We present a formalization of the blocks world on the basis of the situation calculus and circumscription, and investigate its mathematical properties. The main theorem describes the effect of the circumscription which solves the frame problem in the presence of ramifications. The theorem is quite general, in the sense that it is applicable not only to the blocks world, but to a whole class of domains involving situations and actions. Its statement does not mention anything specific for the domain of blocks. Instead, it lists assumptions about purely formal, mostly syntactic, properties of the axiom set.

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In Proceedings of International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR), Allen, James and Fikes, Richard and Sandewall, Erik (Eds.), pp. 376-386 1991.

@inproceedings{lif91a, title={Towards a Metatheory of Action}, author={Vladimir Lifschitz}, booktitle={Proceedings of International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR)}, editor={Allen, James and Fikes and Richard and Sandewall and Erik}, pages={376-386}, url="http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/ai-lab?lif91a", year={1991} }