Representing incomplete knowledge in abductive logic programming

Recently, Gelfond and Lifschitz presented a formal language for representing incomplete knowledge on actions and states, and a sound translation from this language to extended logic programming. We present an alternative translation to abductive logic programming with integrity constraints and prove the soundness and completeness. In addition, we show how an abductive procedure can be used, not only for explanation, but also for deduction and proving satisfiability under uncertainty. From a more general perspective, this work can be viewed as a-successful-experiment in the declarative representation of and automated reasoning on incomplete knowledge using abductive logic programming.status: publishe