The Logical Level

Epistemological primitives can be given formal meaning via logical formalisms, which provide the foundation for machine understandability. In this chapter, we introduce different logical formalisms starting with propositional and first-order logic. Then, we introduce different modifications to first-order logic such as Herbrand models and description logic, which have more desirable computational properties. These two variations on first-order logic are the logical foundations of F-logic and OWL, respectively. Finally, we cover the formal semantics for RDF(S) and SPARQL, which deviate from the logical formalisms introduced before.