Operators vs Arguments: The Ins and Outs of Reification

Antony Galton

In Synthese, Volume 150 (2006), pages 415-441.

Available online

Abstract

So called 'reified temporal logics' were introduced by researchers in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the early 1980s, and gave rise to a long-running series of debates concerning the proper way to represent states, events, causation, action, and other notions identified as crucial to the knowledge representation needs of AI. These debates never resulted in a definitive resolution of the issues under discussion, and indeed continue to produce aftershocks to the present day; none the less, we are now sufficiently far removed in time from their heyday for it to be a worthwhile exercise to stand back and review them as a connected piece of history.


This paper originated as an invited talk at a conference on the Logic of Time and Modality held at Roskilde University, Denmark, on Oct 31-Nov 1 2003. Here are the slides used for that talk.
A.P.Galton
Last modified: Thu Nov 22 12:41:11 GMT 2007