Optative Reasoning with Scenario Semantics
Luı́s Moniz Pereira, José Júlio Alferes · New University of Lisbon's Repository (New University of Lisbon) · 1993
The scenario semantics of extended logic programs builds upon simple primitive notions and has been shown to encompass many important logic program semantics. Here we introduce into the scenario semantics paradigm a general flexible notion of optative acceptance of acceptable hypotheses, and proceed to illustrate its application to fault diagnosis, taxonomic reasoning, and declarative logic program debugging. Whereas the contradiction removal semantics approach has been shown applicable to a wide range of non-monotonic reasoning problems including the above, it is based either on minimally or on sceptically taking back the most primitive (closed world) assumptions contributing to contradiction. In contrast, we show here how to achieve the same effect, and solve the same range of problems, by means of a contradiction avoiding rule of optative acceptance of hypotheses, easily defined in the present more general approach. Our counterpart to minimality in contradiction removal consists (qu...