Embedding defaults into terminological knowledge representation formalisms

We consider the problem of integrating Reiter's default logic into terminological representation systems. It turns out that such an integration is less straightforward than we expected, considering the fact that the terminological language is a decidable sublanguage of first-order logic. Semantically, one has the unpleasant effect that the consequences of a terminological default theory may be rather unintuitive, and may even vary with the syntactic structure of equivalent concept expressions. This is due to the unsatisfactory treatment of open defaults via Skolemization in Reiter's semantics. On the algorithmic side, we show that this treatment may lead to an undecidable default consequence relation, even though our base language is decidable, and we have only finitely many (open) defaults. Because of these problems, we then consider a restricted semantics for open defaults in our terminological default theories: default rules are applied only to individuals that are explicitly present in the knowledge base. In this semantics it is possible to compute all extensions of a finite terminological default theory, which means that this type of default reasoning is decidable. We describe an algorithm for computing extensions and show how the inference procedures of terminological systems can be modified to give optimal support to this algorithm.This is a revised and extended version of a paper presented at the3rd International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, October 1992, Cambridge, MA.     

Reasoning with Sets of Defaults in Default Logic

We present a general approach for representing and reasoning with sets of defaults in default logic, focusing on reasoning about preferences among sets of defaults. First, we consider how to control the application of a set of defaults so that either all apply (if possible) or none do (if not). From this, an approach to dealing with preferences among sets of default rules is developed. We begin with an ordered default theory , consisting of a standard default theory, but with possible preferences on sets of rules. This theory is transformed into a second, standard default theory wherein the preferences are respected. The approach differs from other work, in that we obtain standard default theories and do not rely on prioritized versions of default logic. In practical terms this means we can immediately use existing default logic theorem provers for an implementation. Also, we directly generate just those extensions containing the most preferred applied rules; in contrast, most previous approaches generate all extensions, then select the most preferred. In a major application of the approach, we show how semimonotonic default theories can be encoded so that reasoning can be carried out at the object level. With this, we can reason about default extensions from within the framework of a standard default logic. Hence one can encode notions such as skeptical and credulous conclusions, and can reason about such conclusions within a single extension.     

贪婪缺省逻辑

提出一种贪婪缺省逻辑,旨在构造扩展的过程中尽可能的保留缺省规则当中的信息.给出了贪婪缺省逻辑的推演系统-GD系统和贪婪缺省的GD-扩展的定义.并且证明了对于缺省理论 的一个扩展,必定存在一个贪婪缺省理论的GD-扩展使得缺省逻辑的扩展是贪婪缺省逻辑扩展的子集.并且存在贪婪缺省理论 的某一GD-扩展,该GD-扩展不包含缺省理论的任一扩展.因此缺省逻辑和贪婪缺省逻辑是两种不同的逻辑.     

Regular disjunction-free default theories

In this paper, the class of regular disjunction-free default theories is introduced and investigated.A transformation from regular default theories to normal default theories is established. The initial theory andthe transformed theory have the same extensions when restricted to old variables. Hence, regular default theoriesenjoy some similar properties (e.g., existence of extensions, semi-monotonicity) as normal default theories. Then,a new algorithm for credulous reasoning of regular theories is developed. This algorithm runs in a time not morethan 0(1.45~n), where n is the number of defaults. In case of regular prerequisite-free or semi-2CNF defaulttheories, the credulous reasoning can be solved in polynomial time. However, credulous reasoning for semi-Horndefault theories is shown to be NP-complete although it is tractable for Horn default theories. Moreover, skepticalreasoning for regular unary default theories is co-NP-complete.     

基于四值语义的缺省逻辑

基于公式变换,给出一组缺省理论的变换方法,将命题语言L中的缺省理论变换到对应的命题语言L^-＋中,保证了所得到的缺省理论的所有扩张均不平凡,并通过一种弱变换可同时保证缺省扩张的存在性．为缺省理论定义了各种四值模型,使得缺省逻辑具有非单调超协调推理能力,并证明了L^-＋中的缺省扩张与L中缺省理论的四值模型之间具有一一对应关系．四值模型描述了公式变换的语义,基于四值语义的缺省推理通过缺省理论的变换技术能在标准的缺省逻辑中实现．     

