Talk:Situation calculus

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[edit] Origin

Situation calculus was first introduced by McCarthy solo in 1963. Original Source:

 @TechReport{mccar-1963:situaactio:TR,
   author =     "John McCarthy",
   title =      "Situations, actions, and causal laws",
   institution =  "Artificial Intelligence Project, Stanford University",
   year =       "1963",
   number =     "AIM-2",
 }

Also supported by Reiter himself in his book: Knowledge in Action

 @Book{Reiter01,
   title =      "Knowledge in Action: Logical Foundations for Describing and Implementing Dynamical Systems",
   publisher =  "MIT Press, Bradford Books",
   year =       "2001",
   author =     "R. Reiter",
   address =    "Cambridge, MA",
 }

-Rob

[edit] Type of second order logic?

Is situation calculus a kind of "second order logic"? Maybe not. It just reified first order logic. -Reiter calls SitCalc a 'dialect of FOL'.

I was also wondering this, Russel & Norvig (1995, AI: A Modern Approach, p 204) and Luciano Serafini (Trento, slides, http://sra.itc.it/people/serafini/teaching/dottorato-dit/2005/situation-calculus.pdf) both explicitly state that it is first order, even though the cited articles indeed call it second order (Wouter van Atteveldt, 128.237.249.187)

AI: A "Modern" Approach is such a terrible book. Do yourself a favor and burn it. Fresheneesz (talk) 00:25, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Better than first-order logic?

How is situation calculus more useful than first-order or second-order logic? It seems to me that a situation is simply another variable one can define in first-order logic - in which case situation calculus is simply a special case. Fresheneesz (talk) 00:25, 20 November 2007 (UTC)