An atemporal frame problem

Given some change in the world, the frame problem is the problem of determining that most things in the world haven't changed. Since change is generally taken to mean \change over time," the frame problem is generally assumed to be a problem of temporal reasoning, and most examples of the frame problem are couched in terms of the eeects of actions. In this paper, I point out the fallacy underlying this approach, and demonstrate something very much like the frame problem that is completely independent of time: the counterfactual validity problem. I show that this \atemporal frame problem" proves damning for certain approaches to solving the frame problem. However , exploration of the diierences between these two problems may help to identify more promising research directions. 1 The Frame Problem General agreement on a deenition of thèframe problem' is harder to come by than the Holy Grail; however, current wisdom generally has it that it concerns the irrelevance of most changes to most states. That is, unless we know otherwise, most of the properties of the world about which we're likely to reason haven't changed since the last time we checked. Further, since change is generally taken to mean \change over time," the frame problem is often assumed to be a problem of temporal reasoning, and most examples of the frame problem are couched in terms of the eeects of actions. In this paper, I wish to point out the fallacy underlying this approach, and to demonstrate something very much like the frame problem that is completely independent of time. I hope that such a discovery will open the way for new approaches to solving the frame problem that do not depend exclusively or primarily on the structure of time. To begin, I should describe what I believe the frame problem is. Given some change in the world, the frame problem is the problem of determining that most things haven't changed. Say, for example, that I move a white table from the dining room into the living room. Now, we'd like to conclude that this table is still white. But here we are faced with the frame problem. There are many facts that were true before the move, and some of them|the location of the table, the number of pieces of furniture in the living room|have changed,