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An epistemic model of logic programming

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Abstract

If we view an ordinary logic program as a set of beliefs of animplicit agent about a world, then acompletely epistemic logical view of logic programming would yield a further extension that allows us to reasonexplicitly about beliefs and non-beliefs of any agents. In particular, such a view will accommodate nested beliefs, introspective reasoning of self-beliefs and meta-reasoning of others’ beliefs. In this paper, we present the logical foundation of such a view by developing acomputational logic ofquantified epistemic notions. The semantics of the logic is an extension of Kripke’spossible-worlds semantics with variable domains to capture theintensional imputation problem in epistemic notions. A syntactical characterization of this semantics is developed to yield a clausal form of the logic. An efficient resolution mechanisation of this form is described. It is achieved by augmenting Konolige’sB-resolution with a semi-set-of-support strategy with linear resolution. Further refinements on a Horn clausal form of the logic with negation as failure are also discussed.

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Author notes

  1. Y. J. Jiang

    Present address: Department of Computing, Imperial College, SW7 2BZ, London, England

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Laboratory, Cambridge University, CB2 3QG, Cambridge, England

    Y. J. Jiang

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  1. Y. J. Jiang
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Jiang, Y.J. An epistemic model of logic programming. New Gener Comput 8, 33–59 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03037512

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03037512

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