On the Logic of Dynamic Systems

Extending Theories of Action: Formal Theory and Practical Applications

Volume

Papers from the 1995 AAAI Spring Symposium

Contents

The aim of this paper is to develop a logic-oriented, formal theory of dynamically changing worlds and the process of acting in them. We will show that our view naturally provides two main characteristic features: First of all, the notion of parallelism, which includes the concurrent execution of actions as well as the simultaneous occurrence of events, is an intrinsic element of our theory. Secondly, since parallelism means that normally the various changes during a state transition are simultaneously caused by several reasons, we can easily model delayed effects of actions by initiating additional independent events which eventually trigger a particular effect.