Dynamic Causal Calculus

ABSTRACT. We introduce dynamic causal calculus, a nonmonotonic formalism that can be viewed as a direct logical counterpart of the action description language C+ from \cite{GLMT01}. We formulate a nonmonotonic semantics of the associated causal language, and compare this semantics with the indirect, two-stage semantics for C+, given in \cite{GLMT01}. It will be shown, in particular, that the suggested semantics allows us to alleviate syntactic distinctions between propositional atoms, maintained by C+, as well as type restrictions imposed on its causal laws. We will describe also a logical formalism of dynamic causal inference that constitutes a complete description of the logic that is adequate for this dynamic calculus.