Papers archive

Work in progress

Welcome. This list is incomplete, and the subdivision in categories may not be optimal. Of course, I'd like a feedback from you.

Value mimimization
Circumscription normally concerns minimizing the extent of a predicate. It occured to us that sometimes it makes more sense to minimize the range of a function. As a result, the theory is easier to understand and modify. We have nice results, based on explicit domains (a lá Prolog) and Lifschitz's Nested Abnormality Theories.

C. Baral, A. Gabaldon and A. Provetti.
Formalizing Narratives using Nested Circumscription.
Submitted to Artificial Intelligence Journal (1998).
Available in .dvi or .ps format.

C. Baral, A. Gabaldon and A. Provetti.
Value minimization in Circuscription.
To appear on Artificial Intelligence Journal (1998).
Available in .dvi or .ps format.

C. Baral, A.Gabaldon and A. Provetti.
Value minimization in Circuscription.
In Proc. of Principles of Knowledge representation and Reasoning (KR'96) (1996).
Available in .dvi or .ps format.
An earlier version appears in the Working notes of the 6th Int'l Workshop on Nonmonotonic Reasoning (NMR'96), (1996) 24--29.
Available in .dvi or .ps format.

C. Baral, A.Gabaldon and A. Provetti.
Formalizing Narratives using Nested Circumscription.
In Proc. of 14th AAAI National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (1996) 652--657.
Available in .dvi or .ps format.
An earlier version appears in the Working notes of the 3rd symposium Logical Formalizations of Commonsense Reasoning, (1996) 15--24.
Available in .dvi or .ps format.

Reasoning about actions and change
Formalizing actions and change is one on main topics of the logical approach to AI. An action is described by describing its effect of modifying the surrounding domain, i.e. to describe an action one actually has to define to domains: that before and that after the action is executed. To represent actions with proper axioms is instrumental in several AI programs such as planning, narrative assimilation and explanation. I am particularly interested in the latter two, which are somewhat less application-oriented than planning.

A. Provetti and G. Rossi
Reasoning about Actions in {log}.
Available in the on-line Proc. of Joint Conference on Declarative Programming APPIA-GULP-PRODE'97 (1997), pp. 381-391.
Available here in .ps format.

C. Baral and A. Provetti.
From Action Specification Towards Robot Control Specification.
In C. Ferrari and E Pagello, (eds.) Proc. of the AIIA Workshop Planning Robot Actions in Complex Environments,* (1996) 67--71.
Available in .ps format.

C. Baral, M. Gelfond and A. Provetti.
Representing Actions: Laws, Observations and Hypothesis.
In Journal of Logic Programming, (1997) 31(1-3):201--244.
Available in .dvi or .ps format.
An earlier version appeared in the Working Notes of AAAI Spring Symposium Extending Theories of Actions: Formal Theories and Practical Applications (1995) (this paper is available there).

A. Provetti.
Hypothetical Reasoning: From Situation Calculus to Event Calculus.
In Computational Intelligence Journal, 12(3) (1996).
Available in .dvi or .ps format.
An earlier version appeared in S.D. Goodwin, H.J. Hamilton (eds) Proc. of Int'l WS on Temporal Representation and Reasoning (TIME'94), University of Regina Press, (1994) 42--47.

Formalizing Causal reasoning
This is the subject of my PhD thesis, which is summarized by the definition of the language {\cal L}_{causes}. The point here is to have the simplest possible specification language that allows reasoning about the explanation of events. The language is abstract w.r.t. deduction, data structure etc. but the specifications can be translated in logic programming, for which procedural semantics and optimization techniques are well understood by now.

A. Provetti.
Formalizing Causal Reasoning in Law with an Action-based Language: a Preliminary Report.
In A. de Santis (ed.), Proc. of 5th Italian Conference on Theoretical Computer Science, WP Press (1995).
Available in .dvi or .ps format.
A polished-up version is in the Working notes of th 3rd Symposium Logical Formalizations of Commonsense Reasoning, (1996) 215--225.
Available in .ps format.

Logical reconstruction of normative reasoning

P. Cattabriga and A. Provetti.
Actions and Stable Semantics for the Analysis of Legal Norms.
In IVR'95 Conference, workgroup on Legal Computer Science. Preprints published in European J. of Law, Philosophy and Computer Science 5, CLUEB (1995) 266--275.
A later, unpublished, version in available in .dvi or .ps format.

A. Provetti.
The Law of Contracts in Event Calculus.
In S. Costantini (ed.) Proc. of 7th Italian Conference on Logic Programming (GULP'92), Città Studi (1992).
Available in .ps or .rtf format.

Nonmonotonism in updating Event Theories

L. Chittaro, A. Montanari and A. Provetti.
Reasoning about Partially Ordered Events in the Event Calculus.
Working notes of 2nd Benelux Workshop on Logic Programming (Benelog'94) (1994).
Available in .ps format.

L. Chittaro, A. Montanari and A. Provetti.
Skeptical and Credulous Event Calculi for Supporting Modal Queries.
In A. Cohen, (ed.), Proc. of European Conference on Artifical Intelligence (ECAI'94), (1994).
Available in .dvi format.

I. Cervesato, A. Montanari and A. Provetti.
On The Nonmonotonic Behaviour of Event Calculi for Deriving Maximal Time Intervals.
Interval Computations, 2 (1993) 83--119.
Available in .ps format.
An abstract appeared in B. Kearfott (ed.) Int'l Workshop on Interval Methods in Artifical Intelligence, (1993) 28.

Miscellaneous

A. Provetti.
Ordering Events: Intervals Are Sufficent, More General Sets Are Usually Not Necessary.
To appear on Reliable Computing (formely Interval Computations), 2(3) (1997).
Available in .dvi or .ps format.

S. Costantini, G.A. Lanzarone and A. Provetti.
Ontological Aspects of Dynamic Reification/Unreification for Temporal Reasoning.
In Int'l Workshop on Ontologies in Knowledge Representation and Conceptual Analysis, LADSEB-CNR, (1993).
Available in .ps or .rtf format.

September 1997 / Papers Archive / Ale Provetti / provetti@cs.utep.edu

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