The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct a Christian theology of “hospitality” through a critical reading of Jacques Derrida and Friedrich Nietzsche as well as through an in-depth biblical and theological reflection on the ethics of hospitality. Out of this reconstructive investigation, I propose a new Christian ethics of hospitality as a radical kind. As a new paradigm, this radical hospitality is distinguished from other types in that it is no longer conceived on the model of “gift”. The new (...) Christian ethics of hospitality is rather reconstructed on the model of “forgiveness” by critically appropriating the concept of “invisible debt” that lies between the hosting citizens and the migrants in the senses of “you owe us your presence” and “I owe you my security and success.” While the hospitality of the gift defines the relationship between the hosting citizens and the migrants as givers and givees, the new paradigm of hospitality identifies this relationship as between creditors and debtors. In this regard, a new Christian hospitality called for unto citizens of the hosting society is a radical kind that challenges them to transcend the creditor-debtor consciousness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Shopping for Meaningful Lives: The Religious Motive of Consumerism by Bruce P. RittenhouseIlsup AhnShopping for Meaningful Lives: The Religious Motive of Consumerism Bruce P. Rittenhouse eugene, or: cascade, 2013. 211 pp. $33.00Are there any theories of consumerism that characterize people’s lives on a global scale? What motivates them to choose a consumerist lifestyle? If possible, how can we overcome this lifestyle that entails destructive consequences? In this new (...) book, Shopping for Meaningful Lives, Bruce Rittenhouse answers these questions by critically appropriating Paul Tillich’s theological insights. He first diagnoses consumerism as “not only a pattern of behavior that characterizes an individual life, but a way in which an individual organizes his or her particular life to seek to give it meaning” (3). It is thus more insidious than the mere acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts because humans are not meant to be mere consuming animals. [End Page 196]In attempting to deconstruct consumerism, Rittenhouse first points out that it has been poorly understood despite its seeming ubiquity. He launches his own investigation to look for possible theories of consumerism, which he then evaluates according to a consistent set of empirical criteria. In chapter 3 he enumerates five main types that describe Western consumerism: “1, greed, i.e., consumers’ intemperate materialistic hedonism; 2, status signaling, i.e., consumers’ desire to communicate superior social status; 3, manipulation of consumer by the producers of economic goods through marketing and advertising; 4, imaginative hedonism, i.e., consumers’ seeking emotional pleasure through the imaginative identities; 5, parental concern, i.e., parents’ desire to maximize their children’s well-being” (47). According to Rittenhouse, these five theories of the motivations for consumerism provide anecdotal support to demonstrate their practical relevance, but they “fall short of demonstrating their theories’ empirical possibility, let alone their empirical superiority over the rival theories” (95).Rittenhouse’s alternative theory is then developed in chapter 5, after he provides empirical evidence (including economic charts and analyses) for his own critique in chapter 4. His years of experience as a professional economist aptly qualify him to develop his social-scientific argumentation. Rittenhouse’s constructive proposal is hinged upon his critical insight that consumerism’s motivation may best be understood as religious. By religious, he means that it “answers a question posed by the nature of human existence” (132). Consumerism is now newly understood both as existential and as religious matter, and here Rittenhouse critically appropriates Tillich’s ontotheological categories and concepts, such as the three pairs of ontological elements in the self-world structure of being (individuation and participation, dynamics and form, and freedom and destiny). Since consumerism’s motivation is existential and religious, Rittenhouse attempts to resolve the moral and religious failings of consumerism by demonstrating the “correlation between the existential question of meaning and the answer of existential Christian faith” (133).Rittenhouse concludes his book by calling for existential conversion through the means of grace—that is, “the means of conversion to existential Christian faith and of ongoing conversion within ambiguous existential Christian faith” (175). The strength of this book lies in his discovery that consumerism is a spurious form of religious life that only destroys those who are intoxicated by its lifestyle. Given that consumerism has taken root everywhere affected by ever rising globalization, Rittenhouse’s existential investigation and theological remedy are definitely a welcome voice in the field of Christian ethics. His expertise in social-scientific study and empirical analysis is also a rare strength in this important pursuit. This book is well suited for upper-level college students as well as seminarians and theological school students. It is also a wonderful text for adult Bible study groups in churches and religious communities. [End Page 197]Ilsup AhnNorth Park UniversityCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a new way of understanding Christian ethics by critically interconnecting the theological meanings of the Aqedah ("binding") narrative of Mt. Moriah and the Passion story of Mt. Golgotha. Through an in-depth critical-theological investigation of the relation between these two biblical events, I argue that Christian ethics is possible not so much as a moralization or as a literalistic divine command theory, but rather as a "covenantal-existential" response to God's will in the impossible love on Mt. (...) Moriah as well as in the Son's willing embrace of God's will on Mt. Golgotha. (shrink)

