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Artificial Intelligence

Week 5: First-order Logic (FOL)

COSC2129
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Material

• Chapter 7, Book: Artificial Intelligence: A Modern

Approach Global edition

• Book - TOC of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach,

4th Global ed.
• AIMA: Pseudo code
• Good practices Python
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Propositional logic: Limitation

• Example 1: Represent in PL
– The table has three legs ➢ Properties of ONE
– The table is made of wood and glass object
– The table is expensive

• Example 2
– Table 1 is broken ➢ The same
– Table 2 is broken property of
difference objects
• Example 3
– Table 2 is next to Table 1 • ?
– Table 2 is smaller than Table 1
– The bag is on Table 2
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First-order logic

• First-order logic (FOL):

– built on the foundation of PL
– more expressive than PL
– useful representational ideas (objects, relations,
functions) from nature language.
• Objects: Table, wumpus, people, houses, numbers, colors,…
• Relations/properties: next, red, round, prime, brother of,
smaller than, bigger than, part of, between, …
• Functions: father of, best friend, one more than, plus,…
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First-order logic

• First-order logic (FOL) models the world in terms of

– Objects, which are things with individual identities
– Properties of objects that distinguish them from other objects
– Relations that hold among sets of objects
– Functions, which are a subset of relations where there is only
one “value” for any given “input”

• Examples:
– Objects: Students, lectures, companies, cars ...
– Relations: Brother-of, bigger-than, outside, part-of, has-color,
occurs-after, owns, visits, precedes, ...
– Properties: blue, wood, oval, even, large, ...
– Functions: father-of, best-friend, second-half, one-more-than
...
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FOL: Syntax

Basic syntactic elements of FOL:

• Constant symbols, which represent individuals in the world
– Daisy (name)
– 3 (legs)
– Wood
• Predicate symbols, which map individuals to truth values
– greater(3>2)
– blue(Sky)
– color(Grass, Green)
• Function symbols, which map individuals to individuals
– Sqrt(4)
– father-of(Daisy) = John
– color-of(Sky) = Blue
– legOfTable
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FOL: Syntax

• Variable symbols
– E.g., x, y,…
• Connectives
– Same as in PL: not (), and (), or (), implies
(→), if and only if (biconditional )
• Quantifiers
– Universal x or (Ax)
– Existential x or (Ex)
• Equality: =
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FOL: Sentences

Sentences are built from terms and atoms.

• A term (a real-world individual) is a constant symbol, a
variable symbol, or an n-place function of n terms.
− x and f(x1, ..., xn) are terms, where each xi is a term.
− A term with no variables is a ground term
• An atomic sentence (which has value true or false) is an n-
place predicate of n terms
₋ broken(Table1, Table2) (term: objects, fact)
₋ mother(Jody, Tim) (predicate: relation, fact)
• A complex sentence is formed from atomic sentences
connected by the logical connectives:
P, PQ, PQR, P→Q, PQ where P, Q, R are sentences
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FOL: Sentences (con’t)

• A quantified sentence adds quantifiers  and 

• A well-formed formula (wff) is a sentence containing
no “free” variables. That is, all variables are “bound” by
universal or existential quantifiers.
(x)P(x,y) has x bound as a universally quantified
variable, but y is free.

Examples:
Somebody likes Jane: ∃x : (likes (x, Jane)).
Somebody likes everybody: ∃x :(∀y : (likes (x, y)))
∀x : (even (x) ∧ prime (x) ⇒ (x = 2)) (a mathematical fact)
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Quantifiers

• Universal quantification
– (x)P(x) means that P holds for all values of x in
the domain associated with that variable
– E.g., (x) dolphin(x) → mammal(x)

• Existential quantification
– ( x)P(x) means that P holds for some value of x
in the domain associated with that variable
– E.g., ( x) study(x,AI)  smart(x)
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Quantifiers

• Universal quantifiers: often used with “implies” to form “rules”:

(x) student(x) → smart(x) means “All students are smart”
(x)student(x)smart(x) means “Everyone in the world is a student and
is smart”
• Existential quantifiers: usually used with “and” to specify a list of
properties about an individual:
(x) student(x)  smart(x) means “There is a student who is smart”

