Tabling in abduction and updating

Abstract

In the individual realm part of this book, we are addressing the interplay amongst appropriate LP features to represent moral facets and to reason about them. One such interplay is between LP abduction and updating, both supported with tabling mechanisms. In this chapter, we propose novel approaches for employing tabling in abduction and updating—separately—viz., tabling abductive solutions in contextual abduction (Sect. 5.1), plus the incremental tabling of fluents for LP updating (Sect. 5.2). Moreover, these two individual approaches form the components for their subsequent joint tabling technique when combining LP abduction and updating, to be discussed in detail in Chap. 7. The new techniques introduced here, as well as their later joint combination, are general for normal logic programs, and not specific to morality applications. That is, they are of interest in themselves and may be applicable to other domains.