For all Habermas's remarkable contribution to moral theory, his discourse ethics has left behind some debatable points. In particular, `delinguistified media' such as money and power have been excluded from the domain of moral discourse. The exclusion of money and power from the domain of moral discourse has also motivated Habermas to develop an idea of `colonization of lifeworld by system' by giving us the impression that the delinguistified media are the main culprit of colonizing the lifeworld. In this article, (...) by drawing on Reinhold Niebuhr's theological ethics, I argue that the lifeworld is colonized not by the delinguistified media as such, but, rather, by the people who mismanage money and power. I also develop the argument that in order to `decolonize' the colonized lifeworld, we need the substantive ethical ideals as well as the communicatively established law to guide the moral conduct of these system managers. (shrink)

In recent years, scholars and researchers have discovered a new trend in the migration of unauthorized people into the United States: while the total numbers of unaccompanied migrant children crossing the border have grown exponentially in the past few years, human rights violations against migrant women have also increased significantly. This unfortunate trend is not unrelated to the intensifying border militarization and the criminalization of all unauthorized migrants. This paper attempts to provide an ethical solution to the political conundrum of (...) undocumented migration by engaging a critical discourse with major feminist theorists of justice, including Seyla Benhabib, Martha Nussbaum, Iris Marion Young, and Onora O'Neill. I develop an argument in the paper that the US government's political appropriation of forgiveness is the most justifiable and practical solution for resolving the precarious situation of undocumented migrant women and children. (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Asian American Christian Ethics: Voices, Methods, Issues eds. by Grace Y. Kao and Ilsup AhnAlex MikulichAsian American Christian Ethics: Voices, Methods, Issues Edited by Grace Y. Kao and Ilsup Ahn WACO, TX: BAYLOR UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2015. 355 PP. $44.95This volume opens new horizons in Christian ethics. Editors Grace Y. Kao and Ilsup Ahn suggest two ways of conceptualizing Asian American Christian ethics. They describe the (...) first as "agency- or advocacy-centered" and the second as "bringing Western and Asian philosophical, theological, and cultural traditions together in critical dialogue and for selective retrieval for Asian American Christian ethics" (11). While the contributors to this book rightfully develop agency and advocacy-centered approaches within complex histories of colonialism and oppression, they also emulate Michael Walzer's "connected critic" who is not naïvely or uncritically "neutral" or dispassionate. The contributors appropriately use co-critical approaches that make possible "new and creative 'traditioning'" that does not uncritically reinscribe some "purer" Asian past or "undefiled by Western contact" (15).Nearly every chapter unpacks the deeply problematic term "Asian American" that was originally employed by activists who sought a new identity as "self-determining subjects rather than as 'oriental objects' in the United States" (4). But the term obfuscates multiple diversities within richly divergent national, geographical, colonial, and cultural histories and traditions.Hoon Choi explores the complexity of gender and sexual identities through a richly textured intersectional approach, examines how these identities become intertwined in double and triple binds, and reinterprets Christ as the fullness of humanity against Western hegemony and Eastern sexism. Choi's vibrant reinterpretation of Jesus Christ is complemented by a wise and compassionate pastoral approach.Sharon M. Tan calls for a reinterpretation both of Christian and Asian traditions of marriage, family, and parenting that will "entail a bicultural approach to life" and "creative new ways of retelling their stories and imagining their futures" (42). Tan underscores the difficulty of describing a Pan-Asian approach to marriage, family, and parenting by exploring the complexities of "Tiger Mothers," multigenerational households, the "special case of refugees," transnational families, and biculturality and adaptation.Hannah Ka deconstructs a wide range of Christian approaches to environmental ethics and reinterprets Sallie McFague's Body of God ecological theology through a distinctive Asian American approach. Drawing on beautiful and challenging stories from her own family as well as Confucian and Taoist [End Page 215] thought, Ka suggests a reinterpretation both of existential and functional indebtedness between human beings and all living things. She contends that "humans cannot survive even a day without … all other inorganic and organic existents on earth, while [other existents] can flourish without humans. The life of the human species is not merely interdependent with, but utterly indebted to, all the other existents on earth, rendering humans more vulnerable than others" (221).These are only a few examples of how this volume