Temporal Reasoning About Uncertain Worlds

TL;DR

This paper introduces a system for managing temporally scoped beliefs in uncertain worlds, supporting constraint networks, causal rules, and data consistency, serving as a foundation for belief calculus applications.

Contribution

It presents a novel program that handles temporal belief constraints and dependencies independently of belief measures, facilitating belief calculus implementation.

Findings

Supports complex temporal belief management

Ensures data consistency in uncertain environments

Provides a basis for belief calculus applications

Abstract

We present a program that manages a database of temporally scoped beliefs. The basic functionality of the system includes maintaining a network of constraints among time points, supporting a variety of fetches, mediating the application of causal rules, monitoring intervals of time for the addition of new facts, and managing data dependencies that keep the database consistent. At this level the system operates independent of any measure of belief or belief calculus. We provide an example of how an application program mi9ght use this functionality to implement a belief calculus.