This paper investigates transformations and normal forms in the context of Defeasible Logic, a simple but efficient formalism for nonmonotonic reasoning based on rules and priorities. The transformations described in this paper have two main benefits: on one hand they can be used as a theoretical tool that leads to a deeper understanding of the formalism, and on the other hand they have been used in the development of an efficient implementation of defeasible logic

For many years, the non-monotonic reasoning commu-nity has focussed on highly expressive logics. Such logics have tumed out to be computationally expensive, and have given little support to the practical use of non-monotonic reasoning. In this work we discuss defeasible logic, a less-expressive but more efficient non-monotonic logic. We report on two new implemented systems for defeasible logic: a query answering system employing a backward-chaining approach, and a forward-chaining implementation that computes all conclusions. Our experimental evaluation demonstrates that the systems can deal with large theories (up to hundreds of thousands of rules). We show that defea-sible logic has linear complexity, which contrasts markedly with most other non-monotonic logics and helps to explain the impressive experimental results. We believe that defea-sible logic, with its eficiency and simplicity, is a good can-didate to be used as a modelling language for practical ap-plications, including modelling of regulations and business rules. 1

Defeasible logic is a rule-based nonmonotonic logic, with both strict and defeasible rules, and a priority relation on rules. We show that inference in the propositional form of the logic can be performed in linear time. This contrasts markedly with most other propositional nonmonotonic logics, in which inference is intractable. 1 Introduction Mostwork in non-monotonicreasoning has focussed on languages for whichpropositional inference is not tractable. Sceptical default reasoning is \Pi p 2 -hard, even for very simple classes of default rules, as is sceptical autoepistemic reasoning and propositional circumscription. The complexity of sceptical inference from logic programs with negation-as-failure varies according to the semantics of negation. For both the stable model semantics and the Clark completion, sceptical inference is co-NPhard. See [13, 9] for more details. Although such languages are very expressive, and this expressiveness has been exploited in answer-set progra...

Logics for knowledge representation suffer from overspecialization: while each logic may provide an ideal representation formalism for some problems, it is less than optimal for others. A solution to this problem is to choose from several logics and, when necessary, combine the representations. In general, such an approach results in a very difficult problem of combination. However, if we can choose the logics from a uniform framework then the problem of combining them is greatly simplified. In this paper, we develop such a framework for defeasible logics. It supports all defeasible logics that satisfy a strong negation principle. We use logic meta-programs as the basis for the framework.

Recently there has been increased interest in logic programming-based default reasoning approaches which are not using negation-as-failure in their object language. Instead, default reasoning is modelled by rules and a priority relation among them. In this paper we compare the expressive power of two approaches in this family of logics: Defeasible Logic, and sceptical LPwNF. Our results show that the former has a strictly stronger expressive power. The difference is caused by the latter logic's failure to capture the idea of teams of rules supporting a specific conclusion.

Regulations are a wide-spread and important part of government and business. They codify how products must be made and processes should be performed. Such regulations can be difficult to understand and apply. In an environment of growing complexity of, and change in, regulation, automated support for reasoning with regulations is becoming increasingly necessary. In this paper we claim that such automated support can be provided on the basis of defeasible logical rules. We highlight the support that can be provided by this logical tool, and illustrate some aspects using examples from one specific domain: university regulations. 1 Introduction Regulations are a wide-spread and important part of government and business. They codify how products must be made and processes should be performed. Such regulations can be difficult to understand and apply. Even stand-alone regulations can be self-contradictory, as a result of the incremental process of their development and the lack of a forma...

Defeasible reasoning is a direction in nonmonotonic reasoning that is based on the use of rules that may be defeated by other rules. It is a simple, but often more efficient approach than other nonmonotonic reasoning systems. This paper presents a family of defeasible reasoning formalisms built around Nute's defeasible logic. We describe the motivations of these formalisms and derive some basic properties and interrelationships. We also describe a query answering system that supports these formalisms and is available on the World Wide Web.

We investigate defeasible logics using a technique which decomposes the semantics of such logics into two parts: a specification of the structure of defeasible reasoning and a semantics for the meta-language in which the specification is written.

Defeasible logic is a logic-programming based nonmonotonic reasoning formalism which has an efficient implementation. It makes use of facts, strict rules, defeasible rules, defeaters, and a superiority relation. We clarify the proof theory of defeasible logic through an analysis of the conclusions it can draw. Using it, we show that defeaters do not add to the expressiveness of defeasible logic, among other results. The analysis also supports the restriction of defeasible logic to admit only acyclic superiority relations.

Defeasible logic is an efficient non-monotonic logic that is defined only proof-theoretically. It has potential application in some legal domains. We present here an argumentation semantics for defeasible logic that will be useful in these applications. Our development differs at several points from existing argumentation frameworks since there are several features of defeasible logic that have not been addressed in the literature.