exemplifies clear, cogent, and constructive Christian ethics. Chapters by Ilsup Ahn ("Virtue Ethics"), Keun-Joo Christine Pae ("Peace and War"), Christina A. Astorga ("Wealth and Prosperity"), Ki Joo (KC) Choi ("Racial Identity and Solidarity"), SueJeanne Koh ("Health Care"), Hak Joon Lee ("Immigration"), Irene Oh ("Education and Labor"), and Jonathan Tran ("Cosmetic Surgery") all expand the horizons of contemporary ethics. I highly recommend this text for scholars to engage new horizons of Christian ethics and to use for a wide variety of upper level undergraduate and graduate courses in Christian ethics as well as constructive and pastoral theology.Alex MikulichLoyola University New OrleansCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Religious Ethics and Migration: Doing Justice to Undocumented Workers by Ilsup AhnAndy DraycottReligious Ethics and Migration: Doing Justice to Undocumented Workers Ilsup Ahn New York: Routledge, 2014. 204PP. $145.00Ilsup Ahn addresses the controverted issue of immigration, focusing on the plight of undocumented migrants. His theoretical discussions are decidedly Eurocentric, with substantial investment in explicating Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Jürgen Habermas, while his practical (...) test cases are North American, as is his recourse to theologians in his closing chapter, so there is a hospitable cosmopolitan air to the work as a whole. Billing his work as “religious ethics,” and allowing that other religious traditions may approximate the concerns he expresses, Ahn writes as a Christian contributing to Christian ethics and political thought, looking to the Bible and contemporary theological discourse.Ahn’s main argument is that many migrants are on the move because of a globalized economy that distributes goods unfairly; they should thus be reclassified as economic refugees (83). But recognizing that classic liberal rights discourse focuses on the claims of individuals at the point of entry, Ahn seeks to invert this emphasis on the claimant, irrespective of whether an immigrant or refugee, by developing an account modeled on forgiveness that avoids the problematic power relation implied in a hospitality model. Christians learn from the gospel to recognize that gift, far from being arbitrary or unidirectional, emerges out of forgiveness. That is, radical hospitality is born not primarily as a power-difference-fueled contract of mutual indebtedness whereby liberty is negotiated; rather, it is born out of the awareness of being [End Page 213] a community grounded in a transcendent forgiveness through which liberty is enjoyed. Ahn seeks to overcome the gift-becomes-debt model by asserting an “invisible debt” that precedes any acts of hospitality; only the radical hospitality of forgiveness can break this destructive ontological polarization around immigration.Whereas part 1 of the book covers theory, part 2 deals with the concrete issue of immigration in the United States, particularly Arizona. He argues for a religious right to express compassion in the hiring of those who are needy, comparing Arizona’s sanction of such employers to “prosecuting and incarcerating the Good Samaritan for his conscientious act of expressing compassion in solidarity with the victim” (129). He further turns his attention to the problem of nativist racism against Chilean, Japanese, and Mexican migrants; Ahn suggests political forgiveness would replace detention centers, run by security personnel, with hospitality centers run as rescue missions. Forgiveness frees the state from the deadening introversion of national security, and thereby for hospitality.The question arises as to how Ahn thinks Christians can actively pursue his agenda when they have no immediate mechanism to change laws or international conventions. Furthermore, Christians might feel bound to law and order such that political forgiveness may look like ignoring the legality of national borders. Ahn’s final chapter turns more explicitly from philosophy to theology to help answer this concern. He proposes a model based on Covenant, Kingdom of God, and Body of Christ: God’s redemptive work is brought about through these dynamic realities of divine agency, incorporating hospitality in a way that transcends individual rights and national security and favors the “least of these.” Christians may overcome the arbitrary hospitality of creditor or debtor by delighting in the arbitrary favor of God.Some may wonder, despite Ahn’s philosophical sophistication, whether his claims act as proxy for policy moves favored on other, less rigorous grounds like love or compassion that lack hardnosed realism. Might a reader refuse Ahn’s forgiveness paradigm on the grounds that he is actually recommending amnesty or the chaos of open borders? Ahn does call for comprehensive immigration reform but is not foolhardy enough to set out legislative proposals. The strength of his work is the sustained conversation between high-level philosophy and theology and the practical realities for undocumented migrants on the ground. His task as a Christian ethicist is to narrate a different way of seeing the world, modeled on forgiveness and not power and right. It is to be hoped that readers will take up his challenge to see... (shrink)

