Deducing Logic Programs

Abstract

Consider an agent endowed with a logic program which is able to respond to certain questions about the logic program. We would like to answer the question: to what extent can we deduce the logic program from the agent’s answers, and how can we do this?

For example, suppose the agent has a logic program with the unique answer set {p, q}. Supposing that we are only allowed to ask whether a given literal is in an answer set, we may guess that the logic program is {p ←, q ←}. It is clear that this is unlikely to be the actual logic program, however we cannot distinguish between this program and the actual program with only the questions allowed. On the other end of the scale, suppose we are allowed to ask the agent to tell us their logic program. Then it is trivial to determine exactly the logic program of the agent.