Abstract
The revision and transformation of knowledge is widely recognized as a key issue in knowledge representation and reasoning. Reasons for the importance of this topic are the fact that intelligent systems are gradually developed and refined, and that often the environment of an intelligent system is not static but changes over time. Traditionally belief revision has been concerned with revising first order theories.
Nonmonotonic reasoning provides rigorous techniques for reasoning with incomplete information. Until recently the dynamics of nonmonotonic reasoning approaches has attracted little attention. This paper studies the dynamics of defeasible logic, a simple and efficient form of nonmonotonic reasoning based on defeasible rules and priorities. We define revision and contraction operators and propose postulates. Our postulates try to follow the ideas of AGM belief revision as far as possible, but some AGM postulates clearly contradict the nonmonotonic nature of defeasible logic, as we explain. Finally we verify that the operators satisfy the postulates.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
C. E. Alchourron, P. Gardenfors and D. Makinson. On the Logic of Theory Change: Partial Meet Contraction and Revision Functions. Journal of Symbolic Logic 50 (1985), 510–530.
G. Antoniou. The role of nonmonotonic representations in requirements engineering. International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering8, 3 (1998): 385–399.
G. Antoniou, D. Billington and M. Maher. On the analysis of regulations using defeasible rules. In Proc. 32nd Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science, IEEE Press 1999.
G. Brewka. Preferred Subtheories: An Extended Logical Framework for Default Reasoning. In Proc. 11th IJCAI, 1989, 1043–1048.
D. E. Cooke and Luqi. Logic Programming and Software Maintenance. Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence 21 (1997): 221–229.
M. A. Covington. Defeasible Logic on an Embedded Microcontroller. In Proc. 10th International Conference on Industrial and Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems, June 1997.
P. Gardenfors. Knowledge in Flux: Modeling the Dynamics of Epistemic States. The MIT Press 1988.
P. Gardenfors and D. Makinson. Nonmonotonic Inference Based on Expectations. Artificial Intelligence 65 (1994): 197–245.
A. Ghose and R. Goebel. Belief states as default theories: Studies in non-prioritized belief change. In Proc. ECAI’98.
G. Gottlob. Complexity Results for Nonmonotonic Logics. Journal of Logic and Computation 2, 3 (1992): 397–425.
W. L. Harper. Rational Conceptual Change. In PSA 1976, Philosophy of Science Association, Vol. 2, 462–494.
H. A. Kautz and B. Selman. Hard problems for simple default logics. Artificial Intelligence 49 (1991):243–279.
I. Levi. Subjunctives, dispositions and chances. Synthese 34, 423–455, 1977.
Luqi and D. E. Cooke. How to Combine Nonmonotonic Logic and Rapid Proto-typing to Help Maintain Software. International Journal on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering 5, 1 (1995): 89–118.
M. J. Maher, G. Antoniou and D. Billington. A Study of Provability in Defeasible Logic. In Proc. 11th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, LNAI 1502, Springer 1998, 215–226.
D. Nute. Defeasible Reasoning. In Proc. 20th Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science, IEEE Press 1987, 470–477.
M. A. Williams and N. Foo. Nonmonotonic Dynamics of Default Logics. In Proc. 9th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 1990, 702–707.
M. A. Williams and G. Antoniou. A Strategy for Revising Default Theory Extensions. in Proc. 6th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Represenation and Reasoning, Morgan Kaufmann 1998.
D. Zowghi and R. Offen. A Logical Framework for Modeling and Reasoning about the Evolution of Requirements. In Proc. Third International Symposium on Requirements Engineering, IEEE Press 1997.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Billington, D., Antoniou, G., Governatori, G., Maher, M. (1999). Revising Nonmonotonic Theories: The Case of Defeasible Logic. In: Burgard, W., Cremers, A.B., Cristaller, T. (eds) KI-99: Advances in Artificial Intelligence. KI 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1701. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48238-5_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48238-5_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-66495-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48238-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive