John W. Etchemendy | |
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| Born | 1952 (age 73–74) Reno, Nevada, U.S. |
| Education | |
| Education | University of Nevada, Reno (BA,MA) Stanford University (PhD) |
| Doctoral advisor | John Perry |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Analytic philosophy |
| Doctoral students | Sun-Joo Shin |
| Main interests | Logic,philosophy of language |
John William Etchemendy (born 1952) is an American logician and philosopher who served asStanford University's twelfthProvost. He succeededJohn L. Hennessy to the post on September 1, 2000 and stepped down on January 31, 2017.
John Etchemendy received his bachelor's and master's degrees at theUniversity of Nevada, Reno, before earning his PhD inphilosophy at Stanford in 1982.
He has been a faculty member in Stanford's Department of Philosophy since 1983, prior to which he was a faculty member in the Philosophy Department atPrinceton University. He is also a faculty member of Stanford's Symbolic Systems Program and a senior researcher at theCenter for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford.
At Stanford, Etchemendy served as director of the Center for the Study of Language and Information from 1990 to 1993, senior associate dean in the School of Humanities and Sciences from 1993 to 1997, and chair of the Department of Philosophy from 1998 to 2000.
He is a member of the American Philosophical Association, on the editorial boards ofSynthese andPhilosophia Mathematica, and a former editor of theJournal of Symbolic Logic. His wife is the writerNancy Etchemendy and they have one son Max Etchemendy.
Etchemendy's research interests includelogic,semantics and thephilosophy of language. He has challenged orthodox views on the central notions of truth,logical consequence andlogical truth. His most well-known book,The Concept of Logical Consequence (1990, 1999), criticizesAlfred Tarski's widely accepted analysis of logical consequence.The Liar: An essay on truth and circularity (1987, 1992), co-authored with the lateJon Barwise, develops a formal account of theliar paradox modelled using a version ofset theory incorporating the so-called Anti-Foundation Axiom.
Etchemendy's recent work has focused on the role of diagrams and other nonlinguistic forms of representation in reasoning. His latest book, written with Jon Barwise and Dave Barker-Plummer, isLanguage, Proof and Logic (2000, 2006), a popular introductory logic textbook. He has also developed numerous pieces of instructional software, includingTuring's World,Tarski's World,Fitch, andHyperproof, software that allows computers to support the reasoning process.
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| Preceded by | Provost of Stanford University 2000–2017 | Succeeded by |
