Articles

Modality for Robots - Responses to Halpern and Wansing

An article addressing responses to my 1997 criticism of the expressiveness of modal logic.

(McCarthy 1997) has attracted responses defending modal logic from Heinrich Wansing (Wansing 1998) and Joseph Halpern (Halpern 1999). My criticism of modal logic in connection with AI is that modal logic, at least as described in the literature, isn't expressive enough for an independently operating robot. It relegates to humans reasoning with and about modalities that an independent robot will have to do for itself.

The demand wasn't sufficiently clearly expressed in (McCarthy 1997), and perhaps consequently the responses don't sufficiently speak to it.

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