Over the past few decades, non-monotonic reasoning has developed to be one of the most important topics in computational logic and artificial intelligence. Different ways to introduce non-monotonic aspects to classical logic have been considered, e.g., extension with default rules, extension with modal belief operators, or modification of the semantics. In this survey we consider a logical formalism from each of the above possibilities, namely Reiter's default logic, Moore's autoepistemic logic and McCarthy's circumscription. Additionally, we consider abduction, where one is not interested in inferences from a given knowledge base but in computing possible explanations for an observation with respect to a given knowledge base.
Complexity results for different reasoning tasks for propositional variants of these logics have been studied already in the nineties. In recent years, however, a renewed interest in complexity issues can be observed. One current focal approach is to consider parameterized problems and identify reasonable parameters that allow for FPT algorithms. In another approach, the emphasis lies on identifying fragments, i.e., restriction of the logical language, that allow more efficient algorithms for the most important reasoning tasks. In this survey we focus on this second aspect. We describe complexity results for fragments of logical languages obtained by either restricting the allowed set of operators (e.g., forbidding negations one might consider only monotone formulae) or by considering only formulae in conjunctive normal form but with generalized clause types.
The algorithmic problems we consider are suitable variants of satisfiability and implication in each of the logics, but also counting problems, where one is not only interested in the existence of certain objects (e.g., models of a formula) but asks for their number.
Institute for Logic, Language and Computation（逻辑、语言与计算研究所）；University of Amsterdam（阿姆斯特丹大学）
Description logics are knowledge representation languages that have been designed to strike a balance between expressivity and computational tractability. Many different description logics have been developed, and numerous computational problems for these logics have been studied for their computational complexity. However, essentially all complexity analyses of reasoning problems for description logics use the one-dimensional framework of classical complexity theory. The multi-dimensional framework of parameterized complexity theory is able to provide a much more detailed image of the complex…
Birkbeck, University of London（伦敦大学伯贝克学院）；University of Oxford（牛津大学）；University of Warsaw（华沙大学）
We investigate the data complexity of answering queries mediated by metric temporal logic ontologies under the event-based semantics assuming that data instances are finite timed words timestamped with binary fractions. We identify classes of ontology-mediated queries answering which can be done in AC0, NC1, L, NL, P, and coNP for data complexity, provide their rewritings to first-order logic and its extensions with primitive recursion, transitive closure or datalog, and establish lower complexity bounds.
We study the validity problem for propositional dependence logic, modal dependence logic and extended modal dependence logic. We show that the validity problem for propositional dependence logic is NEXPTIME-complete. In addition, we establish that the corresponding problem for modal dependence logic and extended modal dependence logic is NEXPTIME-hard and in NEXPTIME^NP.
We show that context semantics can be fruitfully applied to the quantitative analysis of proof normalization in linear logic. In particular, context semantics lets us define the weight of a proof-net as a measure of its inherent complexity: it is both an upper bound to normalization time (modulo a polynomial overhead, independently on the reduction strategy) and a lower bound to the number of steps to normal form (for certain reduction strategies). Weights are then exploited in proving strong soundness theorems for various subsystems of linear logic, namely elementary linear logic, soft linear…
Autoepistemic logic extends propositional logic by the modal operator L. A formula that is preceded by an L is said to be "believed". The logic was introduced by Moore 1985 for modeling an ideally rational agent's behavior and reasoning about his own beliefs. In this paper we analyze all Boolean fragments of autoepistemic logic with respect to the computational complexity of the three most common decision problems expansion existence, brave reasoning and cautious reasoning. As a second contribution we classify the computational complexity of counting the number of stable expansions of a given …
Modal logics are widely used in computer science. The complexity of modal satisfiability problems has been investigated since the 1970s, usually proving results on a case-by-case basis. We prove a very general classification for a wide class of relevant logics: Many important subclasses of modal logics can be obtained by restricting the allowed models with first-order Horn formulas. We show that the satisfiability problem for each of these logics is either NP-complete or PSPACE-hard, and exhibit a simple classification criterion. Further, we prove matching PSPACE upper bounds for many of the P…
