Temporal Reasoning and Default Logics.

Abstract

This document presents axioms to represent some simple concepts in temporal reasoning: events occuring at points in time, facts holding true over time, events causing facts to begin, facts causing contradictory facts to cease, and facts tending to remain true unless explicitly forced to cease. To express this last notion the authors couch the axioms in a default logic: they alternatively consider the logics of McDermott and Doyle, of Reiter, and of McCarthy. This document defines precisely (through a computer program and its formal description) the conclusions its authors intend be drawn from these axioms, given a particular temporal state of affairs. They prove, however, that these conclusions are not deductions licensed by any of the above default logics. Further analysis leads to the conclusion that these logics are inherently incapable of representing this particular kind of default reasoning. (Author)

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 01, 1985
Accession Number
ADA162447

Entities

People

  • Drew McDermott
  • Steve Hanks

Organizations

  • Yale University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • C4I
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer Science
  • Electrical Engineering
  • Electronics
  • Information Processing
  • Information Systems
  • Intervals
  • Language
  • Military Research
  • Model Theory
  • Models
  • New York
  • Numbers
  • Reasoning
  • Theorems
  • Time Intervals

Fields of Study

  • Economics

Readers

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Oncology
  • Systems Analysis and Design