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LPS as Step towards a Unifying Framework for Computing

As a scientific discipline, the field of Computing lacks a unifying framework. It consists, instead, of diverse languages and techniques in the mostly disjoint areas of programming, databases, and artificial intelligence. LPS (logic-based production system) is an attempt to implement a unifying framework that is lacking in Computing today.

LPS includes both logic programs and reactive rules of the form if antecedent then consequent, which are a logical reconstruction and generalisation of production system rules. Logic programs in LPS represent the beliefs of an intelligent agent, and reactive rules represent the agent’s goals. Computation in LPS consists in destructively performing state-transforming actions to make consequents true whenever antecedents become true. Arguably, this combination of logic and change of state makes LPS not only a programming, database, and AI knowledge representation and problem-solving language, but also a scaled-down model of human thinking.

In my talk, I will demonstrate an open-source, web-based prototype of LPS implemented in SWISH. The prototype is being developed with Fariba Sadri and Miguel Calejo, to support the teaching of computing and logic in schools.