scholarly journals A common view on strong, uniform, and other notions of equivalence in answer-set programming

2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEFAN WOLTRAN

AbstractLogic programming under the answer-set semantics nowadays deals with numerous different notions of program equivalence. This is due to the fact that equivalence for substitution (known as strong equivalence) and ordinary equivalence are different concepts. The former holds, given programs P and Q, iff P can be faithfully replaced by Q within any context R, while the latter holds iff P and Q provide the same output, that is, they have the same answer sets. Notions in between strong and ordinary equivalence have been introduced as theoretical tools to compare incomplete programs and are defined by either restricting the syntactic structure of the considered context programs R or by bounding the set $\A$ of atoms allowed to occur in R (relativized equivalence). For the latter approach, different $\A$ yield properly different equivalence notions, in general. For the former approach, however, it turned out that any “reasonable” syntactic restriction to R coincides with either ordinary, strong, or uniform equivalence (for uniform equivalence, the context ranges over arbitrary sets of facts, rather than program rules). In this paper, we propose a parameterization for equivalence notions which takes care of both such kinds of restrictions simultaneously by bounding, on the one hand, the atoms which are allowed to occur in the rule heads of the context and, on the other hand, the atoms which are allowed to occur in the rule bodies of the context. We introduce a general semantical characterization which includes known ones as SE-models (for strong equivalence) or UE-models (for uniform equivalence) as special cases. Moreover, we provide complexity bounds for the problem in question and sketch a possible implementation method making use of dedicated systems for checking ordinary equivalence.

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (4-6) ◽  
pp. 565-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES P. DELGRANDE

AbstractAn approach to the revision of logic programs under the answer set semantics is presented. For programs P and Q, the goal is to determine the answer sets that correspond to the revision of P by Q, denoted P * Q. A fundamental principle of classical (AGM) revision, and the one that guides the approach here, is the success postulate. In AGM revision, this stipulates that α ∈ K * α. By analogy with the success postulate, for programs P and Q, this means that the answer sets of Q will in some sense be contained in those of P * Q. The essential idea is that for P * Q, a three-valued answer set for Q, consisting of positive and negative literals, is first determined. The positive literals constitute a regular answer set, while the negated literals make up a minimal set of naf literals required to produce the answer set from Q. These literals are propagated to the program P, along with those rules of Q that are not decided by these literals. The approach differs from work in update logic programs in two main respects. First, we ensure that the revising logic program has higher priority, and so we satisfy the success postulate; second, for the preference implicit in a revision P * Q, the program Q as a whole takes precedence over P, unlike update logic programs, since answer sets of Q are propagated to P. We show that a core group of the AGM postulates are satisfied, as are the postulates that have been proposed for update logic programs.


2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
MAURICIO OSORIO ◽  
JUAN A. NAVARRO ◽  
JOSÉ ARRAZOLA

We present some applications of intermediate logics in the field of Answer Set Programming (ASP). A brief, but comprehensive introduction to the answer set semantics, intuitionistic and other intermediate logics is given. Some equivalence notions and their applications are discussed. Some results on intermediate logics are shown, and applied later to prove properties of answer sets. A characterization of answer sets for logic programs with nested expressions is provided in terms of intuitionistic provability, generalizing a recent result given by Pearce. It is known that the answer set semantics for logic programs with nested expressions may select non-minimal models. Minimal models can be very important in some applications, therefore we studied them; in particular we obtain a characterization, in terms of intuitionistic logic, of answer sets which are also minimal models. We show that the logic G3 characterizes the notion of strong equivalence between programs under the semantic induced by these models. Finally we discuss possible applications and consequences of our results. They clearly state interesting links between ASP and intermediate logics, which might bring research in these two areas together.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 757-772 ◽  
Author(s):  
GIOVANNI AMENDOLA ◽  
CARMINE DODARO ◽  
FRANCESCO RICCA

AbstractAnswer Set Programming (ASP) is a well-established formalism for logic programming. Problem solving in ASP requires to write an ASP program whose answers sets correspond to solutions. Albeit the non-existence of answer sets for some ASP programs can be considered as a modeling feature, it turns out to be a weakness in many other cases, and especially for query answering. Paracoherent answer set semantics extend the classical semantics of ASP to draw meaningful conclusions also from incoherent programs, with the result of increasing the range of applications of ASP. State of the art implementations of paracoherent ASP adopt the semi-equilibrium semantics, but cannot be lifted straightforwardly to compute efficiently the (better) split semi-equilibrium semantics that discards undesirable semi-equilibrium models. In this paper an efficient evaluation technique for computing a split semi-equilibrium model is presented. An experiment on hard benchmarks shows that better paracoherent answer sets can be computed consuming less computational resources than existing methods.


