A Well-Founded Semantics for FOL-Programs

TL;DR

This paper introduces a well-founded semantics for FOL-programs, integrating first-order logic with rules, supporting inconsistency representation, and generalizing standard semantics for logic programs.

Contribution

It defines a new semantics for FOL-programs based on unfounded sets, accommodating inconsistencies and combining closed and open world reasoning.

Findings

Supports reasoning with inconsistencies explicitly.

Generalizes standard well-founded semantics for logic programs.

Approximates well-supported answer set semantics for DL programs.

Abstract

An FOL-program consists of a background theory in a decidable fragment of first-order logic and a collection of rules possibly containing first-order formulas. The formalism stems from recent approaches to tight integrations of ASP with description logics. In this paper, we define a well-founded semantics for FOL-programs based on a new notion of unfounded sets on consistent as well as inconsistent sets of literals, and study some of its properties. The semantics is defined for all FOL-programs, including those where it is necessary to represent inconsistencies explicitly. The semantics supports a form of combined reasoning by rules under closed world as well as open world assumptions, and it is a generalization of the standard well-founded semantics for normal logic programs. We also show that the well-founded semantics defined here approximates the well-supported answer set semantics for normal DL programs.