SYLLABUS- MODULE 4 (Knowledge Representation and Reasoning)

Logical Agents – Knowledge based agents, Logic, Propositional Logic, Propositional Theorem proving,
Agents based on Propositional Logic. First Order Predicate Logic – Syntax and Semantics of First Order
Logic, Using First Order Logic, Knowledge representation in First Order Logic. Inference in First Order
Logic – Propositional Vs First Order inference, Unification and Lifting, Forward chaining, Backward
chaining, Resolution.

Logical Agents
The idea is that an agent can represent knowledge of its world, its goals and the current situation by
sentences in logic and decide what to do by inferring that a certain action or course of action is
appropriate to achieve its goals.

Knowledge-Based Agents
 Central component of a Knowledge-Based Agent is a Knowledge-Base
 It is a set of sentences in a formal language
 Sentences are expressed using a knowledge representation language
 Two generic functions:
– TELL - add new sentences (facts) to the KB • “Tell it what it needs
to know”
– ASK - query what is known from the KB • “Ask what to do next”

PEAS of Knowledge Based Agent

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  Performance Measure: Performance measure is the unit to define the success of an agent.
Performance varies with agents based on their different precepts.
 Environment: Environment is the surrounding of an agent at every instant. It keeps changing
with time if the agent is set in motion.
 Actuator: An actuator is a part of the agent that delivers the output of action to the environment.
 Sensor: Sensors are the receptive parts of an agent that takes in the input for the agent.
A simple knowledge-based agent

Logic

Logics are formal languages for representing information such that conclusions can be drawn
Syntax defines the sentences in the language
Semantics define the "meaning" of sentences; define truth of each sentence with respect to each possible
world
E.g., the language of arithmetic
x+2 ≥ y is a sentence
x2+y > {} is not a sentence
x+2 ≥ y is true iff the number x+2 is no less than the number y
x+2 ≥ y is true in a world where x = 7, y = 1

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Model- “possible world, mathematical abstractions, each of which simply fixes the truth or falsehood
of every relevant sentence
Possible worlds- real environments that the agent might or might not be in
If a sentence α is true in model m, we say that m satisfies α or sometimes m is a model of α.
We use the notation M(α) to mean the set of all models of α
Entailment
Entailment means a sentence follows logically from another : to mean that the sentence α entails the
sentence β
α |= β if and only if, in every model in which α is true, β is also true
α |= β if and only if M(α) ⊆ M(β) .
Knowledge base KB entails sentence α if and only if α is true in all worlds where KB is true
Eg. the KB containing “the Phillies won” and “the Reds won” entails “Either the Phillies won or the
Reds won”
Eg. x+y = 4 entails 4 = x+y
Entailment is a relationship between sentences (i. e. , syntax) that is based on semantics
Inference and Entailment
Inference is a procedure that allows new sentences to be derived from a knowledge base. Understanding
inference and entailment: think of Set of all consequences of a KB as a haystack, α as the needle,
Entailment is like the needle being in the haystack and Inference is like finding it.
if an inference algorithm i can derive α from KB, we write

which is pronounced “α is derived from KB by i” or “i derives α from KB.”

M is a model of a sentence α if α is true in M
M(α) is the set of all models of α

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Sound and Truth Preserving Inference
An inference algorithm that derives only entailed sentences is called sound or truth preserving.
Soundness is a highly desirable property. An unsound inference procedure essentially makes things up
as it goes along—it announces the discovery of nonexistent needles. It is easy to see that model
checking, when it is applicable is a sound procedure. The property of completeness is also desirable: an
inference algorithm is complete if it can derive any sentence that is entailed
A reasoning process whose conclusions are guaranteed to be true in any world in which the premises
are true; in particular, if KB is true in the real world, then any sentence α derived from KB by a sound
inference procedure is also true in the real world

