32078047
Temporal Theories of Reasoning
In this paper we describe a general way of formalizing reasoning behaviour. Such a behaviour may be described by all the patterns which are valid for the behaviour. A pattern can be seen as a sequence of information states which describe what has been derived at each time point. A transition from an information state at a point in time to the state at the (or a) next time point is induced by one or more inference steps. We choose to model the information states by partial models and the patterns either by linear time or branching time temporal models. Using temporal logic one can define theories and look at all models of that theory. For a number of examples of reasoning behaviour we have been able to define temporal theories such that its (minimal) models correspond to the valid patterns of the behaviour. These theories prescribe that the inference steps which are possible, are "executed" in the temporal model. The examples indicate that partial temporal logic is a powerful means of describing and formalizing complex reasoning patterns, as the dynamic aspects of reasoning systems are integrated into the static ones in a clear fashion.
34555418
Nonmonotonic Reasoning with Multiple Belief Sets
In the present paper we introduce nonmonotonic belief set operators and selection operators to formalize and to analyze multiple belief sets in an abstract setting. We define and investigate formal properties of belief set operators as absorption, congruence, supradeductivity and weak belief monotony. Furthermore, it is shown that for each belief set operator satisfying strong belief cumulativity there exists a largest monotonic logic underlying it, thus generalizing a result for nonmonotonic inference operations. Finally, we study abstract properties of selective inference operations connected to belief set operators and which are used to choose one of the possible views.
40535872
Compositional Verification of Multi-Agent Systems in Temporal Multi-Epistemic Logic
Compositional verification aims at managing the complexity of theverification process by exploiting compositionality of the systemarchitecture. In this paper we explore the use of a temporal epistemiclogic to formalize the process of verification of compositionalmulti-agent systems. The specification of a system, its properties andtheir proofs are of a compositional nature, and are formalized within acompositional temporal logic: Temporal Multi-Epistemic Logic. It isshown that compositional proofs are valid under certain conditions.Moreover, the possibility of incorporating default persistence ofinformation in a system, is explored. A completion operation on aspecific type of temporal theories, temporal completion, is introducedto be able to use classical proof techniques in verification withrespect to non-classical semantics covering default persistence.
1862248
Monotonicity and Persistence in Preferential Logics
An important characteristic of many logics for Artificial Intelligence is their nonmonotonicity. This means that adding a formula to the premises can invalidate some of the consequences. There may, however, exist formulae that can always be safely added to the premises without destroying any of the consequences: we say they respect monotonicity. Also, there may be formulae that, when they are a consequence, can not be invalidated when adding any formula to the premises: we call them conservative. We study these two classes of formulae for preferential logics, and show that they are closely linked to the formulae whose truth-value is preserved along the (preferential) ordering. We will consider some preferential logics for illustration, and prove syntactic characterization results for them. The results in this paper may improve the efficiency of theorem provers for preferential logics.
9865419
A compositional reasoning system for executing nonmonotonic theories of reasoning
In this paper the framework DESIRE for the design of compositional reasoning systems and multi-agent systems was applied to build a generic nonmonotonic reasoning system. The outcome is a general reasoning system that can be used to model different nonmonotonic reasoning formalisms and that can be executed by a generic execution mechanism. The main advantages of using DESIRE (for example, compared to a direct implementation in a programming language such as PROLOG) are that the design is generic and has a transparent compositional structure, and the explicit declarative specification of both the static and dynamic aspects of the nonmonotonic reasoning processes, including their control. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
35737768
A Compositional Reasoning System for Executing Nonmonotonic Theories of Reasoning
In this paper a system was developed using the compositional modelling environment DESIRE (framework for DEsign and Specification of Interacting REasoning components). This environment for the development of compositional reasoning systems and multi-agent systems has been succesfully used to design various types of reasoning systems and multi-agent systems and applications in particular domains. The DESIRE sofware environment offers a graphical editor, an implementation generator and an execution environment to execute specifications automatically.
5981521
Nested Pebbles and Transitive Closure
First-order logic with k-ary deterministic transitive closure has the same power as two-way k-head deterministic automata that use a finite set of nested pebbles. This result is valid for strings, ranked trees, and in general for families of graphs having a fixed automaton that can be used to traverse the nodes of each of the graphs in the family. Other examples of such families are grids, toruses, and rectangular mazes.
15984778
XML transformation by tree-walking transducers with invisible pebbles
The pebble tree automaton and the pebble tree transducer are enhanced by additionally allowing an unbounded number of "invisible" pebbles (as opposed to the usual ("visible" ones). The resulting pebble tree automata recognize the regular tree languages (i.e., can validate all generalized DTD's) and hence can find all matches of MSO definable n-ary patterns. Moreover, when viewed as a navigational device, they lead to an XPath-like formalism that has a path expression for every MSO definable binary pattern. The resulting pebbletree transducers can apply arbitrary MSO definable tests to (the observable part of) their configurations, they (still) have a decidable typechecking problem, and they can model the recursion mechanism of XSLT. The time complexity ofthe typechecking problem for conjunctive queries that use MSO definable binary patterns can often be reduced through the use of invisible pebbles.
11003400
Passes and Paths of Attributive Grammars
An attribute grammar is pure (left-to-right) multi-pass if a bounded number of left-to-right passes over the derivation tree suffice to compute all its attributes. There is no requirement, as for the usual multi-pass attribute grammars, that all occurrences of the same attribute are computed in the same pass. It is shown that the problem of determining whether an arbitrary attribute grammar is pure multipass, is of inherently exponential time complexity. For fixed k > 0, it can be decided in polynomial time whether an attribute grammar is pure k-pass. The proofs are based on a characterization of pure multi-pass attribute grammars in terms of paths through their dependency graphs. A general result on dependency paths of attribute grammars relates them to (finite-copying) top-down tree transducers. The formal power of k-pass attribute grammars increases with increasing k. Formally, multi-pass attribute grammars are less powerful than arbitrary attribute grammars.
20050455
Clique-Width for 4-Vertex Forbidden Subgraphs
Clique-width of graphs is a major new concept with respect to efficiency of graph algorithms. The notion of clique-width extends the one of treewidth, since bounded treewidth implies bounded clique-width. We give a complete classification of all graph classes defined by forbidden induced subgraphs of at most four vertices with respect to bounded or unbounded clique-width.
17560850
Clique-Width for Four-Vertex Forbidden Subgraphs
Clique-width of graphs is a major new concept with respect to efficiency of graph algorithms. The notion of clique-width extends the one of treewidth, since bounded treewidth implies bounded clique-width. We give a complete classification of all graph classes defined by forbidden induced subgraphs of at most four vertices with respect to bounded or unbounded clique-width.