichten in der MdS weder konsistent noch vollständig ist, weil Rechts- und Tugendpflichten, entgegen Kants Annahme, den Bereich der moralischen Pflichten nicht erschöpfen . Kants System der Pflichten beruht auf den Unterscheidungen zwischen Recht und Ethik und zwischen Legalität und Moralität. Letztere konzipiert Kant in der MdS anders als in früheren Werken, indem er sie nun auf die beiden Arten (...) der "Gesetzgebung" in Recht und Ethik und die daraus entspringenden Gesetze zurückführt . Im Zusammenhang mit der "ethischen" Gesetzgebung ergibt sich das Problem, wie es ethisch geboten sein kann, aus Pflicht zu handeln . Analog dazu stellt sich mit Blick auf die "juridische" Gesetzgebung die Frage, warum man befugt ist, andere zu rechtlichem Handeln zu zwingen. Handelt es sich um eine moralische oder eine spezifisch rechtliche Befugnis? Es zeigt sich, daß Kant zwei unvereinbare Auffassung miteinander verbindet: Aus seiner "offiziellen" Auffassung, wonach das Recht ein Teil der Moral ist, würde folgen, daß die Zwangsbefugnis im Recht moralisch gerechtfertigt werden kann. Tatsächlich ist eine solche Rechtfertigung aber nicht möglich, die "offizielle" Auffassung also unzureichend. Kant greift in der MdS aber auch mehrfach auf eine "alternative" Auffassung zurück, der zufolge das Recht als eine eigenständige Form autonomer Gesetzgebung neben der Moral steht . Dieser alternativen Auffassung zufolge, die der "offiziellen" insgesamt überlegen ist, würde die "Rechtslehre" also gar nicht in die Metaphysik der Sitten gehören. (shrink)

I claim that there is pro tanto moral reason for parents to not raise their child on a vegan diet because a vegan diet bears a risk of harm to both the physical and the social well-being of children. After giving the empirical evidence from nutrition science and sociology that supports this claim, I turn to the question of how vegan parents should take this moral reason into account. Since many different moral frameworks have been used to argue for veganism, (...) this is a complex question. I suggest that, on some of these moral frameworks, the moral reason that some parents have for not raising their child on a vegan diet on account of this risk is plausibly as strong as the reason they have for raising their child on a vegan diet. In other words, the moral reason I outline is weighty enough to justify some vegan parents in plausibly finding it permissible to not raise their child on a vegan diet. (shrink)

Scholars have long been captivated by the parallels between birdsong and human speech and language. In this book, leading scholars draw on the latest research to explore what birdsong can tell us about the biology of human speech and language and the consequences for evolutionary biology. They examine the cognitive and neural similarities between birdsong learning and speech and language acquisition, considering vocal imitation, auditory learning, an early vocalization phase, the structural properties of birdsong and human language, and the striking (...) similarities between the neural organization of learning and vocal production in birdsong and human speech. After outlining the basic issues involved in the study of both language and evolution, the contributors compare birdsong and language in terms of acquisition, recursion, and core structural properties, and then examine the neurobiology of song and speech, genomic factors, and the emergence and evolution of language. Contributors: Hermann Ackermann, Gabriël J.L. Beckers, Robert C. Berwick, Johan J. Bolhuis, Noam Chomsky, Frank Eisner, Martin Everaert, Michale S. Fee, Olga Fehér, Simon E. Fisher, W. Tecumseh Fitch, Jonathan B. Fritz, Sharon M.H. Gobes, Riny Huijbregts, Eric Jarvis, Robert Lachlan, Ann Law, Michael A. Long, Gary F. Marcus, Carolyn McGettigan, Daniel Mietchen, Richard Mooney, Sanne Moorman, Kazuo Okanoya, Christophe Pallier, Irene M. Pepperberg, Jonathan F. Prather, Franck Ramus, Eric Reuland, Constance Scharff, Sophie K. Scott, Neil Smith, Ofer Tchernichovski, Carel ten Cate, Christopher K. Thompson, Frank Wijnen, Moira Yip, Wolfram Ziegler, Willem Zuidema. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

This article examines the relevance and value of Confucian Ethics to contemporary Business Ethics by comparing their respective perspectives and approaches towards business activities within the modern capitalist framework, the principle of reciprocity and the concept of human virtues. Confucian Ethics provides interesting parallels with contemporary Western-oriented Business Ethics. At the same, it diverges from contemporary Business Ethics in some significant ways. Upon an examination of philosophical texts as well as empirical studies, it is argued that Confucian Ethics is able (...) to provide some unique philosophical and intellectual perspectives in order to forge a richer understanding and analysis of the field of contemporary Business Ethics. (shrink)

This article examines the relevance and value of Confucian Ethics to contemporary Business Ethics by comparing their respective perspectives and approaches towards business activities within the modern capitalist framework, the principle of reciprocity and the concept of human virtues. Confucian Ethics provides interesting parallels with contemporary Western-oriented Business Ethics. At the same, it diverges from contemporary Business Ethics in some significant ways. Upon an examination of philosophical texts as well as empirical studies, it is argued that Confucian Ethics is able (...) to provide some unique philosophical and intellectual perspectives in order to forge a richer understanding and analysis of the field of contemporary Business Ethics. (shrink)