Compilability of Abduction

Abduction is one of the most important forms of reasoning; it has been successfully applied to several practical problems such as diagnosis. In this paper we investigate whether the computational complexity of abduction can be reduced by an appropriate use of preprocessing. This is motivated by the fact that part of the data of the problem (namely, the set of all possible assumptions and the theory relating assumptions and manifestations) are often known before the rest of the problem. In this paper, we show some complexity results about abduction when compilation is allowed

Automated Synthesis of Tableau Calculi

This paper presents a method for synthesising sound and complete tableau calculi. Given a specification of the formal semantics of a logic, the method generates a set of tableau inference rules that can then be used to reason within the logic. The method guarantees that the generated rules form a calculus which is sound and constructively complete. If the logic can be shown to admit finite filtration with respect to a well-defined first-order semantics then adding a general blocking mechanism provides a terminating tableau calculus. The process of generating tableau rules can be completely automated and produces, together with the blocking mechanism, an automated procedure for generating tableau decision procedures. For illustration we show the workability of the approach for a description logic with transitive roles and propositional intuitionistic logic.Comment: 32 page

Using Linear Temporal Logic to Model and Solve Planning Problems

In this work we investigate the use of propositional linear temporal logic LTL as a specification language for planning problems and the use of analytic tableaux as a tool for plan search, following the “planning as satisfiability” approach [11]. We claim that LTL can be a good specification language for planning problems, because of its rich expressive power and the underlying simple model of time and actions. We propose the use of Tabplan, a tableau calculus for bounded model search in LTL (fully described in [7]), as a system for plan synthesis. We show how to code a given planning problem by means of different LTL theories, each encoding making the model construction procedure simulate a different search strategy, namely planning by progression and partial order regression planning in the style of [14]

An efficient approach to nominal equalities in hybrid logic tableaux

Basic hybrid logic extends modal logic with the possibility of naming worlds by means of a distinguished class of atoms (called nominals) and the so-called satisfaction operator, that allows one to state that a given formula holds at the world named a, for some nominal a. Hence, in particular, hybrid formulae include ``equality'' assertions, stating that two nominals are distinct names for the same world. The treatment of such nominal equalities in proof systems for hybrid logics may induce many redundancies. This paper introduces an internalized tableau system for basic hybrid logic, significantly reducing such redundancies. The calculus enjoys a strong termination property: tableau construction terminates without relying on any specific rule application strategy, and no loop-checking is needed. The treatment of nominal equalities specific of the proposed calculus is briefly compared to other approaches. Its practical advantages are demonstrated by empirical results obtained by use of implemented systems. Finally, it is briefly shown how to extend the calculus to include the global and converse modalities