A Proper Ontology for Reasoning about Knowledge and Planning.
Leora Morgenstern · 1994
: Research on the knowledge preconditions problems for actions and plans has sought to answer the following questions: (1) When does an agent know enough to perform an action? (2) When can an agent execute a multi-agent plan? It has been assumed that the choice of temporal ontology is not crucial. This paper shows that this assumption is wrong and that it is very difficult to develop within existing ontologies theories that can answer both questions (1) and (2). A theory of linear time does not support a solution to the knowledge preconditions problem for action sequences. A theory of branching time solves this problem, but does not support a solution to the knowledge preconditions problem for multi-agent plan sequences. Linear time supports prediction, but does not support hypothetical reasoning; branching time supports hypothetical reasoning, but does not support prediction. Since both prediction and hypothetical reasoning are essential components of the solution to the knowledge pr...