TOWARDS AN INTEGRATION OF TIME AND CAUSATION IN A HYBRID KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION FORMALISM

The article focuses on the relations between time and causation and pr oposes a general framework in which a strict integration is achieved b oth in the representation formalism and in the reasoning process. By t aking advantage of the basic capabilities of a Hybrid Knowledge Repres entation formalism (in particular, we use BACK), we provide an explici t and integrated representation of the basic entities in the temporal and causal ontology, and propose a taxonomy in which different types o f causal relations found in the literature are classified, depending o n the temporal relations they impose between causes and effects. Moreo ver, we develop a specialized causal-temporal reasoner which operates on causal nets built upon the basic causal-temporal representation. Su ch a reasoner is flexible (in the sense that different definitions of causation may be considered in the same reasoning process) and integra ted (since the mutual effects of time and causation are coped with), a nd takes advantage of a specialized temporal reasoner. (C) 1994 John W iley & Sons, Inc.