On nonmonotonic reasoning with the method of sweeping presumptions

Reasoning almost always occurs in the face of incomplete information. Such reasoning is nonmonotonic in the sense that conclusions drawn may later be withdrawn when additional information is obtained. There is an active literature on the problem of modeling such nonmonotonic reasoning, yet no category of method-let alone a single method-has been broadly accepted as the right approach. This paper introduces a new method, called sweeping presumptions, for modeling nonmonotonic reasoning. The main goal of the paper is to provide an example-driven, nontechnical introduction to the method of sweeping presumptions, and thereby to make it plausible that sweeping presumptions can usefully be applied to the problems of nonmonotonic reasoning. The paper discusses a representative sample of examples that have appeared in the literature on nonmonotonic reasoning, and discusses them from the point of view of sweeping presumptions.     

Iterated Belief Change

Most existing formalizations treat belief change as a single-step process, and ignore several problems that become important when a theory, or belief state, is revised over several steps. This paper identifies these problems, and argues for the need to retain all of the multiple possible outcomes of a belief change step, and for a framework in which the effects of a belief change step persist as long as is consistently possible. To demonstrate that such a formalization is indeed possible, we develop a framework, which uses the language of PJ-default logic (Delgrande and Jackson 1991) to represent a belief state, and which enables the effects of a belief change step to persist by propagating belief constraints . Belief change in this framework maps one belief state to another, where each belief state is a collection of theories given by the set of extensions of the PJ-default theory representing that belief state. Belief constraints do not need to be separately recorded; they are encoded as clearly identifiable components of a PJ-default theory. The framework meets the requirements for iterated belief change that we identify and satisfies most of the AGM postulates (Alchourrón, Gärdenfors, and Makinson 1985) as well.     

A logic programming system for nonmonotonic reasoning

The evolution of logic programming semantics has included the introduction of a new explicit form of negation, beside the older implicit (or default) negation typical of logic programming. The richer language has been shown adequate for a spate of knowledge representation and reasoning forms.The widespread use of such extended programs requires the definition of a correct top-down querying mechanism, much as for Prolog wrt. normal programs. One purpose of this paper is to present and exploit a SLDNF-like derivation procedure, SLX, for programs with explicit negation under well-founded semantics (WFSX) and prove its soundness and completeness. (Its soundness wrt. the answer-sets semantics is also shown.) Our choice ofWFSX as the base semantics is justi-fied by the structural properties it enjoys, which are paramount for top-down query evaluation.Of course, introducing explicit negation requires dealing with contradiction. Consequently, we allow for contradiction to appear, and show moreover how it can be removed by freely changing the truth-values of some subset of a set of predefined revisable literals. To achieve this, we introduce a paraconsistent version ofWFSX, WFSX _p , that allows contradictions and for which our SLX top-down procedure is proven correct as well.This procedure can be used to detect the existence of pairs of complementary literals inWESX _p simply by detecting the violation of integrity rulesf L, -L introduced for eachL in the language of the program. Furthermore, integrity constraints of a more general form are allowed, whose violation can likewise be detected by SLX.Removal of contradiction or integrity violation is accomplished by a variant of the SLX procedure that collects, in a formula, the alternative combinations of revisable literals' truth-values that ensure the said removal. The formulas, after simplification, can then be satisfied by a number of truth-values changes in the revisable, among true, false, and undefined. A notion of minimal change is defined as well that establishes a closeness relation between a program and its revisions. Forthwith, the changes can be enforced by introducing or deleting program rules for the revisable literals.To illustrate the usefulness and originality of our framework, we applied it to obtain a novel logic programming approach, and results, in declarative debugging and model-based diagnosis problems.     

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.     

缺省理论与相信理论的关系

本文在相信逻辑中引入相信解释与相信模的概念，从语义上把相信逻辑改造成非单调逻辑。一个缺省理论可以直接转换成一个相信逻辑理论，本文中证明了一个缺省理论外延的模集就是对应相信理论的模，从而为缺省理论提供了一种简便的语义。     

Autoepistemic logic of first order and its expressive power

We study the expressive power of first-order autoepistemic logic. We argue that full introspection of rational agents should be carried out by minimizing positive introspection and maximizing negative introspection. Based on full introspection, we propose the maximal well-founded semantics that characterizes autoepistemic reasoning processes of rational agents, and show that breadth of the semantics covers all theories in autoepistemic logic of first order, Moore's AE logic, and Reiter's default logic. Our study demonstrates that the autoepistemic logic of first order is a very powerful framework for nonmonotonic reasoning, logic programming, deductive databases, and knowledge representation.This research is partially supported by NSERC grant OGP42193.     

Many Birds Fly, Some Don't

Ever since the publication of Programs With Common Sense by McCarthy, the problem of qualification has been a source of intense research and debate. While it is undoubtful that now the common sense research community knows a lot about default reasoning, non-monotonic logics, belief revision, multiple extensions, among related topics, it is undeniable that the problem of qualification remains unsolved.In the present paper, the problem of qualification is reframed and a different approach to it is presented. It is here suggested that a more powerful instrument for quantification (instead of the universal quantifier) can circumvent some of the problems raised by the traditional approaches. From a commonsensical point of view, sentences like men are mortal, elephants are grey, and birds fly suggest a kind of partial set inclusion to which decreasing grades of epistemic entrenchment of a certain agent can be associated.In order to illustrate the capabilities of the proposed approach, an exercise of belief revision, involving a mythical australian bird, named Tweety, which happens to be a flying ostrich, is presented.     

Tableau-based characterization and theorem proving for default logic

In this paper, we present a new method for computing extensions and for deriving formulae from a default theory. It is based on the semantic tableaux method and works for default theories with a finite set of defaults that are formulated over a decidable subset of first-order logic. We prove that all extensions (if any) of a default theory can be produced by constructing the semantic tableau ofone formula built from the general laws and the default consequences. This result allows us to describe an algorithm that provides extensions if there are any, and to decide if there are none. Moreover, the method gives a necessary and sufficient criterion for the existence of extensions of default theories with finitely many defaults provided they are formulated on a decidable subset of FOL.This work was completed while the author was at CNRS, Marseille.     

Extending the Maximum Entropy Approach to Variable Strength Defaults

A generalisation of the maximum entropy (ME) approach to default reasoning [7,8] to cater for variable strength defaults is presented. The assumptions on which the original work was based are reviewed and revised. A new algorithm is presented that is shown to compute the ME-ranking under these more general conditions. The limitations of the revised approach are discussed and a test for the uniqueness of the ME-solution is given. The ME-solutions to several illustrative examples of default reasoning are given, and the approach is shown to handle them appropriately. The conclusion is that the ME-approach can be regarded as providing a benchmark theory of default reasoning against which default intuitions and other default systems may be assessed.     

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.     

Possible events, actual events, and robots

To plan means reasoning about possible actions, but a robot must also reason about actual events. This paper proposes a formal theory about actual and possible events. It presents a new modal logic as a notation for this theory and a technique for planning in the modal logic using a first-order theorem prover augmented with simple modal reasoning. This avoids the need for a general modal-logic theorem prover. Adding beliefs to this theory raises an interesting problem for which the paper offers a tentative solution.     

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．