We present a simple circumscriptive method for formalizing actions with indirect effects (ramifications), and show that, in several examples, all second-order quantifiers can be eliminated from these formalizations using existing techniques for computing circumscriptions. One of the two symbolic computation methods employed here is a generalization of predicate completion and the other is based on the SCAN algorithm. The simplicity of our new approach to representing actions is due to the use of the formalism of nested abnormality theories.

PS

In Proceedings of International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), pp. 1970-1975 1995.

@InProceedings{kar95, title={A Simple Formalization of Actions Using Circumscription}, author={G. Neelakantan Kartha and Vladimir Lifschitz}, booktitle={Proceedings of International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI)}, pages={1970-1975}, url="http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/ai-lab?kar95", year={1995} }