Let L be some extension of classical propositional logic. The non-iterated probabilistic logic over L, is the logic PL that is defined by adding non-nested probabilistic operators in the language of L. For example in PL we can express a statement like "the probability of truthfulness of A is at 0.3" where A is a formula of L. The iterated probabilistic logic over L is the logic PPL, where the probabilistic operators may be iterated (nested). For example, in PPL we can express a statement like "this coin is counterfeit with probability 0.6". In this paper we investigate the influence of probabi…
Linear logic was conceived in 1987 by Girard and, in contrast to classical logic, restricts the usage of the structural inference rules of weakening and contraction. With this, atoms of the logic are no longer interpreted as truth, but as information or resources. This interpretation makes linear logic a useful tool for formalisation in mathematics and computer science. Linear logic has, for example, found applications in proof theory, quantum logic, and the theory of programming languages. A central problem of the logic is the question whether a given list of formulas is provable with the cal…
We study the two-variable fragments D^2 and IF^2 of dependence logic and independence-friendly logic. We consider the satisfiability and finite satisfiability problems of these logics and show that for D^2, both problems are NEXPTIME-complete, whereas for IF^2, the problems are undecidable. We also show that D^2 is strictly less expressive than IF^2 and that already in D^2, equicardinality of two unary predicates and infinity can be expressed (the latter in the presence of a constant symbol). This is an extended version of a publication in the proceedings of the 26th Annual IEEE Symposium on L…
The satisfiability problem of the branching time logic CTL is studied in terms of computational complexity. Tight upper and lower bounds are provided for each temporal operator fragment. In parallel, the minimal model size is studied with a suitable notion of minimality. Thirdly, flat CTL is investigated, i.e., formulas with very low temporal operator nesting depth. A sharp dichotomy is shown in terms of complexity and minimal models: Temporal depth one has low expressive power, while temporal depth two is equivalent to full CTL.
Refinement Modal Logic (RML), which was recently introduced by Bozzelli et al., is an extension of classical modal logic which allows one to reason about a changing model. In this paper we study computational complexity questions related to this logic, settling a number of open problems. Specifically, we study the complexity of satisfiability for the existential fragment of RML, a problem posed by Bozzelli, van Ditmarsch and Pinchinat. Our main result is a tight PSPACE upper bound for this problem, which we achieve by introducing a new tableau system. As a direct consequence, we obtain a tight…
Default logic was introduced by Reiter in 1980. In 1992, Gottlob classified the complexity of the extension existence problem for propositional default logic as $\SigmaPtwo$-complete, and the complexity of the credulous and skeptical reasoning problem as SigmaP2-complete, resp. PiP2-complete. Additionally, he investigated restrictions on the default rules, i.e., semi-normal default rules. Selman made in 1992 a similar approach with disjunction-free and unary default rules. In this paper we systematically restrict the set of allowed propositional connectives. We give a complete complexity class…
Logics with team semantics provide alternative means for logical characterization of complexity classes. Both dependence and independence logic are known to capture non-deterministic polynomial time, and the frontiers of tractability in these logics are relatively well understood. Inclusion logic is similar to these team-based logical formalisms with the exception that it corresponds to deterministic polynomial time in ordered models. In this article we examine connections between syntactical fragments of inclusion logic and different complexity classes in terms of two computational problems: …
We show that every algorithm for testing $n$-variate Boolean functions for monotonicity must have query complexity $\tildeΩ(n^{1/4})$. All previous lower bounds for this problem were designed for non-adaptive algorithms and, as a result, the best previous lower bound for general (possibly adaptive) monotonicity testers was only $Ω(\log n)$. Combined with the query complexity of the non-adaptive monotonicity tester of Khot, Minzer, and Safra (FOCS 2015), our lower bound shows that adaptivity can result in at most a quadratic reduction in the query complexity for testing monotonicity. By contras…
Ontologies are a popular way of representing domain knowledge, in particular, knowledge in domains related to life sciences. (Semi-)automating the process of building an ontology has attracted researchers from different communities into a field called "Ontology Learning". We provide a formal specification of the exact and the probably approximately correct learning models from computational learning theory. Then, we recall from the literature complexity results for learning lightweight description logic (DL) ontologies in these models. Finally, we highlight other approaches proposed in the lit…
We classify the computational complexity of the satisfiability, validity and model-checking problems for propositional independence, inclusion, and team logic. Our main result shows that the satisfiability and validity problems for propositional team logic are complete for alternating exponential-time with polynomially many alternations.