Propositional Logic: A Very Simplest Logic

Syntax of PL: defines the allowable sentences or propositions.
Definition (Proposition): A proposition is a declarative statement (True or False).
A fact, like “the Sun is hot.” The Sun cannot be both hot and not hot at the same time. This
declarative statement could also be referred to as a proposition.
Atomic proposition: single proposition symbol. Each symbol is a proposition.
Notation: upper case letters and may contain subscripts.
Compound proposition: constructed from atomic propositions using parentheses and logical
connectives.
Examples of atomic propositions:

 2+2=4 is a true proposition

 W1,3 is a proposition. It is true if there is a Wumpus in [1,3]
 “If there is a stench in [1,2] then there is a Wumpus in [1,3]” is a proposition
 “How are you?” or “Hello!” are not propositions. In general, statement that are questions,
commands, or opinions are not propositions.
Examples of compound/complex propositions
Let p, p1, and p2 be propositions
◦ Negation ¬p is also a proposition.

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 ◦ A literal is either an atomic proposition or its negation. E.g., W1,3 is a positive literal,
and ¬W1,3 is a negative literal.
◦ Conjunction p1 ∧ p2. E.g., W1,3 ∧ P3,1
◦ Disjunction p1 ∨ p2 E.g., W1,3 ∨ P3,1

◦ Implication p1 → p2. E.g., W1,3 ∧ P3,1 → ¬W2,2

◦ If and only if p1 ↔ p2. E.g., W1,3 ↔ ¬W2,2

Truth Table
The semantics define the rules to determine the truth of a sentence.

 Semantics can be specified by truth tables.

 Boolean values domain: T,F , n-tuple: (x1, x2, ..., xn)
 Operator on n-tuples : g(x1 = v1, x2 = v2, ..., xn = vn)
 A truth table defines an operator g on n- tuples by specifying a Boolean value for each tuple.
 Number of rows in a truth table? R = 2n

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Precedence of operators
1. Expressions in parentheses are processed (inside to outside)
2. Negation
3. AND
4. OR
5. Implication
6. Biconditional
7. Left to right
Use parentheses whenever you have any doubt!
Logical Equivalence
Two propositions p and q are logically equivalent if and only if the columns in the truth table giving
their truth values agree. We write this as p ⇔ q or p ≡ q.
pq is equivalent to ¬pvq

Properties
Commutativity:
p∧q=q∧p
p∨q=q∨p
Associativity:
p ∧ q) ∧ r = p ∧ (q ∧ r)
(p ∨ q) ∨ r = p ∨ (q ∨ r)
Identity element:
p ∧ T rue = p
p ∨ T rue = T rue
¬(¬p) = p
p∧p=pp∨p=p
Distributivity:
p ∧ (q ∨ r) = (p ∧ q) ∨ (p ∧ r)

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 p ∨ (q ∧ r) = (p ∨ q) ∧ (p ∨ r)
p ∧ (¬p) = False and p ∨ (¬p) = T rue
DeMorgan’s laws:
¬(p ∧ q) = (¬p) ∨ (¬q)
¬(p ∨ q) = (¬p) ∧ (¬q)

Tautology and contradiction

Tautology is a proposition which is always true. Contradiction is a proposition which is always false.
Contingency is a proposition which is neither a tautology or a contradiction

Contrapositive and Inverse

Given an implication p → q
• The converse is: q → p
• The contrapositive is: ¬q → ¬p
• The inverse is: ¬p → ¬q
Conditional statement: “If it is raining, then the grass is wet.” The first step is to identify the hypothesis
and conclusion statements. Hypothesis, p: it is raining. Conclusion, q: grass is wet

 Converse statement would be: “If the grass is wet, then it is raining.”

 Inverse statement would be: “If it is NOT raining, then the grass is NOT wet.”

