Matthew Stone's Logic and Knowledge Representation Page Logic and Knowledge Representation Contents Computational Logic Plan Representation Publications Links Home Computational Logic Logic is broadly concerned with studying inference and expressive power of formal languages with well-defined meanings. Computational logic emphasizes the design of finite inference procedures and analysis of complexity and proof search in them. My research uses cut-free sequent calculi to study such logical search problems. Cut-free sequent calculi describe how proofs can be constructed by decomposing the formulas that represent premises or conclusions of the proof according to the meanings of their logical connectives. I have been studying these questions with particular attention to modal and intuitionistic logics, because of these logics' close connection with the planning and common-sense reasoning problems faced by collaborative systems and conversational agents.
Plans are more than programs that an agent cooks up, blindly runs, and discards.
My research has been exploring a representation of plans as proofs in a logical theory of action, time and knowledge. We therefore find a systematic application of the full range of techniques in computational logic. The main challenge of this perspective is to find proof problems that are faithful to the context of an agent's deliberation and action and that afford specialized search techniques of the sort developed in implemented planners. Preliminary results provide good reason to be optimistic on this front. Publications Dissertation Matthew Stone.