Issue 98083 Editor: Erik Sandewall 25.11.1998

Today

Today we send out David Poole's answer to Hector Geffner, in the discussion about David's ETAI submitted article. This discussion is now closed since David has indicated that he wishes to revise the paper and then it will be sent to the referees. We reopen the discussion for possible additional comments after the referees have returned their verdict.

We can also announce a contribution today by Hector Levesque, Fiora Pirri, and Ray Reiter to the collection of reference articles for approaches to actions and change. The collection now has a very good coverage, and we also hope of course to have an article about the event calculus.

Additional contributions are of course welcome as well. Remember, however, that the purpose of these reference articles is to provide the basic definitions for a well established approach, so that it shall not be necessary to repeat those definitions each time in later articles. The purpose is not to present new results. On the contrary, the reference articles should only contain material that is sufficiently stable that it can be expected to remain relevant for a while.

Contributions to the review discussion about these reference articles is also welcome, and we suggest that the articles ought to be discussed from the point of view of their intended purpose. That is, the major question is whether the proposed text characterizes sufficiently well the current best practice in the approach being presented, and whether it is clear, understandable, and on the right level of detail.

A second use of these reference articles may be to provide a more solid basis for the perennial comparative discussion about advantages and limitations of current approaches. During earlier periods of activity, this discussion was hampered by the fuzzyness about exactly what was included in each approach. If this discussion should be reignited after the appearance of the reference articles, then the new contributions will be included as continuations of the existing panel discussion on ontologies of actions and change.


ETAI Publications

Received research articles

Hector Levesque, Fiora Pirri, and Ray Reiter
Foundations for the Situation Calculus.

[Interactions]

Abstract: This article gives the logical foundations for the situations-as-histories variant of the situation calculus, focusing on the following items:

Discussion about received articles

Additional debate contributions have been received for the following article(s). Please click the title of the article to link to the interaction page, containing both new and old contributions to the discussion.

David Poole
Decision Theory, the Situation Calculus and Conditional Plans