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Artificial Intelligence
Volume 113, Issues 1-2, September 1999, Pages 87-123
 
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doi:10.1016/S0004-3702(99)00058-2    How to Cite or Link Using DOI (Opens New Window)
Copyright © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

A logic of universal causation

Hudson TurnerE-mail The Corresponding Author

Department of Computer Science, University of Minnesota at Duluth, Duluth, MN 55812, USA

Received 13 August 1997;
revised 13 August 1999.
Available online 4 November 1999.

Abstract

For many commonsense reasoning tasks associated with action domains, only a relatively simple kind of causal knowledge is required—knowledge of the conditions under which facts are caused. This note introduces a modal nonmonotonic logic for representing causal knowledge of this kind, relates it to other nonmonotonic formalisms, and shows that a variety of causal theories of action can be expressed in it, including the recently proposed causal action theories of Lin. The new logic extends the causal theories formalism of McCain and Turner, and provides a more adequate semantic account of it. A useful subset of the logic has a concise translation into classical propositional logic, and so can be used for automated planning and reasoning about action. A larger subset is closely related to logic programming under the answer set semantics, yielding another approach to automated reasoning.

Author Keywords: Reasoning about actions; Causal logic; Nonmonotonic logic


Artificial Intelligence
Volume 113, Issues 1-2, September 1999, Pages 87-123
 
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