Nat Hansen
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 3597547 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Nat Hansen |
| PRENOMES | Nat |
| SOBRENOME | Hansen |
| ASSINATURA | HANSEN N |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Reading |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5074-1075 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 17 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 19 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 17 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2012 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 2 |
Measuring Conceptual Inflation
Is the term ‘racist’ being applied so widely that it is losing its moral force? Theorists and pundits from across the political spectrum think that it is. They call such a change of meaning “conceptual inflation” and argue that we should try to stop it by restricting the use of ‘racist’ or replacing ‘racist’ with new expressions. But what evidence do we have that ‘racist’ is inflated? Economists do not track currency inflation with mere vibes; th…
The Very Idea of Seriousness
What norms govern aesthetic conversations? In Hansen and Adams (2024), we argue for a norm we call, following Stanley Cavell, “the hope of agreement”, along with a requirement of “seriousness”, the “discipline of accounting for one's judgments”. Nick Riggle criticizes the hope of agreement and the requirement of seriousness and defends a norm of “community” in which aesthetic conversations involve “discretionary valuing” in a “mutually supportive…
Criticism and Truth
Journal Article Criticism and Truth: On Method in Literary Studies Get access Criticism and Truth: On Method in Literary Studies Jonathan Kramnick University of Chicago Press. 2023. pp. 136. £15.35 (pbk). Nat Hansen Nat Hansen University of Reading, UK [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, ayae039, https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayae039 Published: 26 Au…
‘Extremely Racist’ and ‘Incredibly Sexist’
Critics across the political spectrum have worried that ordinary uses of words like ‘racist’, ‘sexist’, and ‘homophobic’ are becoming conceptually inflated, meaning that these expressions are getting used so widely that they lose their nuance and, thereby, their moral force. However, the charge of conceptual inflation as well as responses to it are standardly made without any systematic investigation of how ‘racist’ and other expressions condemni…
A quantitative history of ordinary language philosophy
There is a standard story told about the rise and fall of ordinary language philosophy: it was a widespread, if not dominant, approach to philosophy in Great Britain in the aftermath of World War II up until the early 1960s, but with the development of systematic approaches to the study of language—formal semantic theories on one hand and Gricean pragmatics on the other—ordinary language philosophy more or less disappeared. In this paper we prese…
Is Pain “All in your Mind”? Examining the General Public’s Views of Pain
By definition, pain is a sensory and emotional experience that is felt in a particular part of the body. The precise relationship between somatic events at the site where pain is experienced, and central processing giving rise to the mental experience of pain remains the subject of debate, but there is little disagreement in scholarly circles that both aspects of pain are critical to its experience. Recent experimental work, however, suggests a p…
Pain priors, polyeidism, and predictive power
According to standard philosophical and clinical understandings, pain is an essentially mental phenomenon (typically, a kind of conscious experience). In a challenge to this standard conception, a recent burst of empirical work in experimental philosophy, such as that by Justin Sytsma and Kevin Reuter, purports to show that people ordinarily conceive of pain as an essentially bodily phenomenon—specifically, a quality of bodily disturbance. In res…
Nobody would really talk that way!”
This paper defends a challenge, inspired by arguments drawn from contemporary ordinary language philosophy and grounded in experimental data, to certain forms of standard philosophical practice. The challenge is inspired by contemporary philosophers who describe themselves as practicing “ordinary language philosophy”. Contemporary ordinary language philosophy can be divided into constructive and critical approaches. The critical approach to conte…
Color adjectives, standards, and thresholds
Are color adjectives (“red”, “green”, etc.) relative adjectives or absolute adjectives? Existing theories of the meaning of color adjectives attempt to answer that question using informal (“armchair”) judgments. The informal judgments of theorists conflict: it has been proposed that color adjectives are absolute with standards anchored at the minimum degree on the scale, that they are absolute but have near-midpoint standards, and that they are r…
Experimental Philosophy of Language
Experimental philosophy of language uses experimental methods developed in the cognitive sciences to investigate topics of interest to philosophers of language. This article describes the methodological background for the development of experimental approaches to topics in philosophy of language, distinguishes negative and positive projects in experimental philosophy of language, and evaluates experimental work on the reference of proper names an…
Linguistic Experiments and Ordinary Language Philosophy
J.L. Austin is regarded as having an especially acute ear for fine distinctions of meaning overlooked by other philosophers. Austin employs an informal experimental approach to gathering evidence in support of these fine distinctions in meaning, an approach that has become a standard technique for investigating meaning in both philosophy and linguistics. In this paper, we subject Austin's methods to formal experimental investigation. His methods …
When Words Are Called For
In this fascinating and provocative book, Avner Baz argues that the much maligned methods of Ordinary Language Philosophy (OLP), when properly applied, reveal that central debates in contemporary philosophy are fundamentally misguided. Baz's radical argument targets what he calls the ‘prevailing program’ in philosophy. The ‘prevailing program’ is an approach to gathering data in support of philosophical theories: I will call the question of wheth…
