The complexity of reasoning for fragments of default logic

Abstract

Default logic was introduced by Reiter in 1980. In 1992, Gottlob classified the complexity of the extension existence problem for propositional default logic as Σ2p-complete, and the complexity of the credulous and skeptical reasoning problem as Σ2p-complete, respectively Π2p-complete. Additionally, he investigated restrictions on the default rules, i.e. semi-normal default rules. Selman used in 1992 a similar approach with disjunction-free and unary default rules. In this article, we systematically restrict the set of allowed propositional connectives. We give a complete complexity classification for all sets of Boolean functions in the meaning of Post's lattice for all three common decision problems for propositional default logic. We show that the complexity is a hexachotomy (⁠Σ2p-, Δ2p-, NP-, P-, NL-complete, trivial) for the extension existence problem, while for the credulous and skeptical reasoning problem we obtain similar classifications without trivial cases.