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Operators vs. Arguments: The Ins and Outs of Reification

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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.

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  1. School of Engineering Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Exeter, Harrison Building North Park Road, Exeter, EX4 4QF, UK

    Antony Galton

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  1. Antony Galton
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Correspondence to Antony Galton.

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Galton, A. Operators vs. Arguments: The Ins and Outs of Reification. Synthese 150, 415–441 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-005-5516-7

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