Inference in First-Order Logic.pptVIP

CMSC 471Fall 2002 Class #15/16 –Monday, October 21 / Wednesday, October 23 Today’s class Inference in first-order logic Inference rules Forward chaining Backward chaining Resolution Unification Proofs Clausal form Resolution as search Inference in First-Order Logic Chapter 9 Inference rules for FOL Inference rules for propositional logic apply to FOL as well Modus Ponens, And-Introduction, And-Elimination, … New (sound) inference rules for use with quantifiers: Universal elimination Existential introduction Existential elimination Generalized Modus Ponens (GMP) Universal elimination If (?x) P(x) is true, then P(c) is true, where c is any constant in the domain of x Example: (?x) eats(Ziggy, x) = eats(Ziggy, IceCream) The variable symbol can be replaced by any ground term, i.e., any constant symbol or function symbol applied to ground terms only Existential introduction If P(c) is true, then (?x) P(x) is inferred. Example eats(Ziggy, IceCream) = (?x) eats(Ziggy, x) All instances of the given constant symbol are replaced by the new variable symbol Note that the variable symbol cannot already exist anywhere in the expression Existential elimination From (?x) P(x) infer P(c) Example: (?x) eats(Ziggy, x) = eats(Ziggy, Stuff) Note that the variable is replaced by a brand-new constant not occurring in this or any other sentence in the KB Also known as skolemization; constant is a skolem constant In other words, we don’t want to accidentally draw other inferences about it by introducing the constant Convenient to use this to reason about the unknown object, rather than constantly manipulating the existential quantifier Generalized Modus Ponens (GMP) Apply modus ponens reasoning to generalized rules Combines And-Introduction, Universal-Elimination, and Modus Ponens E.g, from P(c) and Q(c) and (?x)(P(x) ^ Q(x)) = R(x) derive R(c) General case: Given atomic sentences P1, P2, ..., PN implication sentence (Q1 ^ Q2 ^ ... ^ QN) = R Q1, ..., QN and R are atomic sentence