Defeasible argumentation frameworks have evolved to become a sound setting to formalize commonsense, qualitative reasoning from incomplete and potentially inconsistent knowledge. Defeasible Logic Programming (DeLP) is a defeasible argumentation formalism based on an extension of logic programming.

We study the relation between possibility measures and the theory of imprecise probabilities, and argue that possibility measures have an important part in this theory. It is shown that a possibility measure is a coherent upper probability if and only if it is normal. A detailed comparison is given between the possibilistic and natural extension of an upper probability, both in the general case and for upper probabilities dened on a class of nested sets. We prove in particular that a possibility measure is the restriction to events of the natural extension of a special kind of upper probability, dened on a class of nested sets. We show that possibilistic extension can be interpreted in terms of natural extension. We also prove that when either the upper or the lower cumulative distribution function of a random quantity is specied, possibility measures very naturally emerge as the corresponding natural extensions. Next, we go from upper probabilities to upper previsions...

The language for describing inconsistency is underdeveloped. If a knowledgebase (a set of formulae) is inconsistent, we need more illuminating ways to say how inconsistent it is, or to say whether one knowledgebase is “more inconsistent” than another. To address this, we provide a general characterization of inconsistency, based on quasi-classical logic (a form of paraconsistent logic with a more expressive semantics than Belnap’s four-valued logic, and unlike other paraconsistent logics, allows the connectives to appear to behave as classical connectives). We analyse inconsistent knowledge by considering the conflicts arising in the minimal quasi-classical models for that knowledge. This is used for a measure of coherence for each knowledgebase, and for a preference ordering, called the compromise relation, over knowledgebases. In this paper, we formalize this framework, and consider applications in managing heterogeneous sources of knowledge.

One of the possible semantics of fuzzy sets is in terms of similarity, namely a grade of membership of an item in a fuzzy set can be viewed as the degree of resemblance between this item and prototypes of the fuzzy set. In such a framework, an interesting question is how to devise a logic of similarity, where inference rules can account for the proximity between interpretations. The aim is to capture the notion of interpolation inside a logical setting. In this paper, we investigate how a logic of similarity dedicated to interpolation can be defined, by considering different natural consequence relations induced by the presence of a similarity relation on the set of interpretations. These consequence relations are axiomatically characterized in a way that parallels the characterization of nonmonotonic consequence relationships. It is shown how to reconstruct the similarity relation underlying a given family of consequence relations that obey the axioms. Our approach strikingly differs ...

As proposed in various places, a set of propositional formulas, each associated with a numerical weight, can be used to model the preferences of an agent in combinatorial domains. If the range of possible choices can be represented by the set of possible assignments of propositional symbols to truth values, then the utility of an assignment is given by the sum of the weights of the formulas it satisfies. Our aim in this paper is twofold: (1) to establish correspondences between certain types of weighted formulas and well-known classes of utility functions (such as monotonic, concave or k-additive functions); and (2) to obtain results on the comparative succinctness of different types of weighted formulas for representing the same class of utility functions.

In this paper, it is shown that fuzzy sets and possibility theory provide an homogeneous framework for the representation of both imprecise/uncertain information and soft queries with a flexible interpretation. Incompletely known information as well as flexible query handling capabilities are expected to extend the range of applications for future database management systems. The term fuzzy databases which is extensively used in the specialized literature covers several different meanings which are reviewed. A special emphasis is put on flexible queries addressed to regular databases. Such queries enables the user to easily express preferences among more or less admissible attribute values. Several approaches for introducing flexibility, including fuzzy sets, are compared. A query language based on SQL is outlined and some issues related to query processing are discussed. In addition, possibility theory proves to be useful for representing imperfectly known data and soft constraints. P...

Possibilistic logic is a logic for reasoning with uncertain and partially inconsistent knowledge bases. Its standard version consists in ranking propositional formulas according to their certainty or priority level, by assigning them lower bounds of necessity values. We give a survey of automated deduction techniques for standard possibilistic logic, together with complexity results. We focus on the extensions of resolution (Section 3) and of the Davis and Putnam procedure (Section 4). In Section 5 we consider extended versions and variants of possibilistic logic. We conclude by listing the related research topics, the applicative impact of this work and further research issues. 1 Introduction Possibilistic logic is a logic of uncertainty tailored for reasoning under incomplete and partially inconsistent knowledge. At the syntactical level it handles formulae of propositional or firstorder classical logic, to which are attached lower bounds of so-called degrees of necessity and possib...

In this paper we propose a propositional temporal language based on fuzzy temporal constraints which turns out to be expressive enough for domains like many coming from medicine where knowledge is of propositional nature and an explicit handling of time, imprecision and uncertainty are required. The language is provided with a natural possibilistic semantics to account for the uncertainty issued by the fuzziness of temporal constraints. We also present an inference system based on specific rules dealing with the temporal constraints and a general fuzzy modus ponens rule whereby behaviour is shown to be sound. The analysis of the different choices as fuzzy operators leads us to identify the well-known Lukasiewicz implication as very appropriate to define the notion of possibilistic entailment, an essential element of our inference system.

Possibilistic Defeasible Logic Programming (P-DeLP) is a logic programming language which combines features from argumentation theory and logic programming, incorporating as well the treatment of possibilistic uncertainty and fuzzy knowledge at object-language level. Solving a P-DeLP query...

Temporal Constraint Networks are a well-defined, natural and efficient formalism for representing temporal knowledge based on metric temporal constraints. They support the representation of both metric and some qualitative temporal relations and are provided with efficient algorithms based on CSP techniques. Recently, a generalization based on fuzzy sets has been proposed in order to cope with vagueness in temporal relations. In this paper we generalize some earlier definitions for Fuzzy Temporal Constraint Networks, we identify and define "interesting" queries in a fuzzy temporal constraint network, and explore a method for efficiently computing them in a specific case. Further analysis of some measures on possibility distributions turns out to be fundamental in order to precisely determine some of these queries. We discuss the advantages and shortcomings of various choices and propose specific alternatives which satisfactorily avoid the problems of previous proposals. The res...