John Perry (philosopher)

He was co-host of Philosophy Talk, a nationally syndicated radio program which he co-founded with Kenneth Taylor in 2004. He is also part of the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI)—an independent research center founded in 1983.

In his 2001 book Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness, Perry argues for what he calls "antecedent physicalism", according to which physicalism is antecedently taken to be a plausible and reasonable position, provided that there are no better rival theories. Thus, Perry defends a version of type physicalism against three major philosophical arguments for dualism: the zombie argument, the knowledge argument, and the modal argument.

He was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize in 1999. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Perry also produces non-technical work that reaches a wider audience, such as his humorous 1996 online essay entitled "Structured Procrastination". Perry was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in Literature for this essay in 2011. It states that "[t]o be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that's even more important".

In logic, Perry and Jon Barwise are known for discussion of the slingshot argument, especially in their 1981 article "Semantic Innocence and Uncompromising Situations".

In 1979, Perry published "The Problem of the Essential Indexical" in which he combined his work on philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. Essential indexicals (I, here, and now) are parts of language that cannot be paraphrased away. They are seen as locating beliefs and are essential to understand the speaker's belief. Perry presents a now famous example to illustrate his point:

Perry's 1978 book A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality deals with standard problems in the theory of personal identity in the form of a dialogue between a mortally wounded university professor, Gretchen Weirob, and her two friends, Sam Miller and Dave Cohen. The views represented include those of Bernard Williams, John Locke, and Derek Parfit. The format of associating different philosophical positions with different characters in a dialogue recalls David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

John Richard Perry (born 1943) is Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Stanford University and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of California, Riverside. He has made significant contributions to philosophy in the fields of philosophy of language, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. He is known primarily for his work on situation semantics (together with Jon Barwise), reflexivity, indexicality, personal identity, and self-knowledge.

John Perry was born in Lincoln, Nebraska on January 16, 1943. He received his B.A. in philosophy from Doane College in 1964. And he received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Cornell University in 1968 with a dissertation on "Identity." The latter was taken under the supervision of Sydney Shoemaker.