Abstract
In this paper, a new method is introduced to check several forms of logical consistency in nonmonotonic knowledge-bases (KBs). The knowledge representation language under consideration is full propositional logic, using “Abnormal” propositions to be minimized. Basically, the method is based on the use of local search techniques for SAT. Since these techniques are by nature logically incomplete, it is often believed that they can only show that a formula is consistent. Surprisingly enough, we find that they can allow inconsistency to be proved as well. To that end, some additional heuristic information about the work performed by local search algorithms is shown of prime practical importance. Adapting this heuristic and using some specific minimization policies, we propose some possible strategies to exhibit a “normal-circumstances” model or simply a model of the KB, or to show their non-existence.
This work has been supported by the Ganyméde II project of the “Contrat de Plan Etat/Nord-Pas-de-Calais”.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Davis, M., Putnam, H.: A Computing Procedure for Quantification Theory. Journ. of the ACM 7 (1960) 201–215
Proc. of the Second DIMACS Challenge on Satisfiability Testing, Rutgers (1993)
Dubois, O., André, P., Boufkhad, Y., Carlier, J.: SAT vs. UNSAT, in [2].
Jeroslow, R.E., Wang, J.: Solving Propositional Satisfiability Problems. Ann. Maths and AI 1 (1990) 167–187
azure, B., Saïs, L., Grégoire, E.: TWSAT: a New Local Search Algorithm for SAT. Performance and Analysis. CP'95 Workshop on Studying and Solving Really Hard Problems, Cassis, France (1995) 127–130 (full version in Proc. AAAI-97)
azure, B., Saïs, L., Grégoire, E.: Detecting logical inconsistencies. Proc. AI and Maths Symposium, Fort Lauderdale (FL) (1196) 116–121
McCarthy, J.: Applications of circumscription for formalizing common-sense knowledge. Artificial Intelligence 28 (1986) 89–116
Mitchell, D., Selman, B., Levesque, H.: Hard and Easy Distributions of SAT Problems. Proc. AAAI-92 (1992) 459–465
Reiter, R.: A theory of diagnosis from first principles. Artificial Intelligence 32 (1987) 57–95
Reiter, R.: A logic for default reasoning. Artificial Intelligence 13 (1980) 81–131
Selman, B., Levesque, H., Mitchell, D.: A New Method for Solving Hard Satisfiability Problems. Proc. AAAI-92 (1992) 440–446
Selman, B., Kautz, H.A., Cohen, B.: Local Search Strategies for Satisfiability Testing. Proc. DIMACS Workshop on Maximum Clique, Graph Coloring, and Satisfiability (1993)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Mazure, B., Saïs, L., Grégoire, É. (1997). Checking several forms of consistency in nonmonotonic knowledge-bases. In: Gabbay, D.M., Kruse, R., Nonnengart, A., Ohlbach, H.J. (eds) Qualitative and Quantitative Practical Reasoning. FAPR ECSQARU 1997 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1244. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0035617
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0035617
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-63095-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69129-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive