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International Conference on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning

LPNMR 2015: Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning pp 467–479Cite as

Characterising and Explaining Inconsistency in Logic Programs

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 9345))

Abstract

A logic program under the answer set semantics can be inconsistent because its only answer set is the set of all literals, or because it does not have any answer sets. In both cases, the reason for the inconsistency may be (1) only explicit negation, (2) only negation as failure, or (3) the interplay between these two kinds of negation. Overall, we identify four different inconsistency cases, and show how the respective reason can be further characterised by a set of culprits using semantics which are weaker than the answer set semantics. We also provide a technique for explaining the set of culprits in terms of trees whose nodes are derivations. This can be seen as an important first step towards debugging inconsistent logic programs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Clauses containing variables are used as shorthand for all their ground instances over the Herbrand Universe of the logic program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computing, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK

    Claudia Schulz & Francesca Toni

  2. National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, 101-8430, Japan

    Ken Satoh

Authors
  1. Claudia Schulz
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  2. Ken Satoh
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  3. Francesca Toni
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Claudia Schulz .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Calabria, Rende, Italy

    Francesco Calimeri

  2. University of Calabria, Rende, Italy

    Giovambattista Ianni

  3. University of Kentucky Dept. Computer Science, Lexington, Kentucky, USA

    Miroslaw Truszczynski

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Schulz, C., Satoh, K., Toni, F. (2015). Characterising and Explaining Inconsistency in Logic Programs. In: Calimeri, F., Ianni, G., Truszczynski, M. (eds) Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning. LPNMR 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9345. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23264-5_39

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23264-5_39

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-23263-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-23264-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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