The main purpose of this paper is to show how, at least from a semantic or conceptual point of view, and with a few simple modifications, recent versions of the Event Calculus can support both a deductive and an abductive view of planning in linear time. Specifically, two potential criticisms of planning with the Event Calculus are addressed; (i) the criticism that it is necessary to use `meta-level' concepts such as abduction to formulate the notion of a plan in the context of the Event Calculus, and (ii) the criticism that planning with the Event Calculus will involve some kind of (computationally intractable) dynamic consistency checking.
This paper is in the proceedings of the Second AISB Workshop on Practical Reasoning and Rationality, Manchester, U.K., April 1997.
This paper is available over the Web in compressed postscript form: Planning.ps, or as a dvi file: Planning.dvi.