The Possibilistic Horn Non-Clausal Knowledge Bases

Posibilistic logic is the most extended approach to handle uncertain and partially inconsistent information. Regarding normal forms, advances in possibilistic reasoning are mostly focused on clausal form. Yet, the encoding of real-world problems usually results in a non-clausal (NC) formula and NC-to-clausal translators produce severe drawbacks that heavily limit the practical performance of clausal reasoning. Thus, by computing formulas in its original NC form, we propose several contributions showing that notable advances are also possible in possibilistic non-clausal reasoning. em Firstly, we define the class of em Possibilistic Horn Non-Clausal Knowledge Bases, or mathcaloverlineH_Sigma, which subsumes the classes: possibilistic Horn and propositional Horn-NC. mathcaloverlineH_Sigma is shown to be a kind of NC analogous of the standard Horn class. em Secondly, we define em Possibilistic Non-Clausal Unit-Resolution, or UR_Sigma , and prove that UR_Sigma correctly computes the inconsistency degree of mathcaloverlineH_Sigma members. UR_Sigma had not been proposed before and is formulated in a clausal-like manner, which eases its understanding, formal proofs and future extension towards non-clausal resolution. em Thirdly, we prove that computing the inconsistency degree of mathcaloverlineH_Sigma members takes polynomial time. Although there already exist tractable classes in possibilistic logic, all of them are clausal, and thus, mathcaloverlineH_Sigma turns out to be the first characterized polynomial non-clausal class within possibilistic reasoning.