Computing Specificity

Ronald Loui, Washington University in St Louis
J. Norman, Washington University in St Louis
K. Stiefvater, Washington University in St Louis
A. Merrill, Washington University in St Louis

Abstract

This note reports on an effort to implement a version of Poole's rule for specificity. Relatively, efficient implementation relies on correcting and improving a pruning lemma of Simari-Loui [92]. This in turn requires revision of Poole's specificity concept. The resulting system is a usable knowledge representation system with first-order-language and defeasible reasoning. Sample input and output are included in an appendix. It is a good candidate for multiple inheritance applications; it is useful for planning, but limited by the underlying search for plans.