Deontic Equilibrium Logic with eXplicit Negation

Abstract

Equilibrium logic is a logical characterization of Answer Set Programming (ASP). We introduce Deontic Equilibrium Logic with eXplicit negation (DELX), its extension for normative reasoning. In contrast to modal approaches, DELX utilizes a normal form that restricts deontic operators solely to atoms. We establish that any theories in DELX can be reduced to ASP, and demonstrate the efficacy of this minimalist approach in addressing key challenges from the defeasible deontic logic literature.