Knowledge Based Systems with Multiple Forms of Negation

Dr. Carolina Ruiz
Department of Computer Science
University of Maryland at College Park

Friday, February 23, 1996
11 a.m. - 12 noon
Fuller Labs 320

I discuss a class of knowledge based systems especially suited for commonsense reasoning. A system in this class is capable of combining different rules of default negation. A rule of default negation establishes when it is sound to conclude that a statement is false in the absence of evidence forcing the statement to be true. It models the way humans reason when they jump to conclusions based on incomplete information. Allowing multiple rules of default in a single system increases its expressive power in comparison with traditional knowledge bases which deal with at most one rule of default negation. I describe theoretical aspects of these new knowledge based systems, including the characterization of their semantics and the computational complexity of different reasoning tasks. I present applications to knowledge representation and knowledge base merging and outline future work on using this new formalism to solve problems in the areas of collaborating intelligent agents, legal reasoning, and deductive databases.

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