Abstract
We apply Dijkstra’s semantics for programming languages [Dijkstra, 1976; Dijkstra and Scholten, 1990] to formalization of reasoning about action and change. The basic idea is to specify effects of actions in terms of formula transformers, i.e. functions from formulae into formulae.1 More specifically, with each action A we associate two formula transformers, called the strongest postcondition for A and the weakest liberal precondition for A. The former, when applied to a formula α, returns a formula representing the set of all states that can be achieved by starting execution of A in some state satisfying α. The latter, when applied to a formula α, returns a formula providing a description of all states such that whenever execution of A starts in any one of them and terminates, the output state satisfies α 2.
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Łukaszewicz, W., Madalińska-Bugaj, E. (2002). Reasoning about Action and Change Using Dijkstra’s Semantics for Programming Languages. In: Meyer, JJ.C., Treur, J. (eds) Agent-Based Defeasible Control in Dynamic Environments. Handbook of Defeasible Reasoning and Uncertainty Management Systems, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1741-0_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1741-0_14
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