A Decision-Theoretic Abductive Basis for Planning*
David Pooletand, Keiji Kanazawa · 1994
This paper presents a coherent synthesis of logic and decision theory and shows how it can be used. We allow an axiomatization of the world in definite clauses from a set of assumables. These assumables are parti-tioned into the set of controllable assumables and uncontrollable assumables. The uncon-trollable assumables have probabilities asso-ciated with them. The logic Mlows multiple concurrent actions and lets us predict the ef-fects for both the uncontrolled and controlled cases. We show an example of its use and ar-gue that abduction, particularly probabilis-tic abduction, lays an important groundwork for decision theoretic and probabilistic plan-ning. The main empirical claim is that un-certainty and choices can be represented as independent exogenous events using logic to give the consequences of the events, resulting in a powerful and yet simple representation. 1