 Contrapositive statement would be: “If the grass is NOT wet, then it is NOT raining.”
Inference (Modus Ponens)

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For example, if (WumpusAhead ∧WumpusAlive) ⇒ Shoot and (WumpusAhead ∧ WumpusAlive) are
given, then Shoot can be inferred

Modus Tollens

And Elimination, Unit Resolution

From a conjunction, any of the conjuncts can be inferred. For example, from (WumpusAhead ∧
WumpusAlive), WumpusAlive can be inferred.

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DNF and CNF
DNF: Disjunctive Normal Form, OR of ANDs (terms)
e.g. (p∧¬q) ∨ (¬p∧¬r)
CNF: Conjunctive Normal Form
“Every sentence of propositional logic is logically equivalent to a conjunction of clauses”. AND of ORs
(clauses)
e.g. (p∨¬q) ∧ (¬p∨¬r)

Procedure for converting to CNF

Convert the sentence B1,1 ⇔ (P1,2 ∨ P2,1) into CNF

Definite clauses

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Horn Clause

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AGENTS BASED ON PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC: Wumpus world – Knowledge Base
Atomic propositions

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Room[1,1], room does not have wumpus(¬ W11), no stench (¬S11), no Pit(¬P11), no breeze(¬B11),
no gold (¬G11), visited (V11), and the room is Safe(OK11).
Inference
Prove that Wumpus is in the room (1, 3) using propositional rules which have been derived for the
Wumpus world and using inference rule.

• Apply Modus Ponens with ¬S11 and R1:

Apply And-Elimination Rule:

After applying And-elimination rule to ¬ W11 ∧ ¬ W12 ∧ ¬ W21, we will get three statements:
¬ W11, ¬ W12, and ¬W21.
• Apply Modus Ponens to ¬S21, and R2:
Now we will apply Modus Ponens to ¬S21 and R2 which is ¬S21 → ¬ W21 ∧¬ W22 ∧ ¬ W31, which will
give the Output as ¬ W21 ∧ ¬ W22 ∧

¬ W31

• Apply And -Elimination rule:

Now again apply And-elimination rule to ¬ W21 ∧ ¬ W22 ∧¬ W31, We will get three statements:
¬ W21, ¬ W22, and ¬ W31.
• Apply Modus Pones to S12 and R4:

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Apply Modus Ponens to S12 and R4 which is S12 → W13 ∨. W12 ∨. W22 ∨.W11, we will get the output
as W13∨ W12 ∨ W22 ∨.W11.

• Apply Unit resolution on W13 ∨ W12 ∨ W22 ∨W11 and ¬ W11 :

After applying Unit resolution formula on W13 ∨ W12 ∨ W22 ∨W11 and ¬ W11 we will get W13 ∨ W12 ∨
W22.

• Apply Unit resolution on W13 ∨ W12 ∨ W22 and ¬ W22 :

After applying Unit resolution on W13 ∨ W12 ∨ W22, and ¬W22, we will get W13 ∨ W12 as output.

• Apply Unit Resolution on W13 ∨ W12 and ¬ W12 :

After Applying Unit resolution on W13 ∨ W12 and ¬ W12, we will get W13 as an output, hence it is
proved that the Wumpus is in the room [1, 3].

Demerit of Propositional Logic

Propositional logic can only represent the facts, which are either true or false. PL is not sufficient to
represent the complex sentences or natural language statements. The propositional logic has very
limited expressive power. Consider the following sentence, which we cannot represent using PL logic.
"Some humans are intelligent", or
"Sachin likes cricket."

