495864
Infinitary Default Logic for Specification of Nonmonotonic Reasoning
In this paper we study constructions leading to the formation of belief sets by agents. We focus on the situation when possible belief sets are built incrementally in stages. We call an infinite sequence of theories that represents such a process a reasoning trace. A set of reasoning traces describing all possible reasoning scenarios for the agent is called a reasoning frame. Default logic by Reiter is not powerful enough to represent reasoning frames. In the paper we introduce a generalization of default logic of Reiter by allowing infinite sets of justifications. We call this formalism infinitary default logic. In the main result of the paper we show that every reasoning frame can be represented by an infinitary default theory. A similar representability result for antichains of theories (belief frames) is also presented.
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.
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.
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.
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.
7110538
Only Persistence Makes Nonmonotonicity Monotonous
An important characteristic of many logics for artificial intelligence is that they are nonmonotonic. This means that adding a formula to the premises can destroy some of the consequences. There may exist formulae that can always be safely added to the premises without destroying any of the consequences: they respect monotonicity. We consider three preferential logics for which we analyze the class of formulae which respect monotonicity. For each of the three logics we show that this class is equal to the class of formulae preserved under going to more preferred models, and we provide syntactic characterizations of these classes.
3010463
Equality Languages and Fixed Point Languages
This paper considers equality languages and fixed-point languages of homomorphisms and deterministic gsm mappings. It provides some basic properties of these classes of languages. We introduce a new subclass of dgsm mappings, the so-called symmetric dgsm mappings. We prove that (unlike for arbitrary dgsm mappings) their fixed-point languages are regular but not effectively obtainable. This result has various consequences. In particular we strengthen a result from Ehrenfeucht, A., and Rozenberg, G. [(1978), Theor. Comp. Sci. 7, 169–184] by pointing out a class of homomorphisms which includes elementary homomorphisms but still has regular equality languages. Also we show that the result from Herman, G. T., and Walker, A. [(1976), Theor. Comp. Sci. 2, 115–130] that fixed-point languages of DIL mappings are regular, is not effective.
30357320
The Power to Two-Way Deterministic Checking Stack Automata
Abstract It is well known that nondeterministic two-way checking stack automata recognize NSPACE( n ). We show that deterministic two-way checking stack automata have the same power as deterministic two-way two-head finite automata. The easy proof is based on the closure under inverse deterministic two-way GSM mappings of the deterministic two-way two-head finite automaton languages.
17739753
Finite Languages for the Representation of Finite Graphs
We introduce a new way of specifying graphs: through languages, i.e., sets of strings. The strings of a given (finite, prefix-free) language represent the vertices of the graph; whether or not there is an edge between the vertices represented by two strings is determined by the pair of symbols at the first position in these strings where they differ. With this new, “positional” or lexicographic, method, classical and well-understood ways of specifying languages can now be used to specify graphs, in a compact way; thus, (small) finite automata can be used to specify (large) graphs. Since (prefix-free) languages can be viewed as trees, our method generalizes the hierarchical specification of particular types of graphs such as cographs and VSP graphs. Our main results demonstrate an intrinsic relationship between the fundamental operations of language concatenation and graph substitution.
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.
14472583
An exercise in structural congruence
Milner's structural congruence is decidable for the pi-calculus without restriction, in exponential space.