Title: Chapter 1 Knowledge Representation and Classical Logic
Abstract: Mathematical logicians had developed the art of formalizing declarative knowledge long before the advent of the computer age. But they were interested primarily in formalizing mathematics. Because of the important role of nonmathematical knowledge in artificial intelligence (AI), their emphasis was too narrow from the perspective of knowledge representation, and their formal languages were not sufficiently expressive. Most logicians were not concerned about the possibility of automated reasoning; from the perspective of knowledge representation, they were often too generous in the choice of syntactic constructs. Despite these differences, classic mathematical logic has exerted significant influence on knowledge representation research. The language of classic logic, which is most widely used in the theory of knowledge representation, is the language of first-order (predicate) formulas. Propositional logic is the most important subset of first-order logic; recent surge of interest in representing knowledge by propositional formulas is related to the creation of fast satisfiability solvers for propositional logic. Second-order formulas are particularly important for the theory of knowledge representation because they are sufficiently expressive for defining transitive closure and related concepts and because they are used in the definition of circumscription.
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 23
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