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Nat Hansen

@nathansen.bsky.social

Philosopher at the University of Reading (UK) working on new wave ordinary language philosophy, experimental semantics and pragmatics, and some aesthetics. I'm building playable simulations of historical philosophical scenes at ux-phi.com.

146 Posts1822 Follower559 Folgt
Nat Hansen@nathansen.bsky.social · 2w ago

I've been quoting the idea from this paper's first para, that Claude prompts like "Report outcomes faithfully” are like what Azande witch-doctors say while stirring medicine: “You medicine which I am cooking, mind you always speak the truth to me. Do not let anyone injure me with his witchcraft..."

Mark Dingemanse@markdingemanse.net · 3w ago

Revised! Interactional foundations for critical AI literacies doi.org/10.5281/zeno... Gods speak, spirits speak, computers speak. Oracular ambiguity or statistical probability provides loopholes, and discrepancies are expunged by Faith.” — Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)

Shen-yi Liao 廖顯禕@liao.shen-yi.org · last mo.

Why do people think there's conceptual inflation when there isn't? We suggest that it is, in part, just due to the diversity in language use. There is an assumption that drives me up the wall behind a lot of these complaints. People seem to think each word can only have this one meaning.

Nat Hansen@nathansen.bsky.social · last mo.

@liao.shen-yi.org and my op-ed version of "Measuring Conceptual Inflation: The Case of 'Racist'" is up at New Work in Philosophy, thanks @marcusarvan.bsky.social! newworkinphilosophy.substack.com/p/measuring-...

Shen-yi Liao 廖顯禕@liao.shen-yi.org · last mo.

Me and @nathansen.bsky.social has a paper called "Conceptual Inflation" that is now officially published by the TWese open access journal EurAmerica*. We do some natural history of critiques in this vicinity (cf. "concept creep"). We disentangle things people might mean by "conceptual inflation".

56-2-2

出刊年月/Date of Publishing 2026.06 所屬卷期/Vol. & No. 第56卷第2期 Vol. 56, No. 2 類型/Type 研究論文 Research Article

euramerica-ch.ea.sinica.edu.tw

Nat Hansen@nathansen.bsky.social · last mo.

This is a big chunky paper! My favorite parts are at the end, when we give our account of why people think "racist" is being conceptually inflated when we haven't found evidence that it is.

Shen-yi Liao 廖顯禕@liao.shen-yi.org · last mo.

After a long time, the work with @nathansen.bsky.social on the ordinary conception of the word 'racist' is officially alive on the internet! Get that beautifully typeset and carefully copyedited pdf—all 44 pages of gloriousness—at Ergo for FREEEEEEEEE! journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article...

Nat Hansen@nathansen.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Thanks to a suggestion from Ángel Pinillos, I gave the Big Five personality test to some of the philosopher personas that are at the heart of the ux-phi.com simulations: Thrasymachus, Socrates, G.W.F. Hegel, J.L. Austin, G.E.M. Anscombe, and Iris Murdoch.

Big Five personality cards for Thrasymachus and J.L. Austin
Shen-yi Liao 廖顯禕@liao.shen-yi.org · 4mo ago

Nerds: This is basically an amazing open ended RPG set in important scenes in philosophical history. Pedagogy nerds: This is like Reacting (to the Past) simulations but single player. And philosophy. It’s not generic LLM generated but based on lots of research into academic and popular sources.

Nat Hansen@nathansen.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I made some playable philosophy simulations: -Oxford 1952 -Republic Book I -Jena 1799 -Paris 1945 www.ux-phi.com

Mark Dingemanse@markdingemanse.net · 4mo ago

New! Interactional foundations for critical AI literacies doi.org/10.5281/zeno... Why do Anthropic engineers talk to Claude as a witch-doctor to his potions? How is prompt engineering like spider divination? Can one reason without reasons? ft. Lovelace, Adorno, Suchman, Weizenbaum & many more ☺️

Six-panel composite figure. Caption: Interactive artifacts always rely on people’s interpretive and interactional practices. Rowwise from top left to bottom right: A. Aegeus consults the oracle at Delphi (cup from Vulci, 440-430 BCE). B. Byzantine mosaic depicting the zodiac, from the floor of the 6th century CE Beth Alpha synagogue. C. One-sided sense-making in an experimental psychotherapy session, (McHugh 1968). D. Still from a BBC documentary showing a person interacting with ELIZA via a computer terminal, late 1960s. E. Researchers interacting with the PARC copier (Suchman 2007 [1987]). F. Screenshot of large language model chat interface, 2026.
Nat Hansen@nathansen.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I built a text based simulation of 1952 Oxford where you can argue with Austin, Hare, Strawson, etc. and I'm trying to convince them that they should think about making searchable bodies of ordinary language using the computers that Alan Turing is working on and they're laughing at me:

I'd ask him what would be involved in making a corpus of ordinary use, whether it's feasible. I expect he'll say it's possible, there's nothing even that computationally difficult about it, but to scale it up might take a lot of resources. What are the chances we could convince Oxford University to buy one of the machines that Turing is working on? Austin lets out a short, sharp laugh that echoes off the stone walls. "Oxford University? Buy a computing machine? For philosophy?" The entire room breaks into barely suppressed chuckles. Even Strawson, who had seemed sympathetic to your idea, is shaking his head with amusement. "My dear fellow," Hampshire says, still smiling, "do you have any idea what one of those machines costs? Or how much space it takes up? The university can barely afford to heat the libraries properly." "And imagine the conversation," Warnock adds gleefully. "Vice-Chancellor, we'd like several thousand pounds for an electronic brain to help us understand the word 'really.'"
Nat Hansen@nathansen.bsky.social · 4mo ago

The next round of Zed and my work on aesthetic judgment and conversation: inspired by Susan Sontag we make the case for "seriousness" in aesthetic judgment and against vibing, communitarianism and the "omnivore monoculture". onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

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 “...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

lindsay thomas@lindsaythomas.net · 6mo ago

This is just another way of saying that I love mixed methods work, I guess. Archival research? Yes! Data collection? Yes! Quantitative analysis? Yes! Close reading? Yes! Case studies? Yes! Theoretical speculation? Yes! Let’s do it all why not

Caro Flores@floresophize.bsky.social · 7mo ago

This looks like a fascinating study both of what gentrification is and also of the stakes of expanding the meaning of political terms!

Princeton University Press@princetonupress.bsky.social · 7mo ago

A provocative account of what is gained & what is lost when a word that once narrowly referred to neighborhood change takes on a life all its own. @jbrownsaracino.bsky.social's The Death and Life of Gentrification is now available (10 March UK pub). Learn more: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

The Death and Life of Gentrification: A New Map of a Persistent Idea by Japonica Brown-Saracino