The concept of a stable model, or answer set, is used to define a declarative semantics for logic programs with negation as failure. This is one of several standard approaches to the meaning of negation in logic programming, along with program completion and the well-founded semantics. The stable model semantics is the basis of
answer set programming.
Research on the declarative semantics of negation in logic programming was motivated by the fact that the behavior of SLDNF resolution — the gener...