Bilattices, due to M. Ginsberg, are a family of truth value spaces that allow elegantly for missing or conflicting information. The simplest example is Belnap's four-valued logic, based on classical two-valued logic. Among other examples are those based on finite many-valued logics, and on probabilistic valued logic. A fixed point semantics is developed for logic programming, allowing any bilattice as the space of truth values. The mathematics is little more complex than in the classical two-valued setting, but the result provides a natural semantics for distributed logic programs, including those involving confidence factors. The classical two-valued and the Kripke/Kleene three-valued semantics become special cases, since the logics involved are natural sublogics of Belnap's logic, the logic given by the simplest bilattice. 1 Introduction Often useful information is spread over a number of sites ("Does anybody know, did Willie wear a hat when he left this morning?") that can be speci...

In this paper, we review recent work aimed at the application of declarative logic programming to knowledge representation in artificial intelligence. We consider exten- sions of the language of definite logic programs by classical (strong) negation, disjunc- tion, and some modal operators and show how each of the added features extends the representational power of the language.

A refutation mechanism is introduced into logic programming, dual to the usual proof mechanism; then negation is treated via refutation. A four-valued logic is appropriate for the semantics: true, false, neither, both. Inconsistent programs are allowed, but inconsistencies remain localized. The four-valued logic is a well-known one, due to Belnap, and is the simplest example of Ginsberg's bilattice notion. An e#cient implementation based on semantic tableaux is sketched; it reduces to SLD resolution when negations are not involved. The resulting system can give reasonable answers to queries that involve both negation and free variables. Also it gives the same results as Prolog when there are no negations. Finally, an implementation in Prolog is given. 1 Introduction The most common treatment of negation in logic programming is negation-as-failure. This leads to problems that are now familiar: meanings of programs become di#cult to specify; program operators need not reach fix...