Peter Hanks

Peter Hanks is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota. He specializes in philosophy of language, history of analytic philosophy, Wittgenstein studies, and metaphysics. He earned his PhD in Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002 and his BA from Princeton University in 1995.

His research primarily focuses on propositions, speech acts, reference, and truth, with significant contributions to understanding the relationship between content and force in language. His work engages deeply with Wittgenstein's philosophy and contemporary issues in semantics and pragmatics.

Professor Hanks has published extensively on propositional content and assertion, with recent works examining cancellation phenomena, singular propositions, and critical engagements with philosophical interpretations of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. His publications demonstrate consistent exploration of how linguistic acts create meaning and reference.