Artificial Intelligence

Lecture No. 10
Dr. Asad Ali Safi

Assistant Professor,
Department of Computer Science,
COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT)
Islamabad, Pakistan.
 Summary of Previous Lecture
• A knowledge-based agent
• The Wumpus World
• Syntax , semantics
• Entailment
• Logic as a KR language
 Today’s Lecture
• Logic
• Propositional logic
• Pros and cons of propositional logic
• First-order logic
• Syntax of FOL: Basic elements
• Atomic/complex sentences
• Connections between Quantifiers
 No independent access to the world
• The reasoning agent often gets its knowledge about
the facts of the world as a sequence of logical
sentences and must draw conclusions only from
them without independent access to the world.
• Thus it is very important that the agent’s reasoning
is sound!

4
LANGUAGES
 What is logic?
• We can also think of logic as an “algebra” for
manipulating only two values: true (T) and
false (F)
• We will cover:
– Propositional logic--the simplest kind
 Propositional logic
• Propositional logic consists of:
– The logical values true and false (T and F)
– Propositions: “Sentences,” which
• Are atomic (that is, they must be treated as indivisible
units, with no internal structure), and
• Have a single logical value, either true or false
– Operators, both unary and binary; when applied
to logical values, yield logical values
• The usual operators are and, or, not, and implies
 Propositional logic: Syntax
• Propositional logic is the simplest logic – illustrates basic
ideas
• The proposition symbols P1, P2 etc are sentences
– If S is a sentence, ¬S is a sentence (negation, not)
– If S1 and S2 are sentences, S1 ∧ S2 is a sentence (conjunction,
AND)
– If S1 and S2 are sentences, S1 ∨ S2 is a sentence (disjunction,
OR)
– If S1 and S2 are sentences, S1 ⇒ S2 is a sentence (implication,
IMPLIES)
– If S1 and S2 are sentences, S1 ⇔ S2 is a sentence
(biconditional)
 Truth tables
• Logic, like arithmetic, has operators, which apply to
one, two, or more values (operands)
• A truth table lists the results for each possible
arrangement of operands
– Order is important: x op y may or may not give the
same result as y op x
• The rows in a truth table list all possible sequences
of truth values for n operands, and specify a result
for each sequence
– Hence, there are 2n rows in a truth table for n
operands
 Unary operators
• There are four possible unary operators:

X Constant T Constant F Identity ¬X

T T F T F

F T F F T

 Only the last of these (negation) is widely used (and has a symbol,¬ ,for the
operation
 Useful binary operators
• Here are the binary operators that are traditionally used:

AND OR IMPLIES BICONDITIONAL

X Y X Y X Y X Y X Y
T T T T T T
T F F T F F
F T F T T F
F F F F T T
 Notice in particular that material implication () only approximately
means the same as the English word “implies”
 Any other binary operators can be constructed from a combination of
these (along with unary not, ¬)
 Logical expressions
• All logical expressions can be computed with some combination
of and ( ), or ( ), and not () operators
• For example, logical implication can be computed this way:

X Y X X  Y X Y
T T F T T
T F F F F
F T T T T
F F T T T
 Notice that X  Y is equivalent to X Y
 Pros and cons of propositional logic
 Propositional logic is declarative
 Propositional logic allows partial/disjunctive/negated information
– (unlike most data structures and databases)
–
 Propositional logic is compositional:

– meaning of B1,1  P1,2 is derived from meaning of B1,1 and of P1,2
–
 Meaning in propositional logic is context-independent
– (unlike natural language, where meaning depends on context)
–
 Propositional logic has very limited expressive power
– (unlike natural language)
– E.g., cannot say "pits cause breezes in adjacent squares“
• except by writing one sentence for each squar
 First-order logic
• While propositional logic assumes the world contains
facts,
• first-order logic (like natural language) assumes the
world contains
– Objects: people, houses, numbers, colors, baseball games, wars, …
–
– Relations: red, round, prime, brother of, bigger than, part of,
comes between, …

– Functions: father of, best friend, one more than, plus, …

“Evil King John ruled England in 1200.”

– Object: John, England, 1200; Relation; ruled; Properties: evil, king
 Logics in General
• Ontological Commitment:
– What exists in the world — TRUTH
– PL : facts hold or do not hold.
– FOL : objects with relations between them that hold or do
not hold
• Epistemological Commitment:
– What an agent believes about facts — BELIEF
 Syntax of FOL: Basic elements
• Constant Symbols:
– Stand for objects
– e.g., KingJohn, 2, UCI,...

