Interpreting Abduction in CLP

Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) and Abductive Logic Programming (ALP) share the important concept of conditional answer. We exploit their deep similarities to implement an efficient abductive solver where abducibles are treated as constraints. We propose two possible implementations, in which integrity constraints are exploited either (i) as the definition of a CLP solver on an abductive domain, or (ii) as constraints `a la CLP. Both the solvers are implemented on top of CLP(Bool), that typically have impressively efficient propagation engines. 1 Abduction in CLP Abduction and Constraint Logic Programming have been successfully integrated in various works [1] [2]. Abductive reasoning is aimed at inferring hypotheses about unknowns: typically, some predicates are labelled as abducibles and treated in a special way. It is an extremely powerful reasoning mechanism; through abduction one can deal with uncertainty, non-monotonicity and, of course, hypothetical reasoning. On the other ha...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: AGP
• Authors: Marco Gavanelli, Evelina Lamma, Paola Mello, Michela Milano, Paolo Torroni
• Keywords: Abductive, Abductive Logic Programming, AGP 2003, Constraint Logic Programming, Logic Programming