Summary: Point­Sensitive Circumscription
Eyal Amir
Department of Computer Science,
Gates Building, 2A wing
Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305­9020, USA
eyala@cs.stanford.edu
December 7, 1997
Abstract
A decade ago, Pointwise Circumscription was proposed as a tool
for formalizing common sense. In this paper, we revisit some of its
uses and examine some cases in which it does not yield the intended
behavior. Specifically, we explore the cases in which unsatisfiabil­
ity may result from the presence of multiple minimal models (for
McCarthy's Circumscription). Then, we present a form of circum­
scription, called Point­Sensitive Circumscription, that is a generaliza­
tion of McCarthy's Circumscription and Lifschitz's Generalized Point­
wise Circumscription. We illustrate how Point­Sensitive Circumscrip­
tion handles these cases without losing the control over selective fine­
grained variance of predicates and functions. Last, we compare the
two tools and their potential uses in formalizing Theories of Action.

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

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences