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About Daniel Hoek  CV  E-mail

I am a philosophy professor at Virginia Tech, writing about such topics as loose talk, questions, probability and infinity. Before coming to Tech, I was the Louis Skolnick postdoc in philosophy at Princeton, and did my PhD at NYU under Cian Dorr. I am also a regular visitor of the Institut Jean Nicod in Paris.

I’m currently working on a book about the inquisitive mind, exploring the role that questions play in shaping our thoughts and guiding our decision making (interview). In philosophy of language, I’m known for my theory of metaphor and loose talk as manifestations of conversational exculpature. I’ve also done work on a smattering of other subjects, and received a lot of attention recently for my work on Newton’s First Law of Motion, which argues the law has been widely misunderstood (Scientific American,   cool video,   world-wide press coverage).

I’m part of VTLx, a group of linguistics-adjacent faculty at VT. With Sam Berstler, I organised the Revisiting the Common Ground workshops at Princeton, and I used to help organise the weekly New York Philosophy of Language Workshops. I love building philosophical community through department t-shirts and other means. When it’s rainy out or I can’t sleep, I enjoy trying my hand at translating Dutch children’s rhymes.

In English-speaking contexts, I pronounce my last name the same way as Captain Hook’s, rhyming “Hoek” with “book” and “crook.” If you want to pronounce it the Dutch way, use a longer “oo” sound, so that “Dr. Hoek” becomes “Dr. Who” with a K appended at the end. (And if you pronounce it any other way, that’s also fine: I’m not particular about it.)

Video by VT’s Andrew Adkins