Dr Nat Hansen

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+44 (0) 118 378 6993
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Associate Professor
- Visiting Speaker Co-Coordinator
- Co-Director, Reading Centre for Cognition Research
Areas of interest
Philosophy of Language (contextualism, experimental semantics and pragmatics, the meaning of color terms)
Postgraduate supervision
I am happy to supervise doctoral research in any of the following areas: any topic in philosophy of language (especially contextualism), contextualism in epistemology, the role of experiments in philosophy and semantics and pragmatics, the philosophy of J.L. Austin and ordinary language philosophy.
Teaching
Undergraduate
- Speech Attacks: Bullshit, Lies, Propaganda
- Philosophy of Language
- Mental Machines
Research centres and groups
Background
Nat received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 2010 and has held postdoctoral research fellowships at Umeå University in Sweden and at the Institut Jean-Nicod in Paris. His research concerns the intersection of philosophy of language, linguistics and psychology, with a focus on experimental evidence for semantic and pragmatic theories, the nature of context sensitivity, and the meaning of color terms.
In 2016-2017, he was an external faculty fellow at Stanford University's Humanities Center, in 2018 he was a visiting scholar at Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), and in summers 2021–2023 he is a Humboldt Research Fellow. (CSLI).
Websites/blogs
Please view my personal website
Publications
- Hansen, N. and Adams, Z. (2023) The hope of agreement: against vibing accounts of aesthetic judgment. Mind ISSN: 1460-2113
- Porter, J. and Hansen, N. (2023) A quantitative history of ordinary language philosophy. Synthese , 201 (6). ISSN: 1573-0964 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04187-2
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Lepoutre, M.
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Vilar-Lluch, S.
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Borg, E.
ORCID: 0000-0003-2725-9568 , Hansen, N. (2023) What is hate speech? The case for a corpus approach. Criminal Law and Philosophy ISSN: 1871-9805 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11572-023-09675-7
- Liao, S. and Hansen, N. (2023) 'Extremely racist' and 'incredibly sexist': an empirical response to the charge of conceptual inflation. Journal of the American Philosophical Association , 9 (1). pp. 72-94. ISSN: 2053-4485 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/apa.2021.46
- Zahorec, M. , Bishop, R. , Hansen, N. , Schwenkler, J. , Sytsma, J. (2022) Linguistic corpora and ordinary language: on the dispute between Ryle and Austin about the use of 'voluntary', 'involuntary', 'voluntarily', and 'involuntarily'. In: Bordonaba-Plou, D. , (eds.) Experimental Philosophy of Language: Perspectives, Methods and Prospects. Springer
- Hansen, N. , Francis, K. , Greening, H. (2022) Socratic questionnaires. Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy. Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy
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Salomons, T.
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Harrison, R.
ORCID: 0000-0003-3674-9622 , Hansen, N. , Stazicker, J. , Sorensen, A. , Thomas, P. , Borg, E.
ORCID: 0000-0003-2725-9568 (2022) Is pain “all in your mind”? Examining the general public’s views of pain. Review of Philosophy and Psychology , 13 pp. 683-698. ISSN: 1878-5158 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13164-021-00553-6
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Borg, E.
ORCID: 0000-0003-2725-9568 , Fisher, S. , Hansen, N. , Harrison, R.
ORCID: 0000-0003-3674-9622 , Ravindran, D. , Salomons, T. , Wilkinson, H. (2021) Pain priors, polyeidism, and predictive power: a preliminary investigation into individual differences in our ordinary thought about pain. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics , 42 (3-4). pp. 113-135. ISSN: 1573-1200 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11017-021-09552-1
- Hansen, N. (2021) Metalinguistic proposals. Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy , 64 (1-2). pp. 1-19. ISSN: 1502-3923 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2019.1658628
- Hansen, N. , Porter, J. , Francis, K. (2021) A corpus study of 'know': on the verification of philosophers' frequency claims about language. Episteme , 18 (2). pp. 242-268. ISSN: 1750-0117 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/epi.2019.15
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Borg, E.
ORCID: 0000-0003-2725-9568 , Fisher, S.
