rapaport@ellie.UUCP (William J. Rapaport) (10/18/85)
UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE COLLOQUIUM DONALD NUTE Advanced Computational Methods Center and Department of Philosophy University of Georgia A LOGIC FOR DEFEASIBLE RULES Abstract Humans reason using defeasible and sometimes conflicting rules like `Matches burn when struck' and `Wet things don't burn'. A formal language for representing sentential versions of such rules is presented together with a derivability relation for this language. The resulting system, LDR, is non-monotonic. Inspired by work in conditional logic, the non-monotonic rules of LDR correspond to simple subjunctive and `might' conditionals. Chaining of these rules is restricted in LDR just as the transi- tivity of the conditional is restricted in conditional logics. Several notions of consistency and coherency are defined. LDR is of special importance for research in automated reasoning, since its language is PROLOG-like and its derivability relation can be implemented in PROLOG. Thursday, November 7, 1985 3:30 P.M. Bell 337, Amherst Campus Wine and cheese will be served at 4:30 P.M., 224 Bell Hall For further information, contact: William J. Rapaport Assistant Professor Dept. of Computer Science, SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260 (716) 636-3193, 3181 uucp: ...{allegra,decvax,watmath}!sunybcs!rapaport ...{cmc12,hao,harpo}!seismo!rochester!rocksvax!sunybcs!rapaport cs/arpanet: rapaport%buffalo@csnet-relay -- William J. Rapaport Assistant Professor Dept. of Computer Science, SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260 (716) 636-3193 uucp: ...{allegra,decvax,watmath}!sunybcs!rapaport ...{cmc12,hao,harpo}!seismo!rochester!rocksvax!sunybcs!rapaport cs/arpanet: rapaport%buffalo@csnet-relay