Using causal relationships to deal with the ramification problem in action formalisms based on description logics

Abstract

In the reasoning about actions community, causal relationships have been proposed as a possible approach for solving the ramification problem, i.e., the problem of how to deal with indirect effects of actions. In this paper, we show that causal relationships can be added to action formalisms based on Description Logics (DLs) without destroying the decidability of the consistency and the projection problem. We investigate the complexity of these decision problems based on which DL is used as base logic for the action formalism. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.