ORCID: 0000-0003-1115-6134 , Hansen, N. , Scarafone, A. , Shardimgaliev, M. (2020) Applied philosophy of language. Ratio , 33. Ratio , 33 (4). ISSN: 1467-9329 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/rati.12269
- Adams, Z. and Hansen, N. (2020) The myth of the common-sense conception of colour. In: Marques, T. and Wikforss, Å. , (eds.) Shifting Concepts: The Philosophy and Psychology of Conceptual Variability. Oxford University Press pp. 106-127. ISBN: 9780198803331
- Hansen, N. (2020) "Nobody would really talk that way!": the critical project in contemporary ordinary language philosophy. Synthese , 197 (6). pp. 2433-2464. ISSN: 1573-0964 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1812-x
- Francis, K. , Hansen, N. , Beaman, P. (2019) Open and online experimental philosophy. University of Reading
- Borg, E. , Salomons, T. , Hansen, N. (2019) The meaning of pain expressions and pain communication. In: van Rysewyk, S. , (eds.) Meanings of Pain. , 2. Springer pp. 261-282. ISBN: 9783030241537 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24154-4_14
- Francis, K. , Beaman, P. , Hansen, N. (2019) Stakes, Scales, and Skepticism. Ergo , 6 (16). ISSN: 2330-4014 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.3998/ergo.12405314.0006.016
- Grindrod, J. , Andow, J. , Hansen, N. (2019) Third-person knowledge ascriptions: a crucial experiment for contextualism. Mind and Language , 34 (2). pp. 158-182. ISSN: 1468-0017 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/mila.12196
- Hansen, N. (2018) Just what is it that makes Travis's examples so different, so appealing?. The Philosophy of Charles Travis: Language, Thought, and Perception. Oxford University Press ISBN: 9780198783916
- Hansen, N. (2017) Must we measure what we mean?. Inquiry , 60 (8). pp. 785-815. ISSN: 1502-3923 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2017.1310669
- Hansen, N. and Chemla, E. (2017) Color adjectives, standards, and thresholds: an experimental investigation. Linguistics and Philosophy , 40 (3). pp. 239-278. ISSN: 1573-0549 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10988-016-9202-7
- Hansen, N. (2017) Color comparisons and interpersonal variation. Review of Philosophy and Psychology , 8 (4). pp. 809-826. ISSN: 1878-5158 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13164-016-0323-2
- Hansen, N. (2017) A new argument from interpersonal variation to subjectivism about color: a response to Gómez-Torrente. Noûs , 51 (2). pp. 421-428. ISSN: 1468-0068 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/nous.12103
- Hansen, N. (2015) Experimental philosophy of language. Oxford Handbooks Online. Oxford Handbooks Online | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935314.013.53
- Hansen, N. and Chemla, E. (2015) Linguistic experiments and ordinary language philosophy. Ratio , 28 (4). pp. 422-445. ISSN: 1467-9329 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/rati.12112
- Hansen, N. (2014) Contrasting cases. In: Beebe, J. , (eds.) Advances in experimental epistemology. Bloomsbury , London. pp. 71-95. ISBN: 9781472505316
- Hansen, N. (2014) Contemporary ordinary language philosophy. Philosophy compass , 9 (8). pp. 556-569. ISSN: 1747-9991 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12152
- Hansen, N. (2013) A slugfest of intuitions: contextualism and experimental design. Synthese , 190 (10). pp. 1771-1792. ISSN: 1573-0964 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0261-9
- Hansen, N. and Chemla, E. (2013) Experimenting on contextualism . Mind and Language , 28 (3). pp. 286-321. ISSN: 1468-0017 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/mila.12019
- Hansen, N. (2012) J. L. Austin and literal meaning. European Journal of Philosophy , 22 (4). pp. 617-632. ISSN: 1468-0378 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0378.2011.00510.x
- Hansen, N. (2012) On an alleged truth/falsity asymmetry in context shifting experiments. Philosophical Quarterly , 62 (248). pp. 530-545. ISSN: 1467-9213 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9213.2012.00059.x
- Hansen, N. (2011) Color adjectives and radical contextualism. Linguistics and Philosophy , 34 (3). pp. 201-221. ISSN: 1573-0549 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10988-011-9099-0