Defeasible reasoning is a direction in nonmonotonic reasoning that is based on the use of rules that may be defeated by other rules. It is a simple, but often more efficient approach than other nonmonotonic reasoning systems. This paper presents a family of defeasible reasoning formalisms built around Nute's defeasible logic. We describe the motivations of these formalisms and derive some basic properties and interrelationships. We also describe a query answering system that supports these formalisms and is available on the World Wide Web
