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 Logic & Formal Reasoning


Computing Narratives of Cognitive User Experience for Building Design Analysis: KR for Industry Scale Computer-Aided Architecture Design

AAAI Conferences

We present a cognitive design assistance system equipped with analytical capabilities aimed at anticipating architectural building design performance with respect to people-centred functional design goals. The paper focuses on the system capability to generate "narratives of visuo-locomotive user experience" from digital computer-aided architecture design (CAAD) models. The system is based on an underlying declarative narrative representation and computation framework pertaining to conceptual, geometric, and qualitative spatial knowledge. The semantics of the declarative narrative model, i.e., the overall   representation and computation model, is founded on: (a). conceptual knowledge formalised in an OWL ontology; (b). a general spatial representation and reasoning engine implemented in constraint logic programming; and (c). a declaratively encoded (narrative) construction process (based on search over graph structures) implemented in answer-set programming. We emphasise and demonstrate: complete system implementation, scalability, and robust performance & integration with industry-scale architecture industry tools (e.g., Revit, ArchiCAD) & standards (BIM, IFC).


SmartPM: An Adaptive Process Management System through Situation Calculus, IndiGolog, and Classical Planning

AAAI Conferences

In this paper we present SmartPM, a model and a prototype Process Management System featuring a set of techniques providing support for automated adaptation of knowledge-intensive processes at run-time. Such techniques are able to automatically adapt process instances without explicitly defining policies to recover from exceptions and without the intervention of domain experts at run-time, aiming at reducing error-prone and costly manual ad-hoc changes, and thus at relieving users from complex adaptations tasks. To accomplish this, we make use of well-established techniques and frameworks from Artificial Intelligence, such as situation calculus, IndiGolog and classical planning.


A First-Order Semantics for Golog and ConGolog under a Second-Order Induction Axiom for Situations

AAAI Conferences

Golog and ConGolog are languages defined in the situation calculus for cognitive robotics. Given a Golog program \delta, its semantics is defined by a macro Do(\delta,s,s') that expands to a logical sentence that captures the conditions under which performing \delta in s can terminate in s'. A similarmacro is defined for ConGolog programs. In general, the logical sentences that these macros expand to are second-order, and in the case of ConGolog, may involve quantification over programs. In this paper, we show that by making use of the foundational axioms in the situation calculus, in particular, the second-order closure axiom about the space of situations, these macro expressions can actually be defined using first-order sentences.


Decidable Reasoning in a Fragment of the Epistemic Situation Calculus

AAAI Conferences

The situation calculus is a popular formalism for reasoning about actions and change. Since the language is first-order, reasoning in the situation calculus is undecidable in general.  An important question then is how to weaken reasoning in a principled way to guarantee decidability. Existing approaches either drastically limit the representation of the action theory or neglect important aspects such as sensing. In this paper we propose a model of limited belief for the epistemic situation calculus, which allows very expressive knowledge bases and handles both physical and sensing actions. The model builds on an existing approach to limited belief in the static case. We show that the resulting form of limited reasoning is sound with respect to the original epistemic situation calculus and eventually complete for a large class of formulas. Moreover, reasoning is decidable.


A Formalization of Programs in First-Order Logic with a Discrete Linear Order

AAAI Conferences

We consider the problem of representing and reasoning about computer programs, and proposea translator from a core procedural iterative programming language to first-order logic with quantification over the domain of natural numbers that includes the usual successor function and the ``less than'' linear order, essentially a first-order logic with a discrete linear order. Unlike Hoare's logic, our approach does not rely on loop invariants. Unlike typical temporal logicspecification of a program, our translation does not require a transition system model of the program, and is compositional on the structures of the program. Some non-trivial examples are given to show the effectiveness of our translation for proving properties of programs.


