Editing Jon Barwise (section)

==Philosophical and logical work==

Barwise contended that, by being explicit about the context in which a [[proposition]] is made, the ''[[Situation semantics|situation]]'', many problems in the application of logic can be eliminated. He sought ''... to understand meaning and inference within a general theory of information, one that takes us outside the realm of sentences and relations between sentences of any language, natural or formal.'' In particular, he claimed that such an approach resolved the [[liar paradox]]. He made use of [[Peter Aczel]]'s [[non-well-founded set theory]] in understanding "[[Liar paradox|vicious circle]]s" of reasoning.

Barwise, along with his former colleague at Stanford [[John Etchemendy]], was the author of the popular logic textbook ''[[Language, Proof and Logic]]''. Unlike the ''[[Handbook of Mathematical Logic]]'', which was a survey of the state of the art of [[mathematical logic]] circa 1975, and of which he was the editor, this work targeted elementary logic.  The text is notable for including computer-aided homework problems, some of which provide visual representations of logical problems.  During his time at Stanford, he was also the first Director of the [[Symbolic Systems Program]], an interdepartmental degree program focusing on the relationships between cognition, language, logic, and computation. [[Symbolic Systems Program#Barwise Award for Distinguished Contributions to Symbolic Systems|The K. Jon Barwise Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Symbolic Systems Program]] has been given periodically since 2001.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://symsys.stanford.edu/viewing/htmldocument/13686 |title=K. Jon Barwise Award, Symbolic Systerms Program, Stanford University |access-date=2015-03-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170615233222/https://symsys.stanford.edu/viewing/htmldocument/13686 |archive-date=2017-06-15 |url-status=dead }}</ref>