(9) Fast Hypothetical Reasoning System

Although the framework of hypothetical reasoning is very useful, it has not been widely used due mainly to its low efficiency. This study aims to develop software tools that allow our achievements on an efficient hypothetical reasoning metod to be used in wider applications, thus expanding the use of the new knowledge processing framework. In particular, we will focus on a framework of weighted (or cost-based) hypothetical reasoning, which assigns numerical weights to possible element hypotheses and obtains an optimal solution hypothesis with minimal sum of the weights (or const). Our metod for this hypothetiacl reasoning can compute a near-optimal solution in polynomial time. We will implement software tools of this method not only for the propositional logic version but also for the predicate logic version (handling range-restricted predicate Horn clauses) with wider expression capability. The propositional logic version will be completed as a tool in fiscal 1995, and the predicate logic version using KLIC will be included into the system in the next fiscal year.