Foundations of MT-PDCL: Measure-Theoretic Probabilistic Definite Clause Logic

arXiv:2608.13018v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Standard probabilistic logic programming frameworks typically rely on grounding logic programs into discrete propositional representations. This operational requirement restricts exact inference to finite domains and discrete probability distributions. In this paper, we introduce Measure-Theoretic Probabilistic Definite Clause Logic (MT-PDCL), a generalized foundational framework that eliminates this finite-domain restriction. By explicitly defining stochastic variables over bounded index domains and equipping the interpretation space with standard Borel sigma-algebras, MT-PDCL allows logical variables to operate natively over continuous measurable spaces. Building on Continuous Distribution Semantics, MT-PDCL models probabilistic rules as mutually independent causal events. However, rather than aggregating these derivations via finite boolean circuits, declarative entailment is formally defined through exact Lebesgue integration over the continuous measure space. We introduce a continuous immediate consequence operator that unifies the integration of continuous prior distributions with the evaluation of exact continuous observations. We demonstrate that this approach replaces the combinatorial bottleneck of discrete grounding with exact, algebraic, and structurally differentiable inference. While this transition trades discrete combinatorics for the geometric curse of dimensionality, it achieves the expressive power of continuous probabilistic models while preserving the pure declarative syntax of definite clause logic.

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Source: arXiv cs.AI | 2026-08-14