Barwise and Situation Semantics Workshop

The late Jon Barwise, a former professor of Mathematics and of Philosophy

at Stanford, was, among many other things, the first director of the

Center for the Study of Language and Information. His groundbreaking book

with Stanford philosophy professor John Perry, Situations and Attitudes,

appeared some twenty years ago (in 1983), launching situation semantics, a

semantic framework that analyzes context in terms of situations.

A day-long commemorative workshop will be held at CSLI on 26 June, at the

end of the international CONTEXT '03 conference. The workshop, which will

take place in Cordura 100, the room now named in Barwise's memory,

provides a forum for works addressing the following question: What

problems, issues and/or insights connected with situation semantics and

Barwise's ideas motivate research today? And how?

Several former collaborators of Barwise will speak at the workshop,

including John Perry and Keith Devlin, both of CSLI.