Nonmonotonic reasoning in the framework of situation calculus (Q1182155)

The reviewed article is a revised version of a conference paper [the author, Principles of knowledge representation and reasoning, Proc. 1st Int. Conf., Toronto/Can. 1989, 11-20 (1989; Zbl 0709.68087)]. It belongs to a series of papers responding to a claim of \textit{S. Hanks} and \textit{D. McDermott} [Artif. Intell. 33, 379-412 (1987; Zbl 0654.68107)] that, e.g., circumscription and default logic are inherently incapable of representing certain kind of default reasoning. As an example Hanks and McDermott consider a simple problem of reasoning about actions (the Yale shooting problem) and attempt to solve the related frame problem, i.e. the problem of specifying those facts that are unchanged by each action, by applying nonmonotonic logics. They provide situation calculus axioms for the problem using a frame axiom saying that if a fact holding in a situation is not abnormal with respect to an action in the situation, then the fact holds in a situation resulting from performing the action in the situation. The idea is that the frame axiom captures the facts that remain unchanged when considering only the models of the axioms where the abnormalities are minimized. Hanks and McDermott point out that the axioms for the Yale shooting problem have an unintended minimal model. They conclude that inferences permitted by circumscription, i.e. sentences true in every minimal model of the axioms, are much weaker than the intended inferences. They demonstrate that a similar problem arises when using default logic. In the reviewed article it is argued that unintended minimal models in the Yale shooting problem can be eliminated by changing the notion of minimality slightly. The idea is that, while minimizing abnormalities, the relation corresponding to facts holding in situations is held constant across the various models being compared and denotations of situation-valued functions are allowed to vary instead. In addition, an axiom is needed to ensure that every consistent situation is included in the domain of discourse. This axiom is straightforward to state in the simple problem considered by Hanks and McDermott. In the general case the existence of situations axiom is given using circumscription of a second- order predicate resulting to a third-order formula. The author states a correctness criterion for the Yale shooting problem and shows that his solution satisfies it. Using two additional examples concerning ramifications and reasoning backwards in time the author compares his approach to other approaches based on minimal models where the notion of minimality is changed more radically (chronological minimization) or the axioms for the problem are rewritten to represent causality explicitly (causal minimization).