Local Closed-World Reasoning with Description Logics under the Well-Founded Semantics

An important question for the upcoming Semantic Web is how to best combine open world ontology languages, such as the OWL-based ones, with closed world rule-based languages. One of the most mature proposals for this combination is known as hybrid MKNF knowledge bases (Motik and Rosati, 2010 [52]), and it is based on an adaptation of the Stable Model Semantics to knowledge bases consisting of ontology axioms and rules. In this paper we propose a well-founded semantics for nondisjunctive hybrid MKNF knowledge bases that promises to provide better efficiency of reasoning, and that is compatible with both the OWL-based semantics and the traditional Well-Founded Semantics for logic programs. Moreover, our proposal allows for the detection of inconsistencies, possibly occurring in tightly integrated ontology axioms and rules, with only little additional effort. We also identify tractable fragments of the resulting language

AGM 25 years: twenty-five years of research in belief change

The 1985 paper by Carlos Alchourrón (1931–1996), Peter Gärdenfors, and David Makinson (AGM), “On the Logic of Theory Change: Partial Meet Contraction and Revision Functions” was the starting-point of a large and rapidly growing literature that employs formal models in the investigation of changes in belief states and databases. In this review, the first twenty five years of this development are summarized. The topics covered include equivalent characterizations of AGM operations, extended representations of the belief states, change operators not included in the original framework, iterated change, applications of the model, its connections with other formal frameworks, computatibility of AGM operations, and criticism of the model.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A semantics for open normal defaults via a modified preferential approach

We present a new approach for handling open normal defaults that makes it possible 1. to derive existentially quantified formulae from other existentially quantified formulae by default, 2. to derive universally quantified formulae by default, and 3. to treat cardinality formulae analogously to other formulae. This was not the case for previous approaches. Reiter uses Skolemization in his treatment of open defaults to achieve the first goal, but this has the unpleasant side-effect that logically equivalent facts may lead to different default consequences. In addition, Reiter\u27s approach does not comply with our second requirement. Lifschitz\u27s main motivation for his approach was to satisfy this second demand. However, to achieve this goal he has to violate the third requirement, and the first condition is also not observed. Differing from these two previous approaches, we will not view open defaults as schemata for certain instantiated defaults. Instead they will be used to define a preference relation on models. But unlike the usual approaches to preferential semantics we shall not always take the minimal models to construct our semantics. Due to this new treatment of preference relations the resulting nonmonotonic consequence operator has nice proof-theoretic properties such as cumulativity