Explicit Control of Reasoning

Abstract

The construction of expert problem-solving systems requires the development of techniques for using modular representations of knowledge without encountering combinatorial explosions in the solution effort. This report describes an approach to dealing with this problem based on making some knowledge which is usually implicitly part of an expert problem solver explicit, thus allowing this knowledge about control to be manipulated and reasoned about. The basic components of this approach involve using explicit representations of the control structure of the problem solver, and linking this and other knowledge manipulated by the expert by means of explicit data dependencies.