Many systems that exhibit nonmonotonic behavior have been described and studied already in the literature. The general notion of nonmonotonic reasoning, though, has almost always been described only negatively, by the property it does not enjoy, i.e. monotonicity. We study here general patterns of nonmonotonic reasoning and try to isolate properties that could help us map the field of nonmonotonic reasoning by reference to positive properties. We concentrate on a number of families of nonmonotonic consequence relations, defined in the style of Gentzen [13]. Both proof-theoretic and semantic points of view are developed in parallel. The former point of view was pioneered by D. Gabbay in [10], while the latter has been advocated by Y. Shoham in [38]. Five such families are defined and characterized by representation theorems, relating the two points of view. One of the families of interest, that of preferential relations, turns out to have been studied by E. Adams in [2]. The pr...

Abduction in Logic Programming started in the late 80s, early 90s, in an attempt to extend logic programming into a framework suitable for a variety of problems in Artificial Intelligence and other areas of Computer Science. This paper aims to chart out the main developments of the field over the last ten years and to take a critical view of these developments from several perspectives: logical, epistemological, computational and suitability to application. The paper attempts to expose some of the challenges and prospects for the further development of the field.

Abstract not found

Abstract not found

A key issue when reasoning with default rules is how to order them so as to derive plausible conclusions according to the more specific rules applicable to the situation under concern, to make sure that default rules are not systematically inhibited by more general rules, and to cope with the problem of irrelevance of facts with respect to exceptions. Pearl's system Z enables us to rank-order default rules. In this paper we show how to encode such a rank-ordered set of defaults in possibilistic logic. We can thus take advantage of the deductive machinery available in possibilistic logic. We point out that the notion of inconsistency tolerant inference in possibilistic logic corresponds to the bold inference ; 1 in system Z. We also show how to express defaults by means of qualitative possibility relations. Improvements to the ordering provided by system Z are also proposed.

The links between Shoham's preference logic and possibilistic logic, a numerical logic of uncertainty based on Zadeh's possibility measures, are investigated. Starting from a fuzzy set of preferential interpretations of a propositional theory, we prove that the notion of preferential entailment is closely related to a previously introduced notion of conditional possibility. Conditional possibility is then shown to possess all properties (originally stated by Gabbay) of a well-behaved non-monotonic consequence relation. We obtain the possibilistic counterpart of Adams ' e-semantics of conditional probabilities which is the basis of the probabilistic model of non-monotonic logic proposed by Geffner and Pearl. Lastly we prove that our notion of possibilistic entailment is the one at work in possibilistic logic, a logic that handles uncertain propositional formulas, where uncertainty is modelled by degrees of necessity, and where partial inconsistency is allowed. Considering the formerly established close links between Gardenfors'epistemic entrenchment and necessity measures, what this paper proposes is a new way of relating belief revision and non-monotonic inference, namely via possibility theory. 1

Our aim in this article is to supplement the set of strong properties introduced in the preceding article ([Dix94]) with a set of weak principles in order to characterize semantics of logic programs. In [Dix94] we introduced our point of view: we observed that all semantics induce in a natural way a sceptical non-monotonic entailment relation SEM scept . We ask for the properties of these sceptical relations and use them to describe all possible semantics. We collect in this paper serious shortcomings of some semantics proposed recently. Their strange behaviour led us to formulate in a natural way certain principles to avoid these problems. We argue that any well-behaved semantics should satisfy these principles. The main results state that our list of weak principles is complete in the following sense: any well-behaved-semantics is an extension of the well-founded semantics WFS and coincides for stratified programs with Apt, Blair, and Walker's supported model M supp P . We also...

Our goal is to integrate the paradigms of object-oriented structuring and of rule-based specifications for databases. In this paper, we consider hierarchical specifications of objects and object types with attributes defined by logical rules, and we explain their local (single object) semantics as well as their composite (object society) semantics. In order to allow inheritance with exceptions (overriding) even for rules, the defining formulas are interpreted like defaults of di#erent priorities corresponding to levels in the object type hierarchy. Here, minimal model semantics known from default reasoning in artificial intelligence or from database completions can be utilized, but must be modified to respect object-oriented issues, in particular locality. We prove that intended models exist for object and composite specifications under natural conditions, even if general clauses are used as defaults. 1 Introduction Much has already been said about the relative merits of the object-or...

This paper is an investigation of the relationship between conditional objects obtained as a qualitative counterpart to conditional probabilities, and nonmonotonic reasoning. Roughly speaking, a conditional object can be seen as a generic rule which allows us to get a conclusion provided that the available information exactly corresponds to the "context" part of the conditional object. This gives freedom for possibly retracting previous conclusions when the available information becomes more specific. Viewed as an inference rule expressing a contextual belief, the conditional object is shown to possess all properties of a well-behaved nonmonotonic consequence relation when a suitable choice of connectives and deduction operation is made. Using previous results from Adams' conditional probabilistic logic, a logic of conditional objects is proposed. Its axioms and inference rules are those of preferential reasoning logic of Lehmann and colleagues. But the semantics relies on a three-valu...

We distinguish between two ways of thinking about defaults. The first way, in which defaults augment known premises by `strengthening' the underlying logic, is the traditional approach taken by most existing formalisms. In the second way, defaults are represented in the set of premises, but obtain their default status by having a reduced priority relative to the known premises. In this paper we: 1. Compare and contrast the approaches. We argue that the second approach makes for simpler representation of defaults and their interactions. 2. Describe a syntax and semantics for the second, less well-known approach; we introduce the notion of ordered theory presentation (OTP) to represent theories with defaults. 3. Show how ordered theory presentations can represent familiar examples of interacting defaults in an intuitively clear and simple way; we give the Tweety example and the Yale Shooting example. We also show that the OTP framework is particularly well suited to inheritance examples....