Logic (Subsystem of AIMA Code)

The logic system covers part III of the book. We define knowledge bases, and tell and ask operations on those knowledge bases. The interface is defined in the file tell-ask.lisp.

We need a new language for logical expressions, since we don't have all the nice characters (like upside-down A) that we would like to use. We will allow an infix format for input, and manipulate a Lisp-like prefix format internally. Here is a description of the formats (compare to [p 167, 187]). The prefix notation is a subset of the KIF 3.0 Knowledge Interchange Format.

Infix         Prefix             Meaning              Alternate Infix Notation
==========    ======             ===========          ========================
~P            (not P)            negation             not P    
P ^ Q         (and P Q)          conjunction          P and Q  
P | Q         (or P Q)           disjunction          P or Q   
P => Q        (=> P Q)           implication                   
P <=> Q       (<=> P Q)          logical equivalence
P(x)          (P x)              predicate   
Q(x,y)        (Q x y)            predicate with multiple arguments
f(x)          (f x)              function    
f(x)=3        (= (f x) 3)        equality    
forall(x,P(x) (forall (x) (P x)) universal quantification
exists(x,P(x) (exists (x) (P x)) existential quantification
[a,b]         (listof a b)       list of elements
{a,b}         (setof a b)        mathematical set of elements
true          true               the true logical constant
false         false              the false logical constant

You can also use the usual operators for mathematical notation: +, -, *, / for arithmetic, and &;lt;, >, <=, >= for comparison. Many of the functions we define also accept strings as input, interpreting them as infix expressions, so the following are equivalent:

	(tell kb "P=>Q")  
        (tell kb '(=> P Q))