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First-Order Logic (FOL)
It is an extension to propositional logic. FOL is sufficiently expressive to represent the natural language
statements in a concise way. First-order logic is also known as Predicate logic or First-order predicate
logic.
First-order logic (FOL) models the world in terms of
Objects, which are things with individual identities
Properties of objects that distinguish them from other objects
Relations that hold among sets of objects
Functions, which are a subset of relations where there is only one “value” for any given “input”
Examples:
Objects: Students, lectures…
Relations: Brother-of, bigger-than, outside..
Properties: blue, oval, even, large, ...
Functions: father-of, best-friend, second-half, one-more-than ...
FOL is also called as Predicate Logic. It is a generalization of Propositional Logic that allows us to
express and infer arguments in infinite models, Eg,
Some birds can fly
All men are mortal
At least one student has course registered

Terms
A term is a logical expression that refers to an object. Constant symbols are therefore terms, but it is
not always convenient to have a distinct symbol to name every object. For example, in English we might

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use the expression “King John’s left leg” rather than giving a name to his leg. This is what function
symbols are for: instead of using a constant symbol, we use LeftLeg(John).
Consider a term f(t1,...,tn). The function symbol f refers to some function in the model (call it F); the
argument terms refer to objects in the domain (call them d1,...,dn); and the term as a whole refers to the
object that is the value of the function F applied to d1,...,dn.

Atomic Sentences in FOL

Atomic sentences are the most basic sentences of first-order logic. These sentences are formed from a
predicate symbol followed by a parenthesis with a sequence of terms. Atomic sentences are represented
as Predicate (term1, term2, ......, term n).
Example: Ravi and Ajay are brothers: => Brothers(Ravi, Ajay).
Chinky is a cat: => cat (Chinky).
Complex sentences
Complex sentences are made by combining atomic sentences using connectives. We can use logical
connectives to construct more complex sentences, with the same syntax and semantics as in
propositional calculus. Here are four sentences that are true in the model of Figure 8.2 under our
intended interpretation:
Brother (Richard, John) ∧ Brother (John, Richard)
King(Richard) ∨ King(John)
¬King(Richard) ⇒ King(John)
Quantifiers
Quantifiers express properties of entire collections of objects. First-order logic contains two standard
quantifiers, called

 universal and
 existential.

Universal quantification (∀)

It is expression of general rules in propositional logic. The second rule, “All kings are persons,” is
written in first-order logic as
∀ x King(x) ⇒ Person(x) // “For all x, if x is a king, then x is a person.”

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∀ is usually pronounced “For all ...”.
The symbol x is called a variable. A variable is a term all by itself, and as such can also serve as the
argument of a function—for example, LeftLeg(x). A term with no variables is called a ground term.

Existential quantification (∃)

Universal quantification makes statements about every object. Similarly, we can make a statement about
some object in the universe without naming it, by using an existential quantifier. To say, for example,
that King John has a crown on his head, we write
∃ x Crown(x) ∧ OnHead(x, John)
∃x is pronounced “There exists an x such that ...” or “For some x...”. The sentence ∃ x P says that P is
true for at least one object x.
∃ x P is true in a given model if P is true in at least one extended interpretation that assigns x to a domain
element

∃ x Crown(x) ⇒ OnHead(x, John)

Nested quantifiers
We want to express more complex sentences using multiple quantifiers. For example, “Brothers are
siblings” can be written as
∀ x ∀ y Brother (x, y) ⇒ Sibling(x, y) .
Consecutive quantifiers of the same type can be written as one quantifier with several variables. For
example, to say that siblinghood is a symmetric relationship, we can write

∀ x, y Sibling(x, y) ⇔ Sibling(y, x) .
In other cases we will have mixtures. “Everybody loves somebody” means that for every person, there
is someone that person loves:
∀ x ∃ y Loves(x, y) .
On the other hand, to say “There is someone who is loved by everyone,” we write

∃ y ∀ x Loves(x, y) .
says that everyone has a particular property, namely, the property that they love someone. On the other
hand, ∃ y (∀ x Loves(x, y)) says that someone in the world has a particular property, namely the property
of being loved by everybody

Connections between ∀ and ∃

The two quantifiers are actually intimately connected with each other, through negation.

