Foundations of Rule-Based Query Answering

This survey article introduces into the essential concepts and methods underlying rule-based query languages. It covers four complementary areas: declarative semantics based on adaptations of mathematical logic, operational semantics, complexity and expressive power, and optimisation of query evaluation. The treatment of these areas is foundation-oriented, the foundations having resulted from over four decades of research in the logic programming and database communities on combinations of query languages and rules. These results have later formed the basis for conceiving, improving, and implementing several Web and Semantic Web technologies, in particular query languages such as XQuery or SPARQL for querying relational, XML, and RDF data, and rule languages like the “Rule Interchange Framework (RIF)” currently being developed in a working group of the W3C. Coverage of the article is deliberately limited to declarative languages in a classical setting: issues such as query answering in F-Logic or in description logics, or the relationship of query answering to reactive rules and events, are not addressed

Topics in Programming Languages, a Philosophical Analysis through the case of Prolog

[EN]Programming languages seldom find proper anchorage in philosophy of logic, language and science. is more, philosophy of language seems to be restricted to natural languages and linguistics, and even philosophy of logic is rarely framed into programming languages topics. The logic programming paradigm and Prolog are, thus, the most adequate paradigm and programming language to work on this subject, combining natural language processing and linguistics, logic programming and constriction methodology on both algorithms and procedures, on an overall philosophizing declarative status. Not only this, but the dimension of the Fifth Generation Computer system related to strong Al wherein Prolog took a major role. and its historical frame in the very crucial dialectic between procedural and declarative paradigms, structuralist and empiricist biases, serves, in exemplar form, to treat straight ahead philosophy of logic, language and science in the contemporaneous age as well. In recounting Prolog's philosophical, mechanical and algorithmic harbingers, the opportunity is open to various routes. We herein shall exemplify some: - the mechanical-computational background explored by Pascal, Leibniz, Boole, Jacquard, Babbage, Konrad Zuse, until reaching to the ACE (Alan Turing) and EDVAC (von Neumann), offering the backbone in computer architecture, and the work of Turing, Church, Gödel, Kleene, von Neumann, Shannon, and others on computability, in parallel lines, throughly studied in detail, permit us to interpret ahead the evolving realm of programming languages. The proper line from lambda-calculus, to the Algol-family, the declarative and procedural split with the C language and Prolog, and the ensuing branching and programming languages explosion and further delimitation, are thereupon inspected as to relate them with the proper syntax, semantics and philosophical élan of logic programming and Prolog

An Algorithmic Interpretation of Quantum Probability

The Everett (or relative-state, or many-worlds) interpretation of quantum mechanics has come under fire for inadequately dealing with the Born rule (the formula for calculating quantum probabilities). Numerous attempts have been made to derive this rule from the perspective of observers within the quantum wavefunction. These are not really analytic proofs, but are rather attempts to derive the Born rule as a synthetic a priori necessity, given the nature of human observers (a fact not fully appreciated even by all of those who have attempted such proofs). I show why existing attempts are unsuccessful or only partly successful, and postulate that Solomonoff's algorithmic approach to the interpretation of probability theory could clarify the problems with these approaches. The Sleeping Beauty probability puzzle is used as a springboard from which to deduce an objectivist, yet synthetic a priori framework for quantum probabilities, that properly frames the role of self-location and self-selection (anthropic) principles in probability theory. I call this framework "algorithmic synthetic unity" (or ASU). I offer no new formal proof of the Born rule, largely because I feel that existing proofs (particularly that of Gleason) are already adequate, and as close to being a formal proof as one should expect or want. Gleason's one unjustified assumption--known as noncontextuality--is, I will argue, completely benign when considered within the algorithmic framework that I propose. I will also argue that, to the extent the Born rule can be derived within ASU, there is no reason to suppose that we could not also derive all the other fundamental postulates of quantum theory, as well. There is nothing special here about the Born rule, and I suggest that a completely successful Born rule proof might only be possible once all the other postulates become part of the derivation. As a start towards this end, I show how we can already derive the essential content of the fundamental postulates of quantum mechanics, at least in outline, and especially if we allow some educated and well-motivated guesswork along the way. The result is some steps towards a coherent and consistent algorithmic interpretation of quantum mechanics

19th Brazilian Logic Conference: Book of Abstracts

This is the book of abstracts of the 19th Brazilian Logic Conferences. The Brazilian Logic Conferences (EBL) is one of the most traditional logic conferences in South America. Organized by the Brazilian Logic Society (SBL), its main goal is to promote the dissemination of research in logic in a broad sense. It has been occurring since 1979, congregating logicians of different fields — mostly philosophy, mathematics and computer science — and with different backgrounds — from undergraduate students to senior researchers. The meeting is an important moment for the Brazilian and South American logical community to join together and discuss recent developments of the field. The areas of logic covered in the conference spread over foundations and philosophy of science, analytic philosophy, philosophy and history of logic, mathematics, computer science, informatics, linguistics and artificial intelligence. Previous editions of the EBL have been a great success, attracting researchers from all over Latin America and elsewhere. The 19th edition of EBL takes place from May 6-10, 2019, in the beautiful city of João Pessoa, at the northeast coast of Brazil. It is conjointly organized by Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB), whose main campus is located in João Pessoa, Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG), whose main campus is located in the nearby city of Campina Grande (the second-largest city in Paraíba state) and SBL. It is sponsored by UFPB, UFCG, the Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and the State Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of Paraíba. It takes place at Hotel Luxxor Nord Tambaú, privileged located right in front Tambaú beach, one of João Pessoa’s most famous beaches

