CLAUSE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (CMS)
Alex Kean, George Tsiknis · Computational Intelligence · 1993
This paper provides an extension to the study of the clause management system (CMS) proposed by Reiter and de Kleer. The CMS is adapted specifically for aiding a reasoning system in explanations generation. The reasoning system transmits propositional formulae representing its knowledge to the CMS and in return, it requests the CMS for minimal and consistent explanations of a query with respect to the CMS knowledge base. The CMS knowledge base is represented by a set of prime implicates. The classification of implicates as minimal, prime, trivial, and minimal trivial is carefully examined. Similarly, the notion of a support for a clause including minimal, prime, trivial, and minimal trivial is also elaborated. The methods to compute these supports from implicates and a preference ordering scheme expressible by logical specificity for the set of supports for a given clause are also presented. The generalization of the notion of a minimal support for a conjunction of clauses is also shown. Finally, two logic‐based diagnostic reasoning paradigms aided by the CMS are shown to exemplify the functionality of the CMS.