Causality in commonsense reasoning about actions
Norman McCain · 1997
In this dissertation, we investigate the role of knowledge in commonsense reasoning about action and change. We define a language in which a relatively simple form of knowledge is expressed. Using this language, we describe a novel approach to formalizing action domains as causal including domains that involve concurrency, nondeterminism, and things that change by themselves. We show that a subclass of theories can be translated into propositional logic by a generalization of Clark''s completion procedure for logic programs. Finally, we describe an implemented approach to automated query answering and satisfiability planning which is based on this translation.