Nonmonotonic consequences in default domain theory

Default domain theory is a framework for representing and reasoning about commonsense knowledge. Although this theory is motivated by ideas in Reiter’s work on default logic, it is in some sense a dual framework. We make Reiter’s default extension operator into a constructive method of building models, not theories. Domain theory, which is a well established tool for representing partial information in the semantics of programming languages, is adopted as the basis for constructing partial models. This paper considers some of the laws of nonmonotonic consequence, due to Gabbay and to Kraus, Lehmann, and Magidor, in the light of default domain theory. We remark that in some cases Gabbay’s law of cautious monotony is open to question. We consider an axiomatization of the nonmonotonic consequence relation on prime open sets in the Scott topology – the natural logic – of a domain, which omits this law. We prove a representation theorem showing that such relations are in one to one correspondence with the consequence relations determined by extensions in Scott domains augmented with default sets. This means that defaults are very expressive: they can, in a sense, represent any reasonable nonmonotonic entailment. Results about what kind of defaults determine cautious monotony are also discussed. In particular, we show that the property of unique extensions guarantees cautious monotony, and we give several classes of default structures which determine unique extensions. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Consequence finding and computing answers with defaults

Consequence finding has been recognized as an important technique in many intelligent systems involving inference. In previous work, propositional or first-order clausal theories have been considered for consequence finding. In this paper, we consider consequence finding from a default theory, which consists of a first-order clausal theory and a set of normal defaults. In an extension of a default theory, consequence finding can be done with the generating defaults for the extension. Alternatively, all extensions can be represented at once with the conditional answer format, which represents how a conclusion depends on which defaults. We also propose a procedure for consequence finding and query answering in a default theory using the first-order consequence-finding procedure SOL. In computing consequences from default theories efficiently, the notion of TCS-freeness is most important to prune a large number of irrational tableaux induced by the generating defaults for an extension. In order to simulate the TCS-freeness, the refined SOL calculus called SOL-S(Γ) is adopted using skip preference and complement checking. This research is supported in part by JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (No. 17300051)     

Default theories over monadic languages

In this paper we compare the semantical and syntactical definitions of extensions for open default theories. We prove that, over monadic languages, these definitions are equivalent and do not depend on the cardinality of the underlying infinite world. We also show that, under the domain closure assumption, one free variable open default theories are decidable.     

A Comparative Study of Default Reasoning and Epistemic Processes

A comparative study between the theories of default reasoning and open logic is given.Some concepts of open logic,such as new premises,rejections by facts,reconstructions ,epistemic processes,and its limit are introduced to describe th evolution of hypotheses.An improved version of the limit theorem is given and proved.A model-theoretic interpretation of the closed normal defaults is given using the above concepts and the corresponding completeness is proved.Any extension of a closed normal default theory is proved to be the linit of a δ-partial increasing epistemic process of that theory,and vice versa.It is proved that there exist two distinct extensions of a closed normal default theory iff there is an δ-non-monotonic epistemic process of that theory.The completeness of Reiter‘s proof is also given and proved,in terms of the epistemic processes.Finally,the work is compared with Gaerdenfors‘s theory of knowledge in flux.     

利用格论研究缺省推理

本文提出了一组转换规则,使用这组转换规则可以把缺省规则转换成扩展规则,然后使用这些扩展规则去扩展缺省理论的初始逻辑公式集合,在这些扩展规则的基础上,我们提出了缺省格(default lattice)的概念,证明了缺省理论的外延刚好对应于它的缺省格的相容性集合的D-极大值,因此可以使用缺省格求出缺省理论的所有外延.     

Priorities on defaults with prerequisites,and their application in treating specificity in terminological default logic

In a recent paper we have proposed terminological default logic as a formalism that combines means both for structured representation of classes and objects and for default inheritance of properties. The major drawback that terminological default logic inherits from general default logic is that it does not take precedence of more specific defaults over more general ones into account. This behavior has already been criticized in the general context of default logic, but it is all the more problematic in the terminological case where the emphasis lies on the hierarchical organization of concepts.The present paper addresses the problem of modifying terminological default logic such that more specific defaults are preferred. We assume that the specificity ordering is induced by the hierarchical organization of concepts, which means that default information is not taken into account when computing priorities. It turns out that the existing approaches for expressing priorities between defaults do not seem to be appropriate for defaults with prerequisites. Therefore we shall consider an alternative approach for dealing with prioritization in the framework of Reiter's default logic. The formalism is presented in the general setting of default logic where priorities are given by an arbitrary partial ordering on the defaults. We shall exhibit some interesting properties of the new formalism, compare it with existing approaches, and describe an algorithm for computing extensions. In the terminological case, we thus obtain an automated default reasoning procedure that takes specificity into account.This is an extended version of a paper presented at the13th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, August 1993, Chambery, France.     

