Summary: Formalizing Action using Set Theory and
modified Pointwise Circumscription
Eyal Amir
Department of Computer Science,
Gates Building, 2A wing
Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305­9020, USA
eyala@cs.stanford.edu
April 15, 1997
Abstract
We present an action formalism that uses Zermelo--Frankel Set
Theory and a modified version of Pointwise Circumscription, to cap­
ture the idea of solve the Frame Problem one situation at a time. We
show that the formalization has the semantics of [LR94], and that
using a set of Allowed­Situations lets us develop a theory for the
Missionaries and Cannibals Problem (MCP), and carry out reasoning
both forward and backwards in time.
1 Introduction
One of the dominating directions of research in formalizing theories of action
in the past several years, is the discretization of the space of situations, and
the solution of the Frame Problem one situation at a time. This idea takes

Source: Amir, Eyal - Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences