Representing First-Order Causal Theories by Logic Programs

Nonmonotonic causal logic, introduced by Norman McCain and Hudson Turner, became a basis for the semantics of several expressive action languages. McCain's embedding of definite propositional causal theories into logic programming paved the way to the use of answer set solvers for answering queries about actions described in such languages. In this paper we extend this embedding to nondefinite theories and to first-order causal logic.

Logic programs with propositional connectives and aggregates

Answer set programming (ASP) is a logic programming paradigm that can be used to solve complex combinatorial search problems. Aggregates are an ASP construct that plays an important role in many applications. Defining a satisfactory semantics of aggregates turned out to be a difficult problem, and in this paper we propose a new approach, based on an analogy between aggregates and propositional connectives. First, we extend the definition of an answer set/stable model to cover arbitrary propositional theories; then we define aggregates on top of them both as primitive constructs and as abbreviations for formulas. Our definition of an aggregate combines expressiveness and simplicity, and it inherits many theorems about programs with nested expressions, such as theorems about strong equivalence and splitting.

Propositional theories are strongly equivalent to logic programs

This paper presents a property of propositional theories under the answer sets semantics (called Equilibrium Logic for this general syntax): any theory can always be reexpressed as a strongly equivalent disjunctive logic program, possibly with negation in the head. We provide two different proofs for this result: one involving a syntactic transformation, and one that constructs a program starting from the countermodels of the theory in the intermediate logic of here-and-there.

Weight Constraints as Nested Expressions

We compare two recent extensions of the answer set (stable model) semantics of logic programs. One of them, due to Lifschitz, Tang and Turner, allows the bodies and heads of rules to contain nested expressions. The other, due to Niemela and Simons, uses weight constraints. We show that there is a simple, modular translation from the language of weight constraints into the language of nested expressions that preserves the program's answer sets. Nested expressions can be eliminated from the result of this translation in favor of additional atoms. The translation makes it possible to compute answer sets for some programs with weight constraints using satisfiability solvers, and to prove the strong equivalence of programs with weight constraints using the logic of here-and there.