Editing Jon Barwise

{{short description|American mathematician, philosopher and logician (1942–2000)}}
'''Kenneth Jon Barwise''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|b|ɑr|w|aɪ|z}}; June 29, 1942&nbsp;– March 5, 2000)<ref>{{cite web|author=Walsh, Eileen|title=Noted logician K. Jon Barwise dies|website=Stanford News Service|date=8 March 2000|url=http://news.stanford.edu/pr/00/000308barwise.html|access-date=29 March 2015|archive-date=17 June 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160617043655/http://news.stanford.edu/pr/00/000308barwise.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> was an American [[mathematician]], [[philosopher]] and [[logician]] who proposed some fundamental revisions to the way that [[logic]] is understood and used.

==Education and career==
He was born in [[Independence, Missouri]], to Kenneth T. and Evelyn Barwise.

A pupil of [[Solomon Feferman]] at [[Stanford University]], Barwise started his research in [[infinitary logic]]. After positions as assistant professor at [[Yale University]] and the [[University of Wisconsin–Madison|University of Wisconsin]], during which time his interests turned to [[natural language]], he returned to Stanford in 1983 to direct the [[Center for the Study of Language and Information]] (CSLI).  He began teaching at [[Indiana University Bloomington|Indiana University]] in 1990. He was elected a Fellow of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] in 1999.<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter B|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterB.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=May 20, 2011}}</ref>

In his last year, Barwise was invited to give the 2000 [[Gödel Lecture]]; he died prior to the lecture.<ref>{{Cite journal|date=2000|title=2000 Annual Meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/421070|journal=The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic|volume=6|issue=3|pages=361–396|doi=10.2307/421070|jstor=421070|issn=1079-8986|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

==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>

==Selected publications==
*Barwise, K. J. (1975) ''[[iarchive:admissiblesetsst00barw_0|Admissible Sets and Structures. An Approach to Definability Theory]]'' {{ISBN|0-387-07451-1}}
*Barwise, K. J. & [[John Perry (philosopher)|Perry, John]] (1983) [[iarchive:situationsattitu00barw|''Situations and Attitudes''.]] Cambridge: MIT Press. {{ISBN|1-57586-193-3}}<ref>{{cite journal|author=Butterfield, Jerry|title=Review of ''Situations and Attitudes'' by Jon Barwise and John Perry|journal=[[The Philosophical Quarterly]]|date=April 1986|volume=36|issue=143|pages=292–296|doi=10.2307/2219775|jstor=2219775}}</ref>
*Barwise, K. J. & Etchemendy, J. (1987) ''[[iarchive:liaressayontruth0000barw|The Liar: An Essay in Truth and Circularity]]'' {{ISBN|0-19-505944-1}}<ref>{{cite journal|author=Moss, Lawrence S.|title=Review of ''The Liar: An essay in truth and circularity'' by Jon Barwise and John Etchemendy|journal=Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.)|year=1989|volume=20|issue=2|pages=216–225|url=https://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1989-20-02/S0273-0979-1989-15770-4/S0273-0979-1989-15770-4.pdf|doi=10.1090/S0273-0979-1989-15770-4|doi-access=free}}</ref>
*Barwise, K. J. (1988) ''[[iarchive:situationinlogic0000barw|The Situation in Logic]]'' {{ISBN|0-937073-32-6}}
*Barwise, K. J. & Moss, L. (1996) ''[[iarchive:viciouscircleson0000barw_b0k1|Vicious Circles. On the Mathematics of Non-Wellfounded Phenomena]]'' {{ISBN|1-57586-008-2}}<ref>{{cite journal|author=Rutten, J. J. M. M.|title=Review of ''Vicious circles: On the mathematics of non-wellfounded phenomena'' by Jon Barwise and Larry Moss|journal=Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.)|year=1998|volume=35|issue=1|pages=69–75|url=https://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1998-35-01/S0273-0979-98-00735-6/S0273-0979-98-00735-6.pdf|doi=10.1090/s0273-0979-98-00735-6|doi-access=free}}</ref>
*Barwise, K, J. & Seligman, J. (1997) ''[[iarchive:informationflowl0000barw|Information Flow: the Logic of Distributed Systems]]'' {{ISBN|0-521-58386-1}}
*Barwise, K. J. & Etchemendy, J. (2002) ''[[iarchive:languageprooflog00barw|Language, Proof and Logic]]'' {{ISBN|1-57586-374-X}}
*Barwise, K. J. Editor (1977) ''Handbook of Mathematical Logic''. xi+1165 pages {{ISBN|0-7204-2285-X}}
*Barwise, J. & Feferman, S. Editors (1985) ''Model-Theoretic Logics''. x+893 pages {{ISBN|0-387-90936-2}}

==See also==
* [[Barwise Prize]]
* [[Barwise compactness theorem]]
* [[Slingshot argument]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*[https://www.math.ucla.edu/~asl/bsl/0604/0604-004.ps ''In Memoriam'': Kenneth Jon Barwise by Solomon Feferman] ''The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic'' vol. 6(4) Dec. 2000, pp505–8 ([[PostScript]])
*{{MathGenealogy|id=9274|title=K. Jon (Kenneth) Barwise}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barwise, Jon}}
[[Category:1942 births]]
[[Category:2000 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century American mathematicians]]
[[Category:20th-century American philosophers]]
[[Category:20th-century American essayists]]
[[Category:American male essayists]]
[[Category:American male non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:American philosophy academics]]
[[Category:Deaths from colorectal cancer in the United States]]
[[Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences]]
[[Category:Indiana University faculty]]
[[Category:Mathematical logicians]]
[[Category:Mathematicians from Missouri]]
[[Category:American philosophers of logic]]
[[Category:American philosophers of mathematics]]
[[Category:American philosophy writers]]
[[Category:Stanford University alumni]]
[[Category:Stanford University Department of Philosophy faculty]]
[[Category:University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty]]
[[Category:Writers from Independence, Missouri]]
[[Category:Yale University faculty]]
[[Category:20th-century American male writers]]