---
title: "A Decidable First-Order Logic for Knowledge Representation"
authors:
  - "Peter F. Patel-Schneider"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1985/89"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1985/0089.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Ninth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1985
pages: "455-457"
track: "Knowledge Representation"
keywords:
---

# A Decidable First-Order Logic for Knowledge Representation

Peter F. Patel-Schneider

*Proceedings of the Ninth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 455-457.

## Abstract

Even though logic has played an important role in knowledge representation (KR) research, there has b ee n little effort exp ended on devising decidable logics for KR. Most modifications to logic suggested for KR are either extensions to first-order logic (e.g., to handle non-monotonidty) or ad hoc changes in its inference mechanism. This paper presents a variant of first- order relevance lo gic that has a decidable algorithm for determining tautological entailment. Although this logic is considerably weaker than standard fir st-order logic , it can be used effectively in a KR system when semantically correct answers to queries are required within a finite amount of time.