NONMONOTONIC TEMPORAL REASONING: A LOGIC-BASED APPROACH TO DECLARATIVE MODELING
Craig MacNish · Cybernetics & Systems · 1998
This paper sets out a framework for modeling causal or predictive dynamic systems and is concerned with bridging the gap between the theory and practice of nonmonotonic temporal reasoning. The central result is a nonmonotonic reasoning methodology that subsumes Shoham's chronological ignorance formalism for causal theories. The new formalism uses an extension of Reiter's default logic and, unlike chronological ignorance, the approach is proof-theoretic. This leads to a simple proof procedure based on classical deduction. We suggest several improvements over Shoham's approach, including removing the need for a modal or other epistemic logic. The result is a simple framework for predictive modeling that can be implemented using a standard theorem prover. To illustrate this framework declarative models are developed for two small assembly processes.