Formal Logic as a Knowledge Representation Scheme

The term “knowledge representation” refers to a fundamental problem in Artificial Intelligence [Delgrande and Mylopoulos 1986], namely how to represent items of information that will be used in a subsequent reasoning process. This formulation of the problem highlights the very nature of knowledge representation: In order to set up a knowledge representation system, it is not sufficient to devise a static model of information; the model itself must provide for a dynamic interaction of the various items of information in the form of reasoning. Reasoning concerns relationships between truth and falsehood. Logic, too, concerns these relationships. In these respects, logic constitutes in and of itself an approach to the problem of knowledge representation because logic relies on a language, namely a means to represent information.