Contemporary Ordinary Language Philosophy
There is a widespread assumption that ordinary language philosophy was killed off sometime in the 1960s or 70s by a combination of Gricean pragmatics and the rapid development of systematic semantic theory.Contrary to that widespread assumption, however, contemporary versions of ordinary language philosophy are alive and flourishing but going by various aliases - in particular (some versions of) 'contextualism' and (some versions of) 'experimenta…
Experimenting on Contextualism
In this article we refine the design of context shifting experiments , which play a central role in contextualist debates, and we subject a large number of scenarios involving different types of expressions of interest to contextualists, including ‘know’ and color adjectives like ‘green’, to experimental investigation. Our experiment (i) reveals an effect of changing contexts on the evaluation of uses of the sentences that we examine, thereby ove…
A slugfest of intuitions
J . L . A ustin and Literal Meaning
A lice C rary has recently developed a radical reading of J . L . A ustin's philosophy of language. The central contention of C rary's reading is that A ustin gives convincing reasons to reject the idea that sentences have context‐invariant literal meaning. While I am in sympathy with C rary about the continuing importance of A ustin's work, and I think C rary's reading is deep and interesting, I do not think literal sentence meaning is one of A …
On an Alleged Truth/Falsity Asymmetry in Context Shifting Experiments
Keith DeRose has argued that context shifting experiments should be designed in a specific way in order to accommodate what he calls a 'truth/falsity asymmetry'. I explain and critique DeRose's reasons for proposing this modification to contextualist methodology, drawing on recent experimental studies of DeRose's bank cases as well as experimental findings about the verification of affirmative and negative statements. While DeRose's arguments for…
Nobody would really talk that way!”
This paper defends a challenge, inspired by arguments drawn from contemporary ordinary language philosophy and grounded in experimental data, to certain forms of standard philosophical practice. The challenge is inspired by contemporary philosophers who describe themselves as practicing “ordinary language philosophy”. Contemporary ordinary language philosophy can be divided into constructive and critical approaches. The critical approach to conte…
Contemporary Ordinary Language Philosophy
There is a widespread assumption that ordinary language philosophy was killed off sometime in the 1960s or 70s by a combination of Gricean pragmatics and the rapid development of systematic semantic theory.Contrary to that widespread assumption, however, contemporary versions of ordinary language philosophy are alive and flourishing but going by various aliases - in particular (some versions of) 'contextualism' and (some versions of) 'experimenta…
On an Alleged Truth/Falsity Asymmetry in Context Shifting Experiments
Keith DeRose has argued that context shifting experiments should be designed in a specific way in order to accommodate what he calls a 'truth/falsity asymmetry'. I explain and critique DeRose's reasons for proposing this modification to contextualist methodology, drawing on recent experimental studies of DeRose's bank cases as well as experimental findings about the verification of affirmative and negative statements. While DeRose's arguments for…
Criticism and Truth
Journal Article Criticism and Truth: On Method in Literary Studies Get access Criticism and Truth: On Method in Literary Studies Jonathan Kramnick University of Chicago Press. 2023. pp. 136. £15.35 (pbk). Nat Hansen Nat Hansen University of Reading, UK [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, ayae039, https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayae039 Published: 26 Au…
When Words Are Called For
In this fascinating and provocative book, Avner Baz argues that the much maligned methods of Ordinary Language Philosophy (OLP), when properly applied, reveal that central debates in contemporary philosophy are fundamentally misguided. Baz's radical argument targets what he calls the ‘prevailing program’ in philosophy. The ‘prevailing program’ is an approach to gathering data in support of philosophical theories: I will call the question of wheth…
J . L . A ustin and Literal Meaning
A lice C rary has recently developed a radical reading of J . L . A ustin's philosophy of language. The central contention of C rary's reading is that A ustin gives convincing reasons to reject the idea that sentences have context‐invariant literal meaning. While I am in sympathy with C rary about the continuing importance of A ustin's work, and I think C rary's reading is deep and interesting, I do not think literal sentence meaning is one of A …
On an Alleged Truth/Falsity Asymmetry in Context Shifting Experiments
Keith DeRose has argued that context shifting experiments should be designed in a specific way in order to accommodate what he calls a 'truth/falsity asymmetry'. I explain and critique DeRose's reasons for proposing this modification to contextualist methodology, drawing on recent experimental studies of DeRose's bank cases as well as experimental findings about the verification of affirmative and negative statements. While DeRose's arguments for…
Experimenting on Contextualism
In this article we refine the design of context shifting experiments , which play a central role in contextualist debates, and we subject a large number of scenarios involving different types of expressions of interest to contextualists, including ‘know’ and color adjectives like ‘green’, to experimental investigation. Our experiment (i) reveals an effect of changing contexts on the evaluation of uses of the sentences that we examine, thereby ove…
A slugfest of intuitions
When Words Are Called For
In this fascinating and provocative book, Avner Baz argues that the much maligned methods of Ordinary Language Philosophy (OLP), when properly applied, reveal that central debates in contemporary philosophy are fundamentally misguided. Baz's radical argument targets what he calls the ‘prevailing program’ in philosophy. The ‘prevailing program’ is an approach to gathering data in support of philosophical theories: I will call the question of wheth…