• Predicate Symbols
– Stand for relations
– E.g., Brother(Richard, John), greater_than(3,2)...

• Function Symbols
– Stand for functions
– E.g., Sqrt(3), LeftLegOf(John),...
 Syntax of FOL: Basic elements
• Constants KingJohn, 2, UCI,...

• Predicates Brother, >,...

• Functions Sqrt, LeftLegOf,...

• Variables x, y, a, b,...

• Connectives , , , , 

• Equality =

• Quantifiers , 
 Relations
• Some relations are properties: they state
some fact about a single object: Round(ball),
Prime(7).

• n-ary relations state facts about two or more

objects: Married(John,Mary), LargerThan(3,2).

• Some relations are functions: their value is

another object: Plus(2,3), Father(Dan).
 Atomic sentences
Term = function (term1,...,termn) or constant or variable
• A logical expression that refers to an object
– LeftLegOf(Richard)
• There are 2 kinds of terms:
– constant symbols: Table, Computer
– function symbols: LeftLeg(Pete), Sqrt(3), Plus(2,3) etc

Atomic sentence = predicate (term1,...,termn)

or term1 = term2
• An Atomic sentence is formed from a predicate symbol followed by list of
terms.
• Examples:
LargerThan(2,3) is false.
Brother_of(Mary,Pete) is false.
Married(Father(Richard), Mother(John)) could be true or false

• Note: Functions do not state facts and form no sentence:

– Brother(Pete) refers to John (his brother) and is neither true nor false.

• Brother_of(Pete,Brother(Pete)) is True.
Binary relation Function
 Complex Sentences
• We make complex sentences with connectives
(just like in propositional logic). property
Brother (LeftLeg (Richard ), John )  (Democrat (Bush ))

binary function
relation

objects

connectives
 More Examples
• Brother(Richard, John)  Brother(John, Richard)

• King(Richard)  King(John)

• King(John) =>  King(Richard)

• LessThan(Plus(1,2) ,4)  GreaterThan(1,2)

(Semantics are the same as in propositional logic)

 Variables
• Person(John) is true or false because we give it
a single argument ‘John’

• We can be much more flexible if we allow

variables which can take on values in a
domain. e.g., all persons x, all integers i, etc.
– E.g., can state rules like Person(x) => HasHead(x)
or Integer(i) => Integer(plus(i,1)
 Universal Quantification 
•  means “for all”

• Allows us to make statements about all objects that have certain

properties

• Can now state general rules:

 x King(x) => Person(x)

 x Person(x) => HasHead(x)

 i Integer(i) => Integer(plus(i,1))

Note that
 x King(x)  Person(x) is not correct!
This would imply that all objects x are Kings and are People

 x King(x) => Person(x) is the correct way to say this

 Existential Quantification 
•  x means “there exists an x such that….” (at least one object x)

• Allows us to make statements about some object without

naming it

• Examples:

x King(x)

x Lives_in(John, Castle(x))

i Integer(i)  GreaterThan(i,0)

Note that  is the natural connective to use with 

(And => is the natural connective to use with  )
 Combining Quantifiers
 x  y Loves(x,y)
– For everyone (“all x”) there is someone (“y”) who
loves them

 y  x Loves(x,y)
- there is someone (“y”) who loves everyone

Clearer with parentheses:  y (  x Loves(x,y) )

 Connections between Quantifiers
• Asserting that all x have property P is the same as
asserting that does not exist any x that don’t have the
property P

 x Likes(x, 271 class)   x  Likes(x, 271 class)

In effect:
-  is a conjunction over the universe of objects
-  is a disjunction over the universe of objects
Thus, DeMorgan’s rules can be applied
 De Morgan’s Law for Quantifiers
De Morgan’s Rule Generalized De Morgan’s Rule
P  Q  (P  Q ) x P  x (P )
P  Q  (P  Q ) x P  x (P )
(P  Q )  P  Q x P  x (P )
(P  Q )  P  Q x P  x (P )

Rule is simple: if you bring a negation inside a disjunction or a conjunction,

always switch between them (or and, and  or).
 Summery of Today’s Lecture
• logic
• Propositional logic
• Pros and cons of propositional logic
• First-order logic
• Syntax of FOL: Basic elements
• Atomic/complex sentences
• Connections between Quantifiers