Universal Instantiation

The Universal Instantiation (UI) rule states that by replacing a ground word (a term without variables) for the variable, we can infer any sentence. We employ the notion of replacements to formalize the inference rule. Let  denote the result of putting the substitution  to work on the sentence . The rule is then expressed as \frac{\forall v \alpha}{\operatorname{SUBST}(\{v / g\}, \alpha)}. 

For every variable  and ground term . For example, the substitutions

  get the three phrases shown above.

Prepositional Inference in Artificial Intelligence

Let’s start with quantifiers that are universal. Assume we have in our knowledge base the conventional folklore axiom that All Greedy Kings Are Bad:

Then it appears that inferring any of the following sentences is perfectly acceptable:

Similar Reads

Universal Instantiation

The Universal Instantiation (UI) rule states that by replacing a ground word (a term without variables) for the variable, we can infer any sentence. We employ the notion of replacements to formalize the inference rule. Let  denote the result of putting the substitution  to work on the sentence . The rule is then expressed as \frac{\forall v \alpha}{\operatorname{SUBST}(\{v / g\}, \alpha)}....

Existential Instantiation

The variable is substituted by a single new constant symbol in the Existential Instantiation rule. In the knowledge base , for any sentence, variable v, and constant symbol k that does not appear elsewhere...

Contact Us