Contemporary Ordinary Language Philosophy
There is a widespread assumption that ordinary language philosophy was killed off sometime in the 1960s or 70s by a combination of Gricean pragmatics and the rapid development of systematic semantic theory.Contrary to that widespread assumption, however, contemporary versions of ordinary language philosophy are alive and flourishing but going by various aliases - in particular (some versions of) 'contextualism' and (some versions of) 'experimenta…
Experimental Philosophy of Language
Experimental philosophy of language uses experimental methods developed in the cognitive sciences to investigate topics of interest to philosophers of language. This article describes the methodological background for the development of experimental approaches to topics in philosophy of language, distinguishes negative and positive projects in experimental philosophy of language, and evaluates experimental work on the reference of proper names an…
Linguistic Experiments and Ordinary Language Philosophy
J.L. Austin is regarded as having an especially acute ear for fine distinctions of meaning overlooked by other philosophers. Austin employs an informal experimental approach to gathering evidence in support of these fine distinctions in meaning, an approach that has become a standard technique for investigating meaning in both philosophy and linguistics. In this paper, we subject Austin's methods to formal experimental investigation. His methods …
Color adjectives, standards, and thresholds
Are color adjectives (“red”, “green”, etc.) relative adjectives or absolute adjectives? Existing theories of the meaning of color adjectives attempt to answer that question using informal (“armchair”) judgments. The informal judgments of theorists conflict: it has been proposed that color adjectives are absolute with standards anchored at the minimum degree on the scale, that they are absolute but have near-midpoint standards, and that they are r…
Nobody would really talk that way!”
This paper defends a challenge, inspired by arguments drawn from contemporary ordinary language philosophy and grounded in experimental data, to certain forms of standard philosophical practice. The challenge is inspired by contemporary philosophers who describe themselves as practicing “ordinary language philosophy”. Contemporary ordinary language philosophy can be divided into constructive and critical approaches. The critical approach to conte…
Pain priors, polyeidism, and predictive power
According to standard philosophical and clinical understandings, pain is an essentially mental phenomenon (typically, a kind of conscious experience). In a challenge to this standard conception, a recent burst of empirical work in experimental philosophy, such as that by Justin Sytsma and Kevin Reuter, purports to show that people ordinarily conceive of pain as an essentially bodily phenomenon—specifically, a quality of bodily disturbance. In res…
Is Pain “All in your Mind”? Examining the General Public’s Views of Pain
By definition, pain is a sensory and emotional experience that is felt in a particular part of the body. The precise relationship between somatic events at the site where pain is experienced, and central processing giving rise to the mental experience of pain remains the subject of debate, but there is little disagreement in scholarly circles that both aspects of pain are critical to its experience. Recent experimental work, however, suggests a p…
‘Extremely Racist’ and ‘Incredibly Sexist’
Critics across the political spectrum have worried that ordinary uses of words like ‘racist’, ‘sexist’, and ‘homophobic’ are becoming conceptually inflated, meaning that these expressions are getting used so widely that they lose their nuance and, thereby, their moral force. However, the charge of conceptual inflation as well as responses to it are standardly made without any systematic investigation of how ‘racist’ and other expressions condemni…
A quantitative history of ordinary language philosophy
There is a standard story told about the rise and fall of ordinary language philosophy: it was a widespread, if not dominant, approach to philosophy in Great Britain in the aftermath of World War II up until the early 1960s, but with the development of systematic approaches to the study of language—formal semantic theories on one hand and Gricean pragmatics on the other—ordinary language philosophy more or less disappeared. In this paper we prese…
Criticism and Truth
Journal Article Criticism and Truth: On Method in Literary Studies Get access Criticism and Truth: On Method in Literary Studies Jonathan Kramnick University of Chicago Press. 2023. pp. 136. £15.35 (pbk). Nat Hansen Nat Hansen University of Reading, UK [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, ayae039, https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayae039 Published: 26 Au…
Measuring Conceptual Inflation
Is the term ‘racist’ being applied so widely that it is losing its moral force? Theorists and pundits from across the political spectrum think that it is. They call such a change of meaning “conceptual inflation” and argue that we should try to stop it by restricting the use of ‘racist’ or replacing ‘racist’ with new expressions. But what evidence do we have that ‘racist’ is inflated? Economists do not track currency inflation with mere vibes; th…
The Very Idea of Seriousness
What norms govern aesthetic conversations? In Hansen and Adams (2024), we argue for a norm we call, following Stanley Cavell, “the hope of agreement”, along with a requirement of “seriousness”, the “discipline of accounting for one's judgments”. Nick Riggle criticizes the hope of agreement and the requirement of seriousness and defends a norm of “community” in which aesthetic conversations involve “discretionary valuing” in a “mutually supportive…
Philosophy (15 obras) · Epistemology (14 obras) · Metaphysics (9 obras) · Linguistics (8 obras) · Philosophy of language (8 obras) · Psychology (8 obras) · Computer Science (7 obras) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (7 obras) · Ordinary language philosophy (6 obras) · History (4 obras)