Validating reasoning heuristics using next generation theorem provers

The specification of enterprise information systems using formal specification languages enables the formal verification of these systems. Reasoning about the properties of a formal specification is a tedious task that can be facilitated much through the use of an automated reasoner. However, set theory is a corner stone of many formal specification languages and poses demanding challenges to automated reasoners. To this end a number of heuristics has been developed to aid the Otter theorem prover in finding short proofs for set-theoretic problems. This dissertation investigates the applicability of these heuristics to next generation theorem provers.ComputingM.Sc. (Computer Science

Fuzzy Logic

Fuzzy Logic is becoming an essential method of solving problems in all domains. It gives tremendous impact on the design of autonomous intelligent systems. The purpose of this book is to introduce Hybrid Algorithms, Techniques, and Implementations of Fuzzy Logic. The book consists of thirteen chapters highlighting models and principles of fuzzy logic and issues on its techniques and implementations. The intended readers of this book are engineers, researchers, and graduate students interested in fuzzy logic systems

Graphical representation of canonical proof: two case studies

An interesting problem in proof theory is to find representations of proof that do not distinguish between proofs that are ‘morally’ the same. For many logics, the presentation of proofs in a traditional formalism, such as Gentzen’s sequent calculus, introduces artificial syntactic structure called ‘bureaucracy’; e.g., an arbitrary ordering of freely permutable inferences. A proof system that is free of bureaucracy is called canonical for a logic. In this dissertation two canonical proof systems are presented, for two logics: a notion of proof nets for additive linear logic with units, and ‘classical proof forests’, a graphical formalism for first-order classical logic. Additive linear logic (or sum–product logic) is the fragment of linear logic consisting of linear implication between formulae constructed only from atomic formulae and the additive connectives and units. Up to an equational theory over proofs, the logic describes categories in which finite products and coproducts occur freely. A notion of proof nets for additive linear logic is presented, providing canonical graphical representations of the categorical morphisms and constituting a tractable decision procedure for this equational theory. From existing proof nets for additive linear logic without units by Hughes and Van Glabbeek (modified to include the units naively), canonical proof nets are obtained by a simple graph rewriting algorithm called saturation. Main technical contributions are the substantial correctness proof of the saturation algorithm, and a correctness criterion for saturated nets. Classical proof forests are a canonical, graphical proof formalism for first-order classical logic. Related to Herbrand’s Theorem and backtracking games in the style of Coquand, the forests assign witnessing information to quantifiers in a structurally minimal way, reducing a first-order sentence to a decidable propositional one. A similar formalism ‘expansion tree proofs’ was presented by Miller, but not given a method of composition. The present treatment adds a notion of cut, and investigates the possibility of composing forests via cut-elimination. Cut-reduction steps take the form of a rewrite relation that arises from the structure of the forests in a natural way. Yet reductions are intricate, and initially not well-behaved: from perfectly ordinary cuts, reduction may reach unnaturally configured cuts that may not be reduced. Cutelimination is shown using a modified version of the rewrite relation, inspired by the game-theoretic interpretation of the forests, for which weak normalisation is shown, and strong normalisation is conjectured. In addition, by a more intricate argument, weak normalisation is also shown for the original reduction relation

Intuition in formal proof : a novel framework for combining mathematical tools

This doctoral thesis addresses one major difficulty in formal proof: removing obstructions to intuition which hamper the proof endeavour. We investigate this in the context of formally verifying geometric algorithms using the theorem prover Isabelle, by first proving the Graham’s Scan algorithm for finding convex hulls, then using the challenges we encountered as motivations for the design of a general, modular framework for combining mathematical tools. We introduce our integration framework — the Prover’s Palette, describing in detail the guiding principles from software engineering and the key differentiator of our approach — emphasising the role of the user. Two integrations are described, using the framework to extend Eclipse Proof General so that the computer algebra systems QEPCAD and Maple are directly available in an Isabelle proof context, capable of running either fully automated or with user customisation. The versatility of the approach is illustrated by showing a variety of ways that these tools can be used to streamline the theorem proving process, enriching the user’s intuition rather than disrupting it. The usefulness of our approach is then demonstrated through the formal verification of an algorithm for computing Delaunay triangulations in the Prover’s Palette

Saturation-based decision procedures for extensions of the guarded fragment

We apply the framework of Bachmair and Ganzinger for saturation-based theorem proving to derive a range of decision procedures for logical formalisms, starting with a simple terminological language EL, which allows for conjunction and existential restrictions only, and ending with extensions of the guarded fragment with equality, constants, functionality, number restrictions and compositional axioms of form S ◦ T ⊆ H. Our procedures are derived in a uniform way using standard saturation-based calculi enhanced with simplification rules based on the general notion of redundancy. We argue that such decision procedures can be applied for reasoning in expressive description logics, where they have certain advantages over traditionally used tableau procedures, such as optimal worst-case complexity and direct correctness proofs.Wir wenden das Framework von Bachmair und Ganzinger für saturierungsbasiertes Theorembeweisen an, um eine Reihe von Entscheidungsverfahren für logische Formalismen abzuleiten, angefangen von einer simplen terminologischen Sprache EL, die nur Konjunktionen und existentielle Restriktionen erlaubt, bis zu Erweiterungen des Guarded Fragment mit Gleichheit, Konstanten, Funktionalität, Zahlenrestriktionen und Kompositionsaxiomen der Form S ◦ T ⊆ H. Unsere Verfahren sind einheitlich abgeleitet unter Benutzung herkömmlicher saturierungsbasierter Kalküle, verbessert durch Simplifikationsregeln, die auf dem Konzept der Redundanz basieren. Wir argumentieren, daß solche Entscheidungsprozeduren für das Beweisen in ausdrucksvollen Beschreibungslogiken angewendet werden können, wo sie gewisse Vorteile gegenüber traditionell benutzten Tableauverfahren besitzen, wie z.B. optimale worst-case Komplexität und direkte Korrektheitsbeweise