A Fully Model-Theoretic Semantics for Model-Preference Default Systems Fabrizio Sebastiani Istituto di Elaborazione dell’Informazione Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Via S. Maria, 46- 56126Pisa(Italy) E-mail :
[email protected] Abstract time consuming, and, above all, of the fact that the re- levant information simply may not be available to the Propositional systems of default inference ba- agent. sed on the dyadic relation of preference between Nevertheless, action and decision-making is often so models have recently been proposed by Selman complex to require more than the knowledge the agents and Kautz to provide a computationally tracta- actually possess; this forces them to overcome the limi- ble mechanism for the generation of vivid kno- ted coverage of their knowledge bases (KBs) by making wledge bases. In this paper we argue that the “default” assumptions which are then brought to bear in formalism proposed, albeit endowed with a se- the reasoning task. As the name implies, “assumptions” mantic flavour, is not a model-theoretic (or de- are items of knowledge endowed with an epistemic status notational) semantics, as no ontology which is that is far from being solid: that is, they can be invalida- independent of the existence of the knowledge ted by further reasoning or by the subsequent acquisition representation language is postulated. Consi- of empirical data. These phenomena are well-known in stently with good model-theoretic practice we cognitive science, and their lack of resemblance with de- carry on to postulate a language-independent ductive patterns of reasoning has sometimes been taken ontology and to use it in the subsequent de- to imply that a great deal of human reasoning does not finition of a fully model-theoretic semantics conform to the canons of “logic” and hence is not ame- for model-preference default systems.