What underlies Zhuangzi’s thought is the fundamental finitude of the self, meaning that we cannot and should not alter or control things around us at whim or solely in our favour. Consequently, Zhuangzi recommends that we remain open to things instead of going against them, leading to a fulfilled life. This article discusses Zhuangzi’s underlying philosophy of openness, noting that he proposes two different strategies to do so with a distinction between the natural and the human. The former primarily appears (...) in Zhuangzi’s discussions of life and death. To overcome the fear of death, Zhuangzi calls on us to see it in the light of the ‘heavenly patterns’ or processes that can be grasped through the circularity of life and death. Yet, this picture reveals only half of Zhuangzi’s thoughts—he also shares his wisdom on how to address human affairs that are barely discernable or absent in such patterns. Here, Zhuangzi urges us to apply a different strategy: closely and attentively sensing the situations and their vicissitudes and preparing our actions as per such (shifting) data. (shrink)

Background:While nursing ethics education is commonly provided for undergraduate nursing students in most nursing colleges, consensus on the content and teaching modules for these ethics courses have still not been established.Objectives:This study aimed to examine the effects of nursing ethics education on the moral sensitivity and critical thinking disposition of nursing students in Korea.Research design:A one-group pre- and post-test design was used. Moral sensitivity was measured using the Korean version of the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire. Critical thinking disposition was measured using (...) the Critical Thinking Disposition Questionnaire.Participants and research context:Participants were 70 undergraduate nursing students who were attending a university located in Seoul, Korea. The nursing ethics education was provided 7 times, from September to December 2010, and comprised 90-min sessions each week.Ethical considerations:This study was conducted in accordance with the Human Subject Research Ethics Committee guidelines.Findings:After the education, the levels for the patient-oriented care, a sub-domain of moral sensitivity, and inquisitiveness, a sub-domain of critical thinking disposition, significantly improved. There were no changes in overall scores for moral sensitivity and critical thinking disposition. There were significant positive correlations between moral sensitivity and critical thinking disposition both pre- and post-intervention.Conclusion:These results reflect the need for ongoing efforts to develop innovative content, structure, and instructional methods for undergraduate nursing ethics education programs. (shrink)

This study analyses the types and frequencies of ethical dilemmas and the rationale of ethical decision making in student nurses; it also evaluates their decision making. One hundred senior student nurses who were enrolled in a two-credit course in nursing ethics were asked to provide an informal description of a dilemma that they had experienced during their clinical practice. The results were as follows. The ethical dilemmas identified fell into four categories and were of 27 types. Those most frequently experienced (...) were ‘family giving up on a patient because he or she could not be cured’, and ‘not telling the truth to the patient’. The Korean Nurses’ Code of Ethics was applied, in particular the preamble, and the third, fourth, seventh and tenth clauses. The most common rule of ethics and principle applied in these nurses’ ethical decision making were veracity and nonmaleficence. With regard to the moral reasoning process, the primary concern was the welfare of the patients. These students were equipped with the ability to exercise critical and reflective thought when they experienced ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

This paper proposes a ‘geology’ of the new mediascape as an alternative way of studying today’s digital convergence. By geology, I mean a particular physical condition of media platforms, consisting of the lower stratum of fluid atomic particles or binary signals and the upper stratum of cultural sediments as the solidified patterns of these atoms, both of which are circulating through ceaseless re-sedimentation and re-atomization. The discourses of digital convergence that overwhelmed media studies for the first decade of the twenty-first (...) century could be reinterpreted from this geological perspective in relation to such questions; how the old cultural forms that have hitherto solidified into specific physical structures of ‘old media’ are re-atomized into a series of zeros and ones; and how they are re-sedimented into specific algorithms simulating these old forms. Tracing geological metaphors in the cultural historiography of the early twentieth century’s cultural critics, as in works by Siegfried Kracauer, Herbert Marcuse, and Walter Benjamin, this article extends the origin of the convergence culture even to this so-called ‘age of technological reproduction’ in terms of how the human and technological modes of cultural production have converged upon a geological infrastructure of mediascape. The convergence was in this sense an event that happened between different agents of cultural production, namely humans and non-humans, as much as between different media forms. (shrink)

[1] Yotse la-or ʻal yede ṭalmidaṿ shomʻe liḳḥo be-yerakh ha-eṭanim di-shenaṭ 2016 -- [2] Yotse la-or ʻal yede ṭalmidaṿ shomʻe liḳḥo be-yerakh ha-eṭanim di-shenaṭ 2018.

