Default negation as explicit negation plus update

Abstract

We argue that under the stable model semantics default negation can be read as explicit negation with update. We show that dynamic logic programming which is based on default negation, even in the heads, can be interpreted in a variant of updates with explicit negation only. As corollaries, we get an easy description of default negation in generalized and normal logic programming where initially negated literals are updated. These results are discussed with respect to the understanding of negation in logic programming.