Situation Theory and Its Applications. Volume 1

Situation Theory grew out of attempts by Jon Barwise in the late 1970s to provide a semantics for 'naked-infinitive' perceptual reports such as 'Claire saw Jon run'. Barwise's intuition was that Claire didn't just see Jon, an individual, but Jon doing something, a situation. Situations are individuals having properties and standing in relations. A theory of situations would allow us to study and compare various types of situations or situation-like entitles, such as facts, events, and scenes. One of the central themes of situation theory of meaning and reference should be set within a general theory of information, one moreover that is rich enough to do justice to perception, communication, and thought. By now many people have contributed by the need to give a rigorous mathematical account of the principles of information that underwrite the theory.

John Perry is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, where he taught from 1974 to 2008, and from the University of California, Riverside, where he taught from 2008 to 2014. He has written books and articles on semantics (including pioneering work on situation semantics, with Jon Barwise), personal identity, the philosophy of language consciousness and other philosophical topics. He is the recipient of numerous awards for teaching and research, including honorary degrees from Doane College, the University of the Basque Country, and Bochum University. He is a researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI).