Meeting 09: Propositional Logic

Reading: AIAMA 7.1-7.4

In the next part of the course we will see how to expand the intelligence of state-space based agents by using logic programming to reason about states and state transitions. This is particularly helpful for simplifying the code involved in specifying allowable state transitions. Section 7.1 describes this overall framework as knowledge-based agents. Section 7.2 describes the semantics of a classic toy environment called the wumpus world. Section 7.3 introduces the basics of formal logic, which is expanded in section 7.4 to our first type of knowledge base using propositional logic. Much of this should be a review from digital design and discrete math.

Questions you should be able to answer after reading are:

  1. What are the parts of a knowledge base?
  2. What can an agent do to/with a knowledge base?
  3. What is the PEAS description of the wumpus world?
  4. What is the difference between syntax and semantics in logic?
  5. When does a model satisfy a sentence?
  6. What is the relationship between entailment and set theory?
  7. What is logical inference?
  8. What are some important properties of an inference algorithm?
  9. What aspect of the agent grounds the abstract knowledge base in the true environment?
  10. Describe the syntax of propositional logic.
  11. How does one establish semantics in propositional logic?