Similarity preservation in default logic

The paper identifies a problem in default reasoning in Reiter’s Default Logic and related systems: elements which are similar given the axioms only, become distinguishable in extensions. We explain why, sometimes, this is considered undesirable. Two approaches are presented for guaranteeing similarity preservation: One approach formalizes a way of uniformly applying the defaults to all similar elements by introducing generic extensions, which depend only on similarity types of objects. According to the second approach, for a restricted class of default theories, a default theory is viewed as a “shorthand notation” to what is “really meant” by its formulation. In this approach we propose a rewriting of defaults in a form that guarantees similarity preservation of the modified theory. It turns out that the above two approaches yield the same result. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Logical considerations on default semantics

We consider a reinterpretation of the rules of default logic. We make Reiter’s default rules into a constructive method of building models, not theories. To allow reasoning in first‐order systems, we equip standard first‐order logic with a (new) Kleene 3‐valued partial model semantics. Then, using our methodology, we add defaults to this semantic system. The result is that our logic is an ordinary monotonic one, but its semantics is now nonmonotonic. Reiter’s extensions now appear in the semantics, not in the syntax. As an application, we show that this semantics gives a partial solution to the conceptual problems with open defaults pointed out by Lifschitz [V. Lifschitz, On open defaults, in: Proceedings of the Symposium on Computational Logics (1990)], and Baader and Hollunder [F. Baader and B. Hollunder, Embedding defaults into terminological knowledge representation formalisms, in: Proceedings of Third Annual Conference on Knowledge Representation (Morgan‐Kaufmann, 1992)]. The solution is not complete, chiefly because in making the defaults model‐theoretic, we can only add conjunctive information to our models. This is in contrast to default theories, where extensions can contain disjunctive formulas, and therefore disjunctive information. Our proposal to treat the problem of open defaults uses a semantic notion of nonmonotonic entailment for our logic, related to the idea of “only knowing”. Our notion is “only having information” given by a formula. We discuss the differences between this and “minimal‐knowledge” ideas. Finally, we consider the Kraus–Lehmann–Magidor [S. Kraus, D. Lehmann and M. Magidor, Nonmonotonic reasoning, preferential models, and cumulative logics, Artificial Intelligence 44 (1990) 167–207] axioms for preferential consequence relations. We find that our consequence relation satisfies the most basic of the laws, and the Or law, but it does not satisfy the law of Cut, nor the law of Cautious Monotony. We give intuitive examples using our system, on the other hand, which on the surface seem to violate these two laws. We make some comparisons, using our examples, to probabilistic interpretations for which these laws are true, and we compare our models to the cumulative models of Kraus, Lehmann, and Magidor. We also show sufficient conditions for the laws to hold. These involve limiting the use of disjunction in our formulas in one way or another. We show how to make use of the theory of complete partially ordered sets, or domain theory. We can augment any Scott domain with a default set. We state a version of Reiter’s extension operator on arbitrary domains as well. This version makes clear the basic order‐theoretic nature of Reiter’s definitions. A three‐variable function is involved. Finding extensions corresponds to taking fixed points twice, with respect to two of these variables. In the special case of precondition‐free defaults, a general relation on Scott domains induced from the set of defaults is shown to characterize extensions. We show how a general notion of domain theory, the logic induced from the Scott topology on a domain, guides us to a correct notion of “affirmable sentence” in a specific case such as our first‐order systems. We also prove our consequence laws in such a way that they hold not only in first‐order systems, but in any logic derived from the Scott topology on an arbitrary domain. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Ordered seminormal default theories and their extensions

Abstract

The concept of extension plays an important role in default logic. The notion of an ordered seminormal default theory has been introduced (Etherington 1987) to characterize a class of seminormal default theories which have extensions. However, the original definition has a drawback because of its dependence on specific representations of the default theory. We introduce the ‘canonical representation’ of a default theory and redefine the orderedness of a default theory based on its canonical representation. We show that under the new definition, the orderedness of a default theory Δ = (W,D) is intrinsic to the theory itself, independent of the specific representations of W and D. We present a modification of the algorithm in Etherington (1987) for computing extensions of a default theory. More importantly, we prove the conjecture (Etherington 1987) that a modified version of the algorithm in Etherington (1987) converges for general ordered, finite seminormal default theories, while the original algorithm was proven (Etherington 1987) to converge for ordered, finite network default theories which form a proper subset of the theories considered in this paper.     

