Explanation Closure, Action Closure and the Sandewall Test Suite for Reasoning about Change

Abstra t. Explanation losure (EC) axioms were previously introdu ed as a means of solving the frame problem. This paper provides a thorough demonstration of the power of EC ombined with a tion losure (AC) for reasoning about dynami worlds, by way of Sandewall's test suite of 12-or-so problems [29{31℄. Sandewall's problems range from the \Yale turkey shoot" (and variants) to the \stu y room" problem, and were intended as a test and hallenge for nonmonotoni logi s of a tion. The EC/AC-based solutions for the most part do not resort to nonmonotoni reasoning at all, yet yield the intuitively warranted inferen es in a dire t, transparent fashion. While there are good reasons for ultimately employing nonmonotoni or probabilisti logi s { e.g., pervasive un ertainty and the quali ation problem { this does show that the s ope of monotoni methods has been underestimated. Subsidiary purposes of the paper are to larify the intuitive status of EC axioms in relation to a tion e e t axioms; and to show how EC, previously formulated within the situation al ulus, an be applied within the framework of a temporal logi similar to Sandewall's \dis rete uent logi ", with some gains in larity.

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