nat hansen
Photo by Justin Khoo
Nat Hansen
Associate Professor of Philosophy
University of Reading
I work in philosophy of language, with a focus on the intersection of ordinary language philosophy and experimental approaches to meaning. I have interests in aesthetics, the history of analytic philosophy, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. I’m an editor at Mind & Language.
Upcoming Events
MENTaL (Mind, Epistemology, Neuroscience, Thought, and Language)
UC Davis·November 6, 2026
Experimental Philosophy in China
Xiamen University·November 12, 2026
Colloquium
University of Bristol·2027 TBD
Social Philosophy of Language Workshop
University of Düsseldorf·March 10-11, 2027
Recent & Forthcoming Publications
Book
under contractMust We Measure What We Mean? Experiments in New Wave Ordinary Language Philosophy, Oxford University Press.
Articles & Chapters
2026Grindrod, J., Porter, J.D., and Hansen, N. "Distributional Semantics, Holism, and the Instability of Meaning", in H. Cappelen and R. Sterken (eds.), Communicating with A.I., Oxford University Press.
forthcomingHansen, N., Vilar-Lluch, S., Lepoutre, M., and Borg, E. "Legal Interpretation, Corpus Linguistics, and Waismann's Challenge to Ordinary Language Philosophy", in J. Ulatowski, D. Weijers, and J. Sytsma (eds.), Experimental Philosophy and Corpus Methods, Bloomsbury.
2026Hansen, N., Liao, S. "Measuring Conceptual Inflation: The Case of 'Racist'", Ergo, 13(21), 620–663.
2026Liao, S. and Hansen, N. "Conceptual Inflation", EurAmerica, 56(2), 203–232.
2026Hansen, N., Adams, Z. "The Very Idea of Seriousness", European Journal of Philosophy.
2024Hansen, N., Adams, Z. "The Hope of Agreement: Against Vibing Accounts of Aesthetic Judgment", MIND, 133(531), 742–760.
2024Hansen, N., Francis, K., and Greening, H. "Socratic Questionnaires", Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, 5, 331–374.
2024Lepoutre, M., Vilar-Lluch, S., Borg, E., and Hansen, N. "What Is Hate Speech? The Case for a Corpus Approach", Criminal Law and Philosophy, 18, 397–430.
2023Porter, J.D., and Hansen, N. "A Quantitative History of Ordinary Language Philosophy", Synthese, 201(225), 1–36.
2023Liao, S., and Hansen, N. "'Extremely Racist' and 'Incredibly Sexist': An Empirical Response to the Charge of Conceptual Inflation", Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 9(1), 72–94.
2023Zahorec, M., Bishop, R., Hansen, N., Schwenkler, J., and Sytsma, J. "Linguistic Corpora and Ordinary Language", in D. Bordonaba-Plou (ed.), Experimental Philosophy of Language, Springer.