A new syntactic characterization of problems complete via Turing reductions is presented. General canonical forms are developed in order to define such problems. One of these forms allows us to define complete problems on ordered structures, and another form to define them on unordered non-Aristotelian structures. Using the canonical forms, logics are developed for complete problems in various complexity classes. Evidence is shown that there cannot be any complete problem on Aristotelian structures for several complexity classes. Our approach is extended beyond complete problems. Using a simil…
We study the complexity of evaluating positive equality-free sentences of first-order (FO) logic over a fixed, finite structure B. This may be seen as a natural generalisation of the non-uniform quantified constraint satisfaction problem QCSP(B). We introduce surjective hyper-endomorphisms and use them in proving a Galois connection that characterises definability in positive equality-free FO. Through an algebraic method, we derive a complete complexity classification for our problems as B ranges over structures of size at most three. Specifically, each problem is either in Logspace, is NP-com…
Universität Hannover（汉诺威大学）；Université de la Méditerranée（地中海大学）；TWT GmbH（TWT有限公司）
We investigate the application of Courcelle's Theorem and the logspace version of Elberfeld etal. in the context of the implication problem for propositional sets of formulae, the extension existence problem for default logic, as well as the expansion existence problem for autoepistemic logic and obtain fixed-parameter time and space efficient algorithms for these problems. On the other hand, we exhibit, for each of the above problems, families of instances of a very simple structure that, for a wide range of different parameterizations, do not have efficient fixed-parameter algorithms (even i…
This paper investigates the relationship between the Logical Algorithms language (LA) of Ganzinger and McAllester and Constraint Handling Rules (CHR). We present a translation schema from LA to CHR-rp: CHR with rule priorities, and show that the meta-complexity theorem for LA can be applied to a subset of CHR-rp via inverse translation. Inspired by the high-level implementation proposal for Logical Algorithm by Ganzinger and McAllester and based on a new scheduling algorithm, we propose an alternative implementation for CHR-rp that gives strong complexity guarantees and results in a new and ac…
We prove that every triconnected planar graph is definable by a first order sentence that uses at most 15 variables and has quantifier depth at most $11\log_2 n+43$. As a consequence, a canonic form of such graphs is computable in $AC^1$ by the 14-dimensional Weisfeiler-Lehman algorithm. This provides another way to show that the planar graph isomorphism is solvable in $AC^1$.
We study the expressivity and complexity of model checking linear temporal logic with team semantics (TeamLTL). TeamLTL, despite being a purely modal logic, is capable of defining hyperproperties, i.e., properties which relate multiple execution traces. TeamLTL has been introduced quite recently and only few results are known regarding its expressivity and its model checking problem. We relate the expressivity of TeamLTL to logics for hyperproperties obtained by extending LTL with trace and propositional quantifiers (HyperLTL and HyperQPTL). By doing so, we obtain a number of model checking re…
Descriptive complexity theory is an important area in the study of computational complexity. In this direction, it is possible to describe combinatorial problems exclusively by logical methods, without resorting to the use of complicated algorithms. The first work in this direction was written in 1974 by the American mathematician Fagin. The article describes the development of methods of the theory of descriptive complexity.
Motivated by description logics, we investigate what happens to the complexity of modal satisfiability problems if we only allow formulas built from literals, $\wedge$, $\Diamond$, and $\Box$. Previously, the only known result was that the complexity of the satisfiability problem for K dropped from PSPACE-complete to coNP-complete (Schmidt-Schauss and Smolka, 1991 and Donini et al., 1992). In this paper we show that not all modal logics behave like K. In particular, we show that the complexity of the satisfiability problem with respect to frames in which each world has at least one successor d…
The satisfiability problem of hybrid logics with the downarrow binder is known to be undecidable. This initiated a research program on decidable and tractable fragments. In this paper, we investigate the effect of restricting the propositional part of the language on decidability and on the complexity of the satisfiability problem over arbitrary, transitive, total frames, and frames based on equivalence relations. We also consider different sets of modal and hybrid operators. We trace the border of decidability and give the precise complexity of most fragments, in particular for all fragments …
Dependence logics are a modern family of logics of independence and dependence which mimic notions of database theory. In this paper, we aim to initiate the study of enumeration complexity in the field of dependence logics and thereby get a new point of view on enumerating answers of database queries. Consequently, as a first step, we investigate the problem of enumerating all satisfying teams of formulas from a given fragment of propositional dependence logic. We distinguish between restricting the team size by arbitrary functions and the parametrised version where the parameter is the team s…
Let gamma be a (not necessarily finite) structure with a finite relational signature. We prove that deciding whether a given existential positive sentence holds in gamma is in Logspace or complete for the class CSP(gamma)_NP under deterministic polynomial-time many-one reductions. Here, CSP(gamma)_NP is the class of problems that can be reduced to the Constraint Satisfaction Problem of gamma under non-deterministic polynomial-time many-one reductions.
