is relatively straightforward. Another advantage of the ultimate approximation is that in cases where TP is monotone the ultimate well-founded model will be 2-valued and will coincide with the least fixpoint of TP . This is not the case for the standard well-founded semantics. For example in the standard well-founded model of the program: # p. p. p is undefined while the associated TP operator is monotone and p is true in the ultimate well-founded model. One disadvantage of using the ultimate semantics is that it has a higher computational cost even for programs without aggregates. The complexity goes one level higher in the polynomial hierarchy to # 2 for the well-founded model and to 2 for a stable model which is also complete for this class [2]. Fortunately, by adding aggregates the complexity does not increase further. To give an example of a logic program with aggregates we consider the problem of computing the length of the shortest path between two nodes in a direc

Abstract not found

In this paper we develop an algebraic framework for studying semantics of nonmonotonic logics. Our approach is formulated in the language of lattices, bilattices, operators and fixpoints. The goal is to describe fixpoints of an operator O defined on a lattice. The key intuition is that of an approximation, a pair (x, y) of lattice elements which can be viewed as an approximation to each lattice element z such that x z y. The key notion is that of an approximating operator, a monotone operator on the bilattice of approximations whose fixpoints approximate the fixpoints of the operator O. The main contribution of the paper is an algebraic construction which assigns a certain operator, called the stable operator, to every approximating operator on a bilattice of approximations. This construction leads to an abstract version of the well-founded semantics. In the paper we show that our theory offers a unified framework for semantic studies of logic programming, default logic and autoepistemic logic.

Well-known principles of induction include monotone induction and different sorts of nonmonotone induction such as inflationary induction, induction over well-founded sets and iterated induction. In this work, we define a logic formalizing induction over well-founded sets and monotone and iterated induction. Just as the principle of positive induction has been formalized in FO(LFP), and the principle of inflationary induction has been formalized in FO(IFP), this paper formalizes the principle of iterated induction in a new logic for Non-Monotone Inductive Definitions (ID-logic). The semantics of the logic is strongly influenced by the well-founded semantics of logic programming. This paper discusses the formalisation of different forms of (non-)monotone induction by the well-founded semantics and illustrates the use of the logic for formalizing mathematical and common-sense knowledge. To model different types of induction found in mathematics, we define several subclasses of definitions, and show that they are correctly formalized by the well-founded semantics. We also present translations into classical first or second order logic. We develop modularity and totality results and demonstrate their use to analyze and simplify complex definitions. We illustrate the use of the logic for temporal reasoning. The logic formally extends Logic Programming, Abductive Logic Programming and Datalog, and thus formalizes the view on these formalisms as logics of (generalized) inductive definitions. Categories and Subject Descriptors:... [...]:... 1.

Managing uncertainty and/or vagueness is starting to play an important role in Semantic Web representation languages. Our aim is to overview basic concepts on representing uncertain and vague knowledge in current Semantic Web ontology and rule languages (and their combination).

Abstract not found

It is well known that it is possible to split certain autoepistemic theories under the semantics of expansions, i.e. to divide such a theory into a number of different “levels”, such that the models of the entire theory can be constructed by incrementally constructing models for each level. Similar results exist for other non-monotonic formalisms, such as logic programming and default logic. In this work, we present a general, algebraic theory of splitting under a fixpoint semantics. Together with the framework of approximation theory, a general fixpoint theory for arbitrary operators, this gives us a uniform and powerful way of deriving splitting results for each logic with a fixpoint semantics. We demonstrate the usefulness of this approach, by applying our results to auto-epistemic logic.

The paper is an epistemological analysis of logic programming and shows an epistemological ambiguity. Many different logic programming formalisms and semantics have been proposed. Hence, logic programming can be seen as a family of formal logics, each induced by a pair of a syntax and a semantics, and each having a different declarative reading. However, we may expect that (a) if a program belongs to different logics of this family and has the same formal semantics in these logics, then the declarative meaning attributed to this program in the different logics is equivalent, and (b) that one and the same logic in this family has not been associated with distinct declarative readings.

We show that the concepts of strong and uniform equivalence of logic programs can be generalized to an abstract algebraic setting of operators on complete lattices. Our results imply characterizations of strong and uniform equivalence for several nonmonotonic logics including logic programming with aggregates, default logic and a version of autoepistemic logic. 1

Abstract. ID-logic uses ideas from the field of logic programming to extend second order logic with non-monotone inductive defintions. In this work, we reformulate the semantics of this logic in terms of approximation theory, an algebraic theory which generalizes the semantics of several non-monotonic reasoning formalisms. This allows us to apply certain abstract modularity theorems, developed within the framework of approximation theory, to ID-logic. As such, we are able to offer elegant and simple proofs of generalizations of known theorems, as well as some new results. 1