Skolemization for Weighted First-Order Model Counting

AAAI Conferences

First-order model counting emerged recently as a novel reasoning task, at the core of efficient algorithms for probabilistic logics. We present a Skolemization algorithm for model counting problems that eliminates existential quantifiers from a first-order logic theory without changing its weighted model count. For certain subsets of first-order logic, lifted model counters were shown to run in time polynomial in the number of objects in the domain of discourse, where propositional model counters require exponential time. However, these guarantees apply only to Skolem normal form theories (i.e., no existential quantifiers) as the presence of existential quantifiers reduces lifted model counters to propositional ones. Since textbook Skolemization is not sound for model counting, these restrictions precluded efficient model counting for directed models, such as probabilistic logic programs, which rely on existential quantification. Our Skolemization procedure extends the applicability of first-order model counters to these representations. Moreover, it simplifies the design of lifted model counting algorithms.


Constructive Negation in Extensional Higher-Order Logic Programming

AAAI Conferences

Extensional higher-order logic programming has been recently proposed as an interesting extension of classical logic programming. An important characteristic of the new paradigm is that it preserves all the well-known properties oftraditional logic programming. In this paper we enhance extensional higher-order logic programming with constructive negation. We argue that the main ideas underlying constructive negation are quite close to the existing proof procedurefor extensional higher-order logic programming and for this reason the two notions amalgamate quite conveniently. We demonstrate the soundness of the resulting proof procedure and describe an actual implementation of a language that embodies the above ideas. In this way we obtain the first (to our knowledge) higher-order logic programming language supporting constructive negation and offering a new style of programming that genuinely extends that of traditional logic programming.


Logic Programs with Ordered Disjunction: First-Order Semantics and Expressiveness

AAAI Conferences

Logic programs with ordered disjunction (LPODs) (Brewka 2002) generalize normal logic programs by combining alternative and ranked options in the heads of rules. It has been showed that LPODs are useful in a number of areas including game theory, policy languages, planning and argumentations. In this paper, we extend propositional LPODs to the first-order case, where a classical second-order formula is defined to capture the stable model semantics of the underlying first-order LPODs. We then develop a progression semantics that is equivalent to the stable model semantics but naturally represents the reasoning procedure of LPODs. We show that on finite structures, every LPOD can be translated to a first order sentence, which provides a basis for computing stable models of LPODs. We further study the complexity and expressiveness of LPODs and prove that almost positive LPODs precisely capture first-order normal logic programs, which indicates that ordered disjunction itself and constraints are sufficient to represent negation as failure.


Random Logic Programs: Linear Model

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

This paper proposes a model, the linear model, for randomly generating logic programs with low density of rules and investigates statistical properties of such random logic programs. It is mathematically shown that the average number of answer sets for a random program converges to a constant when the number of atoms approaches infinity. Several experimental results are also reported, which justify the suitability of the linear model. It is also experimentally shown that, under this model, the size distribution of answer sets for random programs tends to a normal distribution when the number of atoms is sufficiently large. KEYWORDS: answer set programming, random logic programs.


Typed Hilbert Epsilon Operators and the Semantics of Determiner Phrases (Invited Lecture)

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

The semantics of determiner phrases, be they definite de- scriptions, indefinite descriptions or quantified noun phrases, is often as- sumed to be a fully solved question: common nouns are properties, and determiners are generalised quantifiers that apply to two predicates: the property corresponding to the common noun and the one corresponding to the verb phrase. We first present a criticism of this standard view. Firstly, the semantics of determiners does not follow the syntactical structure of the sentence. Secondly the standard interpretation of the indefinite article cannot ac- count for nominal sentences. Thirdly, the standard view misses the linguis- tic asymmetry between the two properties of a generalised quantifier. In the sequel, we propose a treatment of determiners and quantifiers as Hilbert terms in a richly typed system that we initially developed for lexical semantics, using a many sorted logic for semantical representations. We present this semantical framework called the Montagovian generative lexicon and show how these terms better match the syntactical structure and avoid the aforementioned problems of the standard approach. Hilbert terms rather differ from choice functions in that there is one polymorphic operator and not one operator per formula. They also open an intriguing connection between the logic for meaning assembly, the typed lambda calculus handling compositionality and the many-sorted logic for semantical representations. Furthermore epsilon terms naturally introduce type-judgements and confirm the claim that type judgment are a form of presupposition.