People commonly think of the mind and the brain as distinct entities that interact, a view known as dualism. At the same time, the public widely acknowledges that science attributes all mental phenomena to the workings of a material brain, a view at odds with dualism. How do people reconcile these conflicting perspectives? We propose that people distort claims about the brain from the wider culture to fit their dualist belief that minds and brains are distinct, interacting entities: Exposure to (...) cultural discourse about the brain as the physical basis for the mind prompts people to posit that mind–brain interactions are asymmetric, such that the brain is able to affect the mind more than vice versa. We term this hybrid intuitive theory neurodualism. Five studies involving both thought experiments and naturalistic scenarios provided evidence of neurodualism among laypeople and, to some extent, even practicing psychotherapists. For example, lay participants reported that “a change in a person's brain” is accompanied by “a change in the person's mind” more often than vice versa. Similarly, when asked to imagine that “future scientists were able to alter exactly 25% of a person's brain,” participants reported larger corresponding changes in the person's mind than in the opposite direction. Participants also showed a similarly asymmetric pattern favoring the brain over the mind in naturalistic scenarios. By uncovering people's intuitive theories of the mind–brain relation, the results provide insights into societal phenomena such as the allure of neuroscience and common misperceptions of mental health treatments. (shrink)

Human behavior is frequently described both in abstract, general terms and in concrete, specific terms. We asked whether these two ways of framing equivalent behaviors shift the inferences people make about the biological and psychological bases of those behaviors. In five experiments, we manipulated whether behaviors are presented concretely (i.e. with reference to a specific person, instantiated in the particular context of that person’s life) or abstractly (i.e. with reference to a category of people or behaviors across generalized contexts). People (...) judged concretely framed behaviors to be less biologically based and, on some dimensions, more psychologically based than the same behaviors framed in the abstract. These findings held true for both mental disorders (Experiments 1 and 2) and everyday behaviors (Experiments 4 and 5) and yielded downstream consequences for the perceived efficacy of disorder treatments (Experiment 3). Implications for science educators, students of science, and members of the lay public are discussed. (shrink)

When a cause interacts with unobserved factors to produce an effect, the contingency between the observed cause and effect cannot be taken at face value to infer causality. Yet, it would be computationally intractable to consider all possible unobserved, interacting factors. Nonetheless, two experiments found that when an unobserved cause is assumed to be fairly stable over time, people can learn about such interactions and adjust their inferences about the causal efficacy of the observed cause. When they observed a period (...) in which a cause and effect were associated followed by a period of the opposite association, rather than concluding a complete lack of causality, subjects inferred an unobserved, interacting cause. The interaction explains why the overall contingency between the cause and effect is low and allows people to still conclude that the cause is efficacious. (shrink)

With the increasing demand for ethical standards in the current business environment, ethical leadership has received particular attention. Drawing on self-verification theory and social exchange theory, this study investigated the effect of leaders’ core self-evaluation on the display of ethical leadership and the moderating role of employees’ exchange ideology in the relationship between ethical leadership and employees’ job performance. Consistent with the hypotheses, the results from a sample of 225 dyads of employees and their immediate leaders showed a positive relationship (...) between leaders’ core self-evaluation and ethical leadership. Moreover, the results showed that ethical leadership mediates the effects of leaders’ core self-evaluation on employees’ job performance. Furthermore, we found that employees’ exchange ideology moderates the relationship between ethical leadership and job performance. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to discuss characteristics of Korea’s system responses with a research framework of the structure, conduct and performance theory and explain the role of information, communication technologies (ICT) and Big Data from a technology-mediated control (TMC) perspective. Design/methodology/approach This study examines the contextual nature of Korea’s diagnostic, preventive and treatment efforts. Particular attention is paid to issues related to the effective use of Big Data analytics and its applications, reporting mechanisms and public safety measures. The research model (...) defines key factors in assessing the effectiveness of Korea’s responses. Findings Findings of this research suggest: effective strategic planning and operational execution use well-tested and designed crisis-responsive manuals; linkage role of ICT/Big Data is prominent in trace, test and treat and participation (3T + P); and aggressive epidemic investigations require synergistic efforts of national and local government units, broad societal support and participation and contribution of global firms offering their domestic and global supply chain network capabilities. Research limitations/implications The Korean Government's effective response experiences suggest the synergy of political, social, cultural and technological factors. Future studies may explore how personal privacy and public safety are both achieved in different social–cultural–political contexts (Ahn et al., 2020; Delgado et al., 2020; Sharma and Bashir, 2020). Other emerging organizational issues and international comparative studies are worth further investigation in future studies. Practical implications This case study suggests how to apply ICT capabilities for organizing a national response to the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) pandemic. Public and private partnership in the framework of sociotechnological synergy (i.e. integration of ICT and social orchestration) is essential for the 3T process. In support of public policy initiatives, global firms share their IT infrastructure and supply chain integration experiences to accommodate global-level crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. Social implications This study extends the TMC framework to a national level. In the adapted TMC framework, the control source, control target and linkage mechanism are specified. Using TMC, this shows the dynamic roles of ICT/Big Data in Korea’s COVID-19 response experiences. Originality/value The impacts of the COVID-19 are rapid and enormous. Despite the controversial early policy decisions and the rapid rise of confirmed patients, the world has recognized Korea’s effective responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

