Patrick J. Hayes (1992) Reasoning Agents in a Dynamic World: the Frame Problem. Psycoloquy: 3(59) Frame Problem (1)

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PSYCOLOQUY (ISSN 1055-0143) is sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA).
Psycoloquy 3(59): Reasoning Agents in a Dynamic World: the Frame Problem

REASONING AGENTS IN A DYNAMIC WORLD: THE FRAME PROBLEM
[JAI Press 1991, Greenwich CT, 289 pages, ISBN 1-55938-082-9]
Precis of Hayes and Ford (eds) on Frame-Problem

Patrick J. Hayes
Beckman Institute
405 North Mathews Avenue
Urbana IL 61801

Kenneth M. Ford

hayes@cs.stanford.edu

Abstract

What happens when one picks up a brick? Any child knows that the brick is now held in the air, there is one fewer object on the ground, and THAT'S ALL. For over twenty years it has been astonishingly hard to make a computer draw this conclusion. This "frame problem" is symptomatic of a host of problems in how to properly represent common knowledge about everyday actions. The papers in this volume discuss some of these problems, develop approaches to solving them, or draw philosophical conclusions from them.

Keywords

Frame-problem, artificial intelligence, temporal logics, independent persistence, attention, Hume, dynamic frames, qualification problem.
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1.0 What happens when one picks up a brick? Any child knows that the brick is now held in the air, there is one fewer object on the ground, and THAT'S ALL. For over twenty years it has been astonishingly hard to make a computer draw this last conclusion reliably and convincingly, or even to say precisely what it means. This "frame problem" is symptomatic of a host of problems in how to properly represent common knowledge about everyday actions. The papers in this collection (originally presented at a 1989 workshop) discuss some of these problems, develop approaches to solving them, or draw philosophical conclusions from them.

2.0 Some approaches to action reasoning assume that what is needed is more information for the programs to use. Others focus rather on the reasoning methods they use. In the former spirit, Haugh develops an axiomatic theory of causal relationships, and Weld argues that system dynamics are needed. Tenenberg, however, urges the use of a probabilistic approach to knowledge representation, and Brown develops a new quantified modal logic which contains the seeds of its own description.

3.0 Some of the papers develop or criticise themes that are familiar in AI. Etherington, Kraus and Perlis explain and extend McCarthy's technique of circumscriptive reasoning. Goodwin and Trudel relate the idea of "persistence" - that things should stay true unless there is a reason to falsify them - to that of time as a continuum (a surprisingly underdeveloped idea in this area). Weber criticises persistence as an unrealistically strong assumption and shows that it has some unintuitive consequences.

4.0 Erik Sandewall makes a revisionist survey of the classical AI literature and suggests that what has always been regarded as an unfortunate pun - the frame problem and Minsky's representational notation of frames - should in fact be taken seriously.

5.0 Some of the chapters discuss broader questions. Perlis relates this whole complex of representational difficulties to the fact that the agents we are trying to imitate have evolved with only very partial knowledge of their worlds. Stein generalises the frame problem, as usually described, to the point where it seems to be the general problem of counterfactual reasoning: an alarming and controversial conclusion. Fetzer, a philosopher of science, and Hayes, one of the book's editors, give us a debate on the relevance of philosophy to AI. Fetzer argues that the frame problem is really the problem of scientific induction, so a successful robot must have solved Hume's problem. Hayes argues that Fetzer misunderstands the nature of the AI enterprise and Fetzer replies with a suggestion that a new kind of programming might be the answer.

6.0 Most of the papers are self-contained and some provide excellent introductions to the frame problem and the history of attempts to solve it.

                      Table of Contents

Framing The Problem

      Kenneth M. Ford, University of West Florida
      Patrick J. Hayes, Xerox PARC

The Modal Quantificational Logic Z Applied to the Frame Problem

      Frank M. Brown, University of Kansas

Limited Scope and Circumscriptive Reasoning

      David Etherington, AT&T Bell Laboratories
      Sarit Kraus, Hebrew University - Israel
      Donald Perlis, University of Maryland

The Frame Problem: Artificial Intelligence Meets David Hume

      James H. Fetzer, University of Minnesota

Commentary on: "The Frame Problem: Artificial Intelligence Meets David Hume"

      Pat Hayes, Xerox PARC

A Response to Pat Hayes

      J. H. Fetzer

Persistence in Continuous First Order Temporal Logics

      Scott D. Goodwin, University of Waterloo
      Andre Trudel, Acadia University

Omniscience Isn't Needed to Solve the Frame Problem

      Brian A. Haugh, Martin Marietta Laboratories

Knowledge and the Frame Problem

      Leora Morgenstern, IBM T. J. Watson Labs

Focus of Attention, Context, and the Frame Problem

      J. Terry Nutter, Virginia Tech.

Intentionality and Defaults

      Donald Perlis, University of Maryland

Towards a Logic of Dynamic Frames

      Erik Sandewall, University of Linkoping - Sweden

An Atemporal Frame Problem

      Lynn Andrea Stein, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Abandoning the Completeness Assumptions: A Statistical Approach to the Frame Problem

      Josh D. Tenenberg, University of Rochester

The Myth of Domain-Independent Persistence

      Jay C. Weber, Lockheed Artificial Intelligence Center

System Dynamics and the Qualification Problem

      Daniel S. Weld, University of Washington

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