We investigate the computational complexity of admissibility of inference rules in infinite-valued Łukasiewicz propositional logic (Ł). It was shown in [13] that admissibility in Ł is checkable in PSPACE. We establish that this result is optimal, i.e., admissible rules of Ł are PSPACE-complete. In contrast, derivable rules of Ł are known to be coNP-complete.
Modal dependence logic was introduced recently by Väänänen. It enhances the basic modal language by an operator =(). For propositional variables p_1,...,p_n, =(p_1,...,p_(n-1);p_n) intuitively states that the value of p_n is determined by those of p_1,...,p_(n-1). Sevenster (J. Logic and Computation, 2009) showed that satisfiability for modal dependence logic is complete for nondeterministic exponential time. In this paper we consider fragments of modal dependence logic obtained by restricting the set of allowed propositional connectives. We show that satisfibility for poor man's dependence lo…
Second-order Boolean logic is a generalization of QBF, whose constant alternation fragments are known to be complete for the levels of the exponential time hierarchy. We consider two types of restriction of this logic: 1) restrictions to term constructions, 2) restrictions to the form of the Boolean matrix. Of the first sort, we consider two kinds of restrictions: firstly, disallowing nested use of proper function variables, and secondly stipulating that each function variable must appear with a fixed sequence of arguments. Of the second sort, we consider Horn, Krom, and core fragments of the …
Model checking has been successfully used in many computer science fields, including artificial intelligence, theoretical computer science, and databases. Most of the proposed solutions make use of classical, point-based temporal logics, while little work has been done in the interval temporal logic setting. Recently, a non-elementary model checking algorithm for Halpern and Shoham's modal logic of time intervals HS over finite Kripke structures (under the homogeneity assumption) and an EXPSPACE model checking procedure for two meaningful fragments of it have been proposed. In this paper, we s…
Courcelle's famous theorem from 1990 states that any property of graphs definable in monadic second-order logic (MSO) can be decided in linear time on any class of graphs of bounded treewidth, or in other words, MSO is fixed-parameter tractable in linear time on any such class of graphs. From a logical perspective, Courcelle's theorem establishes a sufficient condition, or an upper bound, for tractability of MSO-model checking. Whereas such upper bounds on the complexity of logics have received significant attention in the literature, almost nothing is known about corresponding lower bounds. I…
Our primary motivation is the comparison of two different traditions used in ICC to characterize the class FPTIME of the polynomial time computable functions. On one side, FPTIME can be captured by Intuitionistic Light Affine Logic (ILAL), a logic derived from Linear Logic, characterized by the structural invariant Stratification. On the other side, FPTIME can be captured by Safe Recursion on Notation (SRN), an algebra of functions based on Predicative Recursion, a restriction of the standard recursion schema used to defiine primitive recursive functions. Stratifiication and Predicative Recurs…
We discuss the definability of finite graphs in first-order logic with two relation symbols for adjacency and equality of vertices. The logical depth $D(G)$ of a graph $G$ is equal to the minimum quantifier depth of a sentence defining $G$ up to isomorphism. The logical width $W(G)$ is the minimum number of variables occurring in such a sentence. The logical length $L(G)$ is the length of a shortest defining sentence. We survey known estimates for these graph parameters and discuss their relations to other topics (such as the efficiency of the Weisfeiler-Lehman algorithm in isomorphism testing…
We present several known formalizations of theorems from computational complexity in bounded arithmetic and formalize the PCP theorem in the theory PV1 (no formalization of this theorem was known). This includes a formalization of the existence and of some properties of the (n,d,λ)-graphs in PV1.
We consider the problems of deciding whether an input graph can be modified by removing/adding at most k vertices/edges such that the result of the modification satisfies some property definable in first-order logic. We establish a number of sufficient and necessary conditions on the quantification pattern of the first-order formula ϕfor the problem to be fixed-parameter tractable or to admit a polynomial kernel.
In this paper two connected Szilard single molecule engines (with different temperature) model of Maxwell's demon are used to demonstrate and analysis the logical compare operation. The logical and physical complexity of compare operations are both showed to be kTln2. Then this limit was used to prove the time complexity lower bound of sorting problem. It confirmed the proposed way to measure the complexity of a problem, provided another evidence of the equivalence between information theoretical and thermodynamic entropies.