AI Magazine ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Lifschitz

Answer set programming is a declarative programming paradigm based on the answer set semantics of logic programs. This introductory article provides the mathematical background for the discussion of answer set programming in other contributions to this special issue.


2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (4-6) ◽  
pp. 531-545 ◽  
Author(s):  
YISONG WANG ◽  
JIA-HUAI YOU ◽  
LI YAN YUAN ◽  
YI-DONG SHEN

AbstractDescription Logic Programs (dl-programs) proposed by Eiter et al. constitute an elegant yet powerful formalism for the integration of answer set programming with description logics, for the Semantic Web. In this paper, we generalize the notions of completion and loop formulas of logic programs to description logic programs and show that the answer sets of a dl-program can be precisely captured by the models of its completion and loop formulas. Furthermore, we propose a new, alternative semantics for dl-programs, called the canonical answer set semantics, which is defined by the models of completion that satisfy what are called canonical loop formulas. A desirable property of canonical answer sets is that they are free of circular justifications. Some properties of canonical answer sets are also explored.


AI Magazine ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 25-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Kaufmann ◽  
Nicola Leone ◽  
Simona Perri ◽  
Torsten Schaub

Answer set programming is a declarative problem solving paradigm that rests upon a workflow involving modeling, grounding, and solving. While the former is described by Gebser and Schaub (2016), we focus here on key issues in grounding, or how to systematically replace object variables by ground terms in a effective way, and solving, or how to compute the answer sets of a propositional logic program obtained by grounding.


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 262-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELIAS MARCOPOULOS ◽  
YUANLIN ZHANG

AbstractRecent progress in logic programming (e.g. the development of the answer set programming (ASP) paradigm) has made it possible to teach it to general undergraduate and even middle/high school students. Given the limited exposure of these students to computer science, the complexity of downloading, installing, and using tools for writing logic programs could be a major barrier for logic programming to reach a much wider audience. We developed onlineSPARC, an online ASP environment with a self-contained file system and a simple interface. It allows users to type/edit logic programs and perform several tasks over programs, including asking a query to a program, getting the answer sets of a program, and producing a drawing/animation based on the answer sets of a program.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 705-721
Author(s):  
GIOVANNI AMENDOLA ◽  
FRANCESCO RICCA ◽  
MIROSLAW TRUSZCZYNSKI

AbstractAnswer Set Programming (ASP) is a logic programming paradigm featuring a purely declarative language with comparatively high modeling capabilities. Indeed, ASP can model problems in NP in a compact and elegant way. However, modeling problems beyond NP with ASP is known to be complicated, on the one hand, and limited to problems in $\[\Sigma _2^P\]$ on the other. Inspired by the way Quantified Boolean Formulas extend SAT formulas to model problems beyond NP, we propose an extension of ASP that introduces quantifiers over stable models of programs. We name the new language ASP with Quantifiers (ASP(Q)). In the paper we identify computational properties of ASP(Q); we highlight its modeling capabilities by reporting natural encodings of several complex problems with applications in artificial intelligence and number theory; and we compare ASP(Q) with related languages. Arguably, ASP(Q) allows one to model problems in the Polynomial Hierarchy in a direct way, providing an elegant expansion of ASP beyond the class NP.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 688-704
Author(s):  
GIOVANNI AMENDOLA ◽  
FRANCESCO RICCA

AbstractIn the last years, abstract argumentation has met with great success in AI, since it has served to capture several non-monotonic logics for AI. Relations between argumentation framework (AF) semantics and logic programming ones are investigating more and more. In particular, great attention has been given to the well-known stable extensions of an AF, that are closely related to the answer sets of a logic program. However, if a framework admits a small incoherent part, no stable extension can be provided. To overcome this shortcoming, two semantics generalizing stable extensions have been studied, namely semi-stable and stage. In this paper, we show that another perspective is possible on incoherent AFs, called paracoherent extensions, as they have a counterpart in paracoherent answer set semantics. We compare this perspective with semi-stable and stage semantics, by showing that computational costs remain unchanged, and moreover an interesting symmetric behaviour is maintained.


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