Logic Programming In Action

Logic programming enjoys a privileged position. It is firmly rooted in mathematical logic, yet it is also immensely practical, as a growing number of users in universities, research institutes, and industry are realizing. Logic programming languages, specifically Prolog, have turned out to be ideal as prototyping and application development languages. This volume presents the proceedings of the Second Logic Programming Summer School, LPSS'92. The First Logic Programming Summer School, LPSS '90, addressed the theoretical foundations of logic programming. This volume focuses onthe relationship between theory and practice, and on practical applications. The introduction to the volume is by R. Kowalski, one of the pioneers in the field. The following papers are organized into sections on constraint logic programming, deductive databases and expert systems, processing of natural and formal languages, software engineering, and education.

Language in Action demonstrates the viability of mathematical research into the foundations of categorial grammar, a topic at the border between logic and linguistics. Since its initial publication it has become the classic work in the foundations of categorial grammar. A new introduction to this paperback edition updates the open research problems and records relevant results through pointers to the literature. Van Benthem presents the categorial processing of syntax and semantics as a central component in a more general dynamic logic of information flow, in tune with computational developments in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Using the paradigm of categorial grammar, he describes the substructural logics driving the dynamics of natural language syntax and semantics. This is a general type-theoretic approach that lends itself easily to proof-theoretic and semantic studies in tandem with standard logic. The emphasis is on a broad landscape of substructural categorial logics and their proof-theoretical and semantic peculiarities. This provides a systematic theory for natural language understanding, admitting of significant mathematical results. Moreover, the theory makes possible dynamic interpretations that view natural languages as programming formalisms for various cognitive activities.

Specifying and implementing dynamical systems with the situation calculus. Modeling and implementing dynamical systems is a central problem in artificial intelligence, robotics, software agents, simulation, decision and control theory, and many other disciplines. In recent years, a new approach to representing such systems, grounded in mathematical logic, has been developed within the AI knowledge-representation community. This book presents a comprehensive treatment of these ideas, basing its theoretical and implementation foundations on the situation calculus, a dialect of first-order logic. Within this framework, it develops many features of dynamical systems modeling, including time, processes, concurrency, exogenous events, reactivity, sensing and knowledge, probabilistic uncertainty, and decision theory. It also describes and implements a new family of high-level programming languages suitable for writing control programs for dynamical systems. Finally, it includes situation calculus specifications for a wide range of examples drawn from cognitive robotics, planning, simulation, databases, and decision theory, together with all the implementation code for these examples. This code is available on the book's Web site.

Logic Programming is a style of programming in which programs take the form of sets of sentences in the language of Symbolic Logic. Over the years, there has been growing interest in Logic Programming due to applications in deductive databases, automated worksheets, Enterprise Management (business rules), Computational Law, and General Game Playing. This book introduces Logic Programming theory, current technology, and popular applications. In this volume, we take an innovative, model-theoretic approach to logic programming. We begin with the fundamental notion of datasets, i.e., sets of ground atoms. Given this fundamental notion, we introduce views, i.e., virtual relations; and we define classical logic programs as sets of view definitions, written using traditional Prolog-like notation but with semantics given in terms of datasets rather than implementation. We then introduce actions, i.e., additions and deletions of ground atoms; and we define dynamic logic programs as sets of action definitions. In addition to the printed book, there is an online version of the text with an interpreter and a compiler for the language used in the text and an integrated development environment for use in developing and deploying practical logic programs.

1 “Change is inevitable.” Embracing this quote we have tried to carefully exp- iment with the format of this conference, the 15th International Conference on Inductive Logic Programming, hopefully making it even better than it already was. But it will be up to you, the inquisitive reader of this book, to judge our success. The major changes comprised broadening the scope of the conference to include more diverse forms of non-propositional learning, to once again have tutorials on exciting new areas, and, for the ?rst time, to also have a discovery challenge as a platform for collaborative work. This year the conference was co-located with ICML 2005, the 22nd Inter- tional Conference on Machine Learning, and also in close proximity to IJCAI 2005, the 19th International Joint Conference on Arti?cial Intelligence. - location can be tricky, but we greatly bene?ted from the local support provided by Codrina Lauth, Michael May, and others. We were also able to invite all ILP and ICML participants to shared events including a poster session, an invited talk, and a tutorial about the exciting new area of “statistical relational lea- ing”. Two more invited talks were exclusively given to ILP participants and were presented as a kind of stock-taking—?ttingly so for the 15th event in a series—but also tried to provide a recipe for future endeavours.

"Logic programming enjoys a privileged position. It is firmly rooted in mathematical logic, yet it is also immensely practical, as a growing number of users in universities, research institutes, and industry are realizing. Logic programming languages, specifically Prolog, have turned out to be ideal as prototyping and application development languages. This volume presents the proceedings of the Second Logic Programming Summer School, LPSS'92. The First Logic Programming Summer School, LPSS '90, addressed the theoretical foundations of logic programming. This volume focuses onthe relationship between theory and practice, and on practical applications. The introduction to the volume is by R. Kowalski, one of the pioneers in the field. The following papers are organized into sections on constraint logic programming, deductive databases and expert systems, processing of natural and formal languages, software engineering, and education."--PUBLISHER'S WEBSITE.

This book is dedicated to Marek Sergot, Professor in Computational Logic at Imperial College London, on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Professor Sergot’s scientific contributions range over many different fields. He has developed a series of novel ideas and formal methods bridging areas including artificial intelligence, computational logic, philosophical logic, legal theory, artificial intelligence and law, multi-agent systems and bioinformatics. By combining his background in logic and computing with his interest in the law, deontic logic, action, and related areas, and applying to all his capacity to understand the subtleties of social interaction and normative reasoning, Professor Sergot has opened up new directions of research, and has been a reference, an inspiration, and a model for many researchers in the fields to which he has contributed. The Festschrift includes several reminiscences and introductory essays describing Professor Sergot's achievements, followed by a series of articles on logic programming, temporal reasoning and action languages, artificial intelligence and law, deontic logic and norm-governed systems, and logical approaches to policies.