A Correct Logic Programming Computation of Default Logic Extensions

We present a method of representing some classes of default theories as normal logic programs. The main point is that the standart semantics (i.e., SLDNF-resolution) computes answer substitutions that correspond exactly to the extensions of the represented default theory. This means that we give a correct implementation of default logic. We explain the steps of constructing a logic program LogProg(P, D) from a given default theory (P, D), give some examples, and derive soundness and completeness results.     

Constraints on extensions of a default theory

In this paper,the representability of a family of theories as the set of extensions of a default theory is studied.Firest,a new necessary condition is given for the representability by means of general default theories.then a sufficient one is presented.The families of theories represneted by default theories are also fully characterized.Finally,the paper gives an example of denumerable families of mutually inconsistent theories that are represented by a default theory but not by normal ones.     

Representation theory for default logic

Default logic can be regarded as a mechanism to represent families of belief sets of a reasoning agent. As such, it is inherently second-order. In this paper, we study the problem of representability of a family of theories as the set of extensions of a default theory. We give a complete solution to the problem of representability by means of default theories with finite set of defaults, and by means of normal default theories. We obtain partial results on representability by arbitrary (infinite, non-normal) default theories. We construct examples of denumerable families of non-including theories that are not representable. We also study the concept of equivalence between default theories. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A proof procedure for normal default theories

Recent research by Delgrande [6] and Geffner and Pearl [10] suggests two different semantic interpretations for normal defaults with one single representation as conditional sentences. However, they both need additional formal mechanisms for handling irrelevant information when their approaches are applied to formalising default reasoning. Delgrande in [5, 6] suggests two meta-strategies which he considers to be adequately strong to handle the orderings of defaults, and he claims they are equivalent. Furthermore, each of Delgrande's strategies is defined in terms of all sentences of the object language. In this paper, we shall prove that Delgrande's claim that his meta-strategies are equivalent is incorrect and that one of his meta-strategies can be reformulated within the framework of First Order Predicate Calculus (FOPC) and without having to consider every sentence of the object language. One advantage of such a reformalisation is its computational simplicity: to give an extension of a default theory there is only a need to consider those sentences which occur in the default theory under consideration rather than every sentence in the object language; furthermore, to provide a proof procedure for Delgrande's system as based on the meta-strategy we have formalised, one need only employ a FOPC proof procedure, rather than a conditional one.     

Completeness, decidability and complexity of entailment for RDF Schema and a semantic extension involving the OWL vocabulary

We prove that entailment for RDF Schema (RDFS) is decidable, NP-complete, and in P if the target graph does not contain blank nodes. We show that the standard set of entailment rules for RDFS is incomplete and that this can be corrected by allowing blank nodes in predicate position.We define semantic extensions of RDFS that involve datatypes and a subset of the OWL vocabulary that includes the property-related vocabulary (e.g. FunctionalProperty), the comparisons (e.g. sameAs and differentFrom) and the value restrictions (e.g. allValuesFrom). These semantic extensions are in line with the ‘if-semantics’ of RDFS and weaker than the ‘iff-semantics’ of D-entailment and OWL (DL or Full). For these semantic extensions we present entailment rules, prove completeness results, prove that consistency is in P and that, just as for RDFS, entailment is NP-complete, and in P if the target graph does not contain blank nodes. There are no restrictions on use to obtain decidability: classes can be used as instances.     

Modal logic for default reasoning

In the paper we introduce a variant of autoepistemic logic that is especially suitable for expressing default reasonings. It is based on the notion of iterative expansion. We show a new way of translating default theories into the language of modal logic under which default extensions correspond exactly to iterative expansions. Iterative expansions have some attractive properties. They are more restrictive than autoepistemic expansions, and, for some classes of theories, than moderately grounded expansions. At the same time iterative expansions avoid several undesirable properties of strongly grounded expansions, for example, they are grounded in the whole set of the agent's initial assumptions and do not depend on their syntactic representation.Iterative expansions are defined syntactically. We define a semantics which leads to yet another notion of expansion — weak iterative expansion — and we show that there is an important class of theories, that we call -programs, for which iterative and weak iterative expansions coincide. Thus, for -programs, iterative expansions can be equivalently defined by semantic means.This work was partially supported by Army Research Office under grant DAAL03-89-K-0124, and by National Science Foundation and the Commonwealth of Kentucky EPSCoR program under grant RII 8610671.