Narratives in the Situation Calculus
Abstract
A narrative is a course of real events about which we might have
incomplete information. Formalisms for reasoning about action may be
broadly divided into those which are narrative-based, such as the Event
Calculus of Kowalski and Sergot, and those which reason on the level
of hypothetical sequences of actions, in particular the Situation Calculus.
This paper bridges the gap between these types of formalism by
supplying a technique for linking incomplete narrative descriptions to
Situation Calculus domain formulae written in the usual style using a
Result function. Particular attention is given to actions with duration
and overlapping actions. By illuminating the relationship between these
two different styles of representation, the paper moves us one step
closer to a full understanding of the space of all possible formalisms for
reasoning about action.
Keywords: Reasoning about Action, Temporal Reasoning, Situation
Calculus, Narrative.
In: The Journal of Logic and Computation (Special Issue on Actions and
Processes), vol 4, no 5, 1994, pages 513-530.
This paper is also available over the Web in postscript form:
Narratives.ps and in dvi form:
Narratives.dvi