• A common mistake is to represent this English sentence as the

FOL sentence:
(x) student(x) → smart(x)
– But what happens when there is a person who is not a student?
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Multiple quantifiers (Scope)

• Switching the order of universal quantifiers does not

change the meaning:
– (x)(y)P(x,y) (y)(x) P(x,y)
• Similarly, you can switch the order of existential
quantifiers:
– (x)(y)P(x,y) (y)(x) P(x,y)
• Switching the order of universals and existentials
does change meaning:
– Everyone likes someone: (x)(y) likes(x,y)
– Someone is liked by everyone: (y)(x) likes(x,y)
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Connections between All and Exists

We can relate sentences involving  and 

using De Morgan’s laws:
(x) P(x) (x) P(x)
(x) P (x) P(x)
(x) P(x)  (x) P(x)
(x) P(x) (x) P(x)
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Semantics of FOL

• Domain M: the set of all objects in the world (of interest)

• Interpretation: includes
– Assign each constant to an object in M
– Define functions (a mapping Mn => M)
– Define predicates (a mapping Mn => {T, F})
• Every ground predicate with any instantiation will have a truth value
– In general there is an infinite number of interpretations
because |M| is infinite
• Define logical connectives: ~, ^, , =>, <=> as in PL
• Define semantics of (x) and (x)
– (x) P(x) is true iff P(x) is true under all interpretations
– (x) P(x) is true iff P(x) is true under some interpretation
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Semantics of FOL

• Model: an interpretation of a set of sentences such that

every sentence is True
• A sentence is
– satisfiable if it is true under some interpretation
– valid if it is true under all possible interpretations
– inconsistent if there does not exist any interpretation under
which the sentence is true
• Logical consequence:
S |= X if all models of S are also models of X
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Inference in FOL
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Quantified inference rules

• Universal instantiation
– x P(x)  P(A)
• Universal generalization
– P(A)  P(B) …  x P(x)
• Existential instantiation
– x P(x) P(F)  skolem constant F
• Existential generalization
– P(A)  x P(x)
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Universal instantiation (universal elimination)

• If (x) P(x) is true, then P(C) is true, where C is any

constant in the domain of x
• Example:
(x) learn(Man, x)  learn(Man, painting)
• The variable symbol can be replaced by any ground
term (any constant symbol or function symbol
applied to ground terms only).
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Existential instantiation (existential elimination)

• From (x) P(x) infer P(c)

• Example:
(x) learn(Man, x) → learn(Man, Subject)
• Note that the variable is replaced by a brand-new
constant not occurring in this or any other sentence in
the KB
• Also known as skolemization; constant is a skolem
constant
• Convenient to use this to reason about the unknown
object, rather than constantly manipulating the
existential quantifier.
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Existential generalization (existential introduction)

• If P(c) is true, then (x) P(x) is inferred.

• Example
learn(Man, Painting)  (x) learn(Man, x)
• All instances of the given constant symbol are
replaced by the new variable symbol
• Note that the variable symbol cannot already exist
anywhere in the expression.
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Propositionalization (FOL → PL)

• Inference in FOL is an extension of inference in PL.

• We can reduce FOL inference to PL inference via
propositionalization.
(Need to deal with substitutions and quantifiers)
• The basic idea
– A variable of sentences with existential quantifier can
be substituted by one instantiation.
– A variable of sentences with universal quantifier can
be substituted by the set of all possible instantiations
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Generalized Modus Ponens (GMP)

• All variables assumed universally quantified

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GMP example

Cre.: Philipp Koehn, AI: Inference in FOL, 2024

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Unification

• The process of finding substitutions

• A unification algorithm takes two sentences and returns a
unifier (substitution) for them if one exists.
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Example of Inference in F

• Prove that Colonel West is a criminal. See slides.

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Most general unifier (MGU)

• Unification should only return the most general one,

which makes the least commitment to constants.
• The algorithm for computing MGUs can be found in the
textbook.
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Question?