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 Asserting that everyone dislikes parsnips is the same as asserting there does not exist someone who
likes them, and vice versa:
∀ x ¬Likes(x,Parsnips ) is equivalent to ¬∃ x Likes(x,Parsnips) .
“Everyone likes ice cream” means that there is no one who does not like ice cream:

∀ x Likes(x,IceCream) is equivalent to ¬∃ x ¬Likes(x,IceCream)

De Morgan rules for quantified and unquantified sentences

Equality
We can use the equality symbol to signify that two terms refer to the same object.
For example, Father (John) = Henry
says that the object referred to by Father (John) and the object referred to by Henry are the same.
Because an interpretation fixes the referent of any term, determining the truth of an equality sentence is
simply a matter of seeing that the referents of the two terms are the same object.
To say that Richard has at least two brothers, we would write

FOL Points to remember:

 The main connective for universal quantifier ∀ is implication →.

 The main connective for existential quantifier ∃ is and ∧.
Properties of Quantifiers:

 In universal quantifier, ∀x∀y is similar to ∀y∀x.

 In Existential quantifier, ∃x∃y is similar to ∃y∃x.
 ∃x∀y is not similar to ∀y∃x.
Examples of FOL

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Free and Bound Variable
There are two types of variables in First-order logic which are given below:
Free Variable: A variable is said to be a free variable in a formula if it occurs outside the scope of the
quantifier.

Example: ∀x ∃(y)[P (x, y, z)], where z is a free variable.

Bound Variable: A variable is said to be a bound variable in a formula if it occurs within the scope of
the quantifier.
Example: ∀x [A (x) B( y)], here x is the bound variables.
Unification
The process of finding a substitution for predicate parameters is called unification. Unification is a
process of making two different logical atomic expressions identical by finding a substitution.
Unification depends on the substitution process. It takes two literals as input and makes them identical
using substitution. We need to know: that 2 literals can be matched. The substitution is that makes the
literals identical. There is a simple algorithm called the unification algorithm that does this.
Let's say there are two different expressions, P(x, y), and P(a, f(z)).
In this example, we need to make both above statements identical to each other. For this, we will
perform the substitution.
P(x,y).........(i)
P(a, f(z))......... (ii)
Substitute x with a, and y with f(z) in the first expression, and it will be represented as a/x and f(z)/y.
With both the substitutions, the first expression will be identical to the second expression and the
substitution set will be: [a/x, f(z)/y].
The substitution variables are called Most General Unifier or MGU.
Conditions for Unification:
Following are some basic conditions for unification:

 Predicate symbol must be same, atoms or expression with different predicate symbol can never
be unified.
 Number of Arguments in both expressions must be identical.
 Unification will fail if there are two similar variables present in the same expression.
The Unification Algorithm

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Inference engine
The inference engine is the component of the intelligent system in artificial intelligence, which applies
logical rules to the knowledge base to infer new information from known facts. Inference engine
commonly proceeds in two modes, which are:

 Forward chaining
 Backward chaining
Forward Chaining
Forward chaining is a form of reasoning which start with atomic sentences in the knowledge base and
applies inference rules (Modus Ponens) in the forward direction to extract more data until a goal is
reached. The Forward-chaining algorithm starts from known facts, triggers all rules whose premises are
satisfied, and add their conclusion to the known facts. This process repeats until the problem is solved.
Given a new fact, generate all consequences
Assumes all rules are of the form C1 and C2 and C3 and…. --> Result. Each rule & binding generates
a new fact This new fact will “trigger” other rules. Keep going until the desired fact is generated. (Semi-
decidable as is FOL in general)
FC: Example Knowledge Base
The law says that it is a crime for an American to sell weapons to hostile nations. The country Nono,
an enemy America, has some missiles, and all of its missiles were sold to it by Col. West, who is an
American.
Prove that Col. West is a criminal.

FC: Example Knowledge Base

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Backward Chaining
Back Chaining considers the item to be proven a goal. Find a rule whose head is the goal (and bindings).
Apply bindings to the body, and prove these (subgoals) in turn. If you prove all the subgoals, increasing
the binding set as you go, you will prove the item.

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