| Peter W. Hanks |
| Associate Professor |
| Department of Philosophy |
| University of Minnesota |
| pwhanks@umn.edu |
| Home |
| Research |
| CV |
| Teaching |
| Papers | |
| "First-Person Propositions," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, forthcoming, (pdf). | |
| A first-person proposition is a proposition that is inaccessible to anyone other than a single subject, in the sense that no one other than that subject can assert or believe that proposition. Many philosophers are skeptical about first-person propositions, despite the fact that they would solve problems about de se belief. Here I show how to make sense of first-person propositions without relying on first-person Fregean senses or individual essences or haecceities. The view is an extension of the account of propositions I develop in "The Content-Force Distinction" and "Structured Propositions as Types". According to this account, propositions are types of actions we perform when we make assertions or form beliefs. | |
| "Early Wittgenstein on Judgment," in Wittgenstein's Early Philosophy, ed. Jose Zalabardo, Oxford University Press, forthcoming in 2012, (pdf). | |
In 'Notes on Logic' and the Tractatus Wittgenstein put forward different accounts of judgment sentences, both of which are attempts at finding a way through a dilemma. On one hand, ' A judges p ' is not a truth-function of p and it cannot express a relation between a subject and something named by p , since p is not a name for anything. On the other, p must occur as a complete sentence in the analysis of ' A judges that p '. It cannot be broken up into its components in the manner of Russell's multiple relation theory of judgment. In this paper I show how the different ways in which Wittgenstein tried to reconcile these competing demands are closely tied to the evolution of his views about elementary sentences from 'Notes on Logic' to the Tractatus. |
|
| "Structured Propositions as Types," Mind 120, Jan. 2011, 11-52, (pdf). | |
In this paper I defend an account of the nature of propositional content according to which the proposition expressed by a declarative sentence is a certain type of action a speaker performs in uttering that sentence. On this view the semantic contents of proper names turn out to be types of reference acts. By carefully individuating these types it is possible to provide new solutions to Frege's puzzles about names in identity and belief sentences. |
|
| "Recent Work on Propositions," Philosophy Compass 4, March 2009, 1-18 (link). | |
| Propositions, the abstract, truth-bearing contents of sentences and beliefs, continue to be the focus of healthy debates in philosophy of language and metaphysics. This article is a critical survey of work on propositions since the mid-90s, with an emphasis on newer work from the past decade. Topics to be covered include a substitution puzzle about propositional designators, two recent arguments against propositions, and two new theories about the nature of propositions. | |
| "Conceiving of Pain," (with Brendan O'Sullivan), Dialogue 47, 2008, 351-76. | |
| This paper is a response to Kripke's modal argument against the mind-brain identity thesis. A popular response to this argument involves challenging the inference from conceivability to metaphysical possibility. Here we explore the options for an identity theorist who does not wish to challenge this inference. Such a theorist can pose a dilemma for the modal argument: either the term 'pain' is rigid or it is not. If not, then a crucial premise of the modal argument fails. If it is rigid then the most plausible semantics for 'pain' treats it as a natural kind term like 'water' or 'aluminum'. That is, if 'pain' is rigid, then it is a natural kind term and hence pain itself is a natural kind. But if pain is a natural kind then it has its microstructure essentially. This means that anything that lacks this microstructure is not pain, even if it feels like pain. The possibility of phenomena that feel like pain but which are not pain can then be used to explain away the apparent conceivability of pain without the associated brain state. | |
| "A Dilemma About Necessity," Erkenntnis 68, Jan. 2008, 129-48 (pdf). | |
The problem of the source of necessity is the problem of explaining what makes necessary truths necessarily true. Simon Blackburn has presented a dilemma intended to show that any reductive, realist account of the source of necessity is bound to fail. Although Blackburn's dilemma faces serious problems, reflection on the form of explanations of necessities reveals that a revised dilemma succeeds in defeating any reductive account of the source of necessity. The lesson is that necessity is metaphysically primitive and irreducible. |
|
| "The Content-Force Distinction," Philosophical Studies 46, May 2007, 141-164 (pdf). | |
| Frege's distinction between content and force is the idea that there is nothing assertive about propositional content. For Frege, assertions are actions in which people put propositions forward as true. Propositions themselves are prior to and independent of these actions. I think this is a mistake, and that in order to make sense of propositional content we must individuate propositions in terms of concepts of force. I argue that there are three different kinds of propositions: assertive propositions, interrogative propositions and imperative propositions. These different kinds of propositions have different kinds of satisfaction conditions and they serve as the contents of sentences in different moods. In this paper I give three arguments against the content-force distinction and I propose an account of what these different kinds of propositions are. | |
| "How Wittgenstein Defeated Russell's Multiple Relation Theory of Judgment," Synthese 154, Jan. 2007, 121-146, (pdf). | |
| In 1913 Wittgenstein raised an objection to Russell’s multiple relation of judgment that had a profound and lasting influence on Russell’s later philosophical work. The objection has been widely interpreted to concern type restrictions on the constituents of judgment. I argue that this interpretation is mistaken and that Wittgenstein’s objection is in fact a form of the problem of the unity of the proposition. (An earlier version of this paper circulated under the title 'Wittgenstein's Objection to Russell's Multiple Relation Theory of Judgment'.) | |
| Articles and Reviews | |
| Review of Belief about the Self: A Defense of the Property Theory of Content, by Neil Feit, Analysis Reviews 69, July 2009, 570-2. | |
| Critical Study of Beyond Rigidity, by Scott Soames, Noûs 40, March 2006, 184-203. | |
| In his excellent recent book Beyond Rigidity (OUP, 2002) Scott Soames picks up where Saul Kripke left off in Naming and Necessity by presenting a novel and ingenious argument for Millianism about proper names, the view that the meaning of a name is exhausted by its referent. Soames' argument depends on a thesis about semantic content: (very roughly) a proposition p is the semantic content of a non-context sensitive sentence s if and only if in any normal context in which a competent speaker uses s literally, the speaker asserts and conveys p. I argue that this thesis is false in the right-to-left direction (the direction Soames needs for his argument). There are possible cases in which speakers invariably assert and convey a proposition p by uttering a sentence s, but p is not part of the semantic content of s. Intuitively, the idea is that it is possible for facts about competence to require that whenever speakers utter a sentence they assert a proposition that is not part of the semantic content of that sentence. I also argue that there are important unclarities in the general conception of semantics in which Soames sets his views on proper names. | |
| "Questions," Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd Edition, Macmillan, 2006, vol. 10, 32-37. | |
| Addendum to "Propositions," Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd Edition, Macmillan, 2006, vol. 8, 90-91. | |
| Review of Donald Davidson: Meaning, Truth, Language, and Reality, by Ernest Lepore and Kirk Ludwig, International Philosophical Quarterly 46, June 2006, 245-246. | |
| Review of Reference Without Referents by R.M. Sainsbury, Disputatio 1, May 2006, 368-375. | |
| Review of The Mechanics of Meaning by David Hyder, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, April 2004. | |