We study a decidable fixpoint extension of temporal description logics. To this end we employ and extend decidability results obtained for various temporally first-order monodic extensions of (first-order) description logics. Using these techniques we obtain decidability and tight complexity results for various fixpoint extensions of temporal description logics.

In this paper we use the Kripke semantics characterization of Dummett logic to introduce a new way of handling non-forced formulas in tableau proof systems. We pursue the aim of reducing the search space by strictly increasing the number of forced propositional variables after the application of non-invertible rules. The focus of the paper is on a new tableau system for Dummett logic, for which we have an implementation.

We present a unifying approach to the efficient evaluation of propositional answer-set programs. Our approach is based on backdoors which are small sets of atoms that represent "clever reasoning shortcuts" through the search space. The concept of backdoors is widely used in the areas of propositional satisfiability and constraint satisfaction. We show how this concept can be adapted to the nonmonotonic setting and how it allows to augment various known tractable subproblems, such as the evaluation of Horn and acyclic programs. In order to use backdoors we need to find them first. We utilize recent advances in fixed-parameter algorithmics to detect small backdoors. This implies fixed-parameter tractability of the evaluation of propositional answer-set programs, parameterized by the size of backdoors. Hence backdoor size provides a structural parameter similar to the treewidth parameter previously considered. We show that backdoor size and treewidth are incomparable, hence there are instances that are hard for one and easy for the other parameter. We complement our theoretical results with first empirical results.

We consider an extension of the propositional modal logic S4 which allows <> to act not only on isolated formulas, but also on sets of formulas. The interpretation of <>A is then given by the tangled closure of the valuations of formulas in A, which over finite transitive, reflexive models indicates the existence of a cluster satisfying A. This extension has been shown to be more expressive than the basic modal language: for example, it is equivalent to the bisimulation-invariant fragment of FOL over finite S4 models, whereas the basic modal language is weaker. However, previous analyses of this logic have been entirely semantic, and no proof system was available. In this paper we present a sound proof system for the polyadic S4 and prove that it is complete. The axiomatization is fairly standard, adding only the fixpoint axioms of the tangled closure to the usual S4 axioms. The proof proceeds by explicitly constructing a finite model from a consistent set of formulas.

The concept of "ideal semantics" has been promoted as an alternative basis for skeptical reasoning within abstract argumentation settings. Informally, ideal acceptance not only requires an argument to be skeptically accepted in the traditional sense but further insists that the argument is in an admissible set all of whose arguments are also skeptically accepted. The original proposal was couched in terms of the so-called preferred semantics for abstract argumentation. We argue, in this paper, that the notion of "deal acceptability'' is applicable to arbitrary semantics and justify this claim by showing that standard properties of classical ideal semantics, e.g. unique status, continue to hold in any "reasonable" extension-based semantics. We categorise the relationship between the divers concepts of "ideal extension wrt semantics s" that arise and we present a comprehensive analysis of algorithmic and complexity-theoretic issues.

We compare the expressiveness of the fragments of Halpern and Shoham's interval logic (HS), i.e., of all interval logics with modal operators associated with Allen's relations between intervals in linear orders. We establish a complete set of inter-definability equations between these modal operators, and thus obtain a complete classification of the family of 212 fragments of HS with respect to their expressiveness. Using that result and a computer program, we have found that there are 1347 expressively different such interval logics over the class of all linear orders.

This paper investigates belief revision where the underlying logic is that governing Horn clauses. It proves to be the case that classical (AGM) belief revision doesn’t immediately generalise to the Horn case. In particular, a standard construction based on a total preorder over possible worlds may violate the accepted (AGM) postulates. Conversely, Horn revision functions in the obvious extension to the AGM approach are not captured by total preorders over possible worlds. We address these difficulties by first restricting the semantic construction to "well behaved" orderings; and second, by augmenting the revision postulates by an additional postulate. This additional postulate is redundant in the AGM approach but not in the Horn case. In a representation result we show that these two approaches coincide. Arguably this work is interesting for several reasons. It extends AGM revision to inferentially-weaker Horn theories; hence it sheds light on the theoretical underpinnings of belief change, as well as generalising the AGM paradigm. Thus, this work is relevant to revision in areas that employ Horn clauses, such as deductive databases and logic programming, as well as areas in which inference is weaker than classical logic, such as in description logic.

This paper presents an approach to belief revision in which revision is a function from a belief state and a finite set of formulas to a new belief state. In the interesting case, the set for revision S may be inconsistent but individual members of S are consistent. We argue that S will still contain interesting information regarding revision; in particular, maximum consistent subsets of S will determine candidate formulas for the revision process, and the agent's associated faithful ranking will determine the plausibility of such candidate formulas. Postulates and semantic conditions characterizing this approach are given, and representation results are provided. As a consequence of this approach, we argue that revision by a sequence of formulas, usually considered as a problem of iterated revision, is more appropriately regarded as revision by the possibly-inconsistent set of these formulas. Hence we suggest that revision by a sequence of formulas is foremost a problem of (uniterated) set revision.

This work develops an approach to efficient reasoning in first-order knowledge bases with incomplete information. We build on Levesque's proper knowledge bases approach, which supports limited incomplete knowledge in the form of a possibly infinite set of positive or negative ground facts. We propose a generalization which allows these facts to involve unknown individuals, as in the work on labeled null values in databases. Dealing with such unknown individuals has been shown to be a key feature in the database literature on data integration and data exchange. In this way, we obtain one of the most expressive first-order open-world settings for which reasoning can still be done efficiently by evaluation, as in relational databases. We show the soundness of the reasoning procedure and its completeness for queries in a certain normal form.

We identify a new representation of propositional knowledge bases, the Sentential Decision Diagram SDD, which is interesting for a number of reasons. First, it is canonical in the presence of additional properties that resemble reduction rules of OBDDs. Second, SDDs can be combined using any Boolean operator in polytime. Third, CNFs with n variables and treewidth w have canonical SDDs of size O ( n 2 w ), which is tighter than the bound on OBDDs based on pathwidth. Finally, every OBDD is an SDD. Hence, working with the latter does not preclude the former.