It is a hallmark of a good model to make accurate a priori predictions to new conditions (Busemeyer & Wang, 2000). This study compared 8 decision learning models with respect to their generalizability. Participants performed 2 tasks (the Iowa Gambling Task and the Soochow Gambling Task), and each model made a priori predictions by estimating the parameters for each participant from 1 task and using those same parameters to predict on the other task. Three methods were used to evaluate the (...) models at the individual level of analysis. The first method used a post hoc fit criterion, the second method used a generalization criterion for short‐term predictions, and the third method again used a generalization criterion for long‐term predictions. The results suggest that the models with the prospect utility function can make generalizable predictions to new conditions, and different learning models are needed for making short‐versus long‐term predictions on simple gambling tasks. (shrink)

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is widely used to study decision‐making within healthy and psychiatric populations. However, the complexity of the IGT makes it difficult to attribute variation in performance to specific cognitive processes. Several cognitive models have been proposed for the IGT in an effort to address this problem, but currently no single model shows optimal performance for both short‐ and long‐term prediction accuracy and parameter recovery. Here, we propose the Outcome‐Representation Learning (ORL) model, a novel model that provides (...) the best compromise between competing models. We test the performance of the ORL model on 393 subjects' data collected across multiple research sites, and we show that the ORL reveals distinct patterns of decision‐making in substance‐using populations. Our work highlights the importance of using multiple model comparison metrics to make valid inference with cognitive models and sheds light on learning mechanisms that play a role in underweighting of rare events. (shrink)

The current consensus is that most natural categories are not organized around strict definitions (a list of singly necessary and jointly sufficient features) but rather according to a family resemblance (FR) principle: Objects belong to the same category because they are similar to each other and dissimilar to objects in contrast categories. A number of computational models of category construction have been developed to provide an account of how and why people create FR categories (Anderson, 1990; Fisher, 1987). Surprisingly, however, (...) only a few experiments on category construction or free sorting have been run and they suggest that people do not sort examples by the FR principle. We report several new experiments and a two‐stage model for category construction. This model is contrasted with a variety of other models with respect to their ability to account for when FR sorting will and will not occur. The experiments serve to identify one basis for FR sorting and to support the two‐stage model. The distinctive property of the two‐stage model is that it assumes that people impose more structure than the examples support in the first stage and that the second stage adjusts for this difference between preferred and perceived structure. We speculate that people do not simply assimilate probabilistic structures but rather organize them in terms of discrete structures plus noise. (shrink)

There has been a long debate on whether demonstratives are directly referential as Kaplan originally argued, or indirectly referential like a definite description. I propose a new analysis of demonstratives that combines intuitions from both direct and indirect approaches. The demonstrative is analyzed as an indirectly referential expression with a binary maximality operator that takes two arguments, where the second argument can be a deictic pointing, an anaphoric index, or a relative clause. Direct reference is encoded not in the meaning (...) of the demonstrative but in the meaning contributed by the pointing gesture, thus capturing both direct and indirect uses. I further propose that some pronouns in English function as demonstratives, realizing the binary structure and competing with the demonstrative. The main advantages of this proposal include (a) deriving the distribution of pronominal and adnominal demonstratives systematically; (b) capturing the unique interaction that demonstratives have with a pointing gesture; and (c) locating English demonstratives against a larger, cross-linguistic picture. (shrink)