Classical Description Logics Research Articles

Reasoning within Fuzzy OWL 2 EL revisited

Description Logics (DLs) are logics with interesting representational and computational features and are at the core of the Web Ontology Language OWL 2 and its profiles among which there is OWL 2 EL. The main feature of OWL 2 EL is that instance/subsumption checking can be decided in polynomial time. On the other hand, fuzzy DLs have been proposed as an extension to classical DLs with the aim of dealing with fuzzy concepts and we focus here on Fuzzy OWL 2 EL under standard and Gödel semantics. We provide some reasoning algorithms showing that instance/subsumption checking decision problems remain polynomial time for Fuzzy OWL 2 EL. We also identify some issues in previous related work (essentially incompleteness problems).

The complexity of fuzzy [formula omitted] under the Łukasiewicz T-norm

Fuzzy Description Logics (DLs) are a family of knowledge representation formalisms designed to represent and reason about vague and imprecise knowledge that is inherent to many application domains. Previous work has shown that the complexity of reasoning in a fuzzy DL using finitely many truth degrees is usually not higher than that of the underlying classical DL. We show that this does not hold for fuzzy extensions of the light-weight DL EL, which is used in many biomedical ontologies, under the finitely valued Łukasiewicz semantics. More precisely, the complexity of reasoning increases from P to ExpTime, even if only one additional truth value is introduced. When adding complex role inclusions and inverse roles, the logic even becomes undecidable. Even more surprisingly, when considering the infinitely valued Łukasiewicz semantics, reasoning in fuzzy EL is undecidable.

Minimally inconsistent reasoning in Semantic Web.

Reasoning with inconsistencies is an important issue for Semantic Web as imperfect information is unavoidable in real applications. For this, different paraconsistent approaches, due to their capacity to draw as nontrivial conclusions by tolerating inconsistencies, have been proposed to reason with inconsistent description logic knowledge bases. However, existing paraconsistent approaches are often criticized for being too skeptical. To this end, this paper presents a non-monotonic paraconsistent version of description logic reasoning, called minimally inconsistent reasoning, where inconsistencies tolerated in the reasoning are minimized so that more reasonable conclusions can be inferred. Some desirable properties are studied, which shows that the new semantics inherits advantages of both non-monotonic reasoning and paraconsistent reasoning. A complete and sound tableau-based algorithm, called multi-valued tableaux, is developed to capture the minimally inconsistent reasoning. In fact, the tableaux algorithm is designed, as a framework for multi-valued DL, to allow for different underlying paraconsistent semantics, with the mere difference in the clash conditions. Finally, the complexity of minimally inconsistent description logic reasoning is shown on the same level as the (classical) description logic reasoning.

Ontology Materialization by Abstraction Refinement in Horn SHOIF

Abstraction refinement is a recently introduced technique using which reasoning over large ABoxes is reduced to reasoning over small abstract ABoxes. Although the approach is sound for any classical Description Logic such as SROIQ, it is complete only for Horn ALCHOI. In this paper, we propose an extension of this method that is now complete for Horn SHOIF and also handles role- and equality-materialization. To show completeness, we use a tailored set of materialization rules that loosely decouple the ABox from the TBox. An empirical evaluation demonstrates that, despite the new features, the abstractions are still significantly smaller than the original ontologies and the materialization can be computed efficiently.

Quantitative Methods for Similarity in Description Logics

Description logics (DLs) are a family of logic-based knowledge representation languages used to describe the knowledge of an application domain and reason about it in a formally well-defined way. However, all classical DLs have in common that they can only express exact knowledge, and correspondingly only allow exact inferences. In practice though, knowledge is rarely exact. Many definitions have exceptions or are vaguely formulated in the first place, and people might not only be interested in exact answers, but also in alternatives that are “close enough”. We are interested in tackling how to express that something is “close enough”, and how to integrate this notion into the formalism of DLs. To this end we employ the notion of similarity and dissimilarity measures, we will look at how useful measures can be defined in the context of DLs and two particular applications: Relaxed instance queries will use a similarity measure in order to not just give the exact answer to some query, but all answers that are reasonably similar. Prototypical definitions on the other hand use a measure of dissimilarity or distance between concepts in order to allow the definitions of and reasoning with concepts that capture not just those individuals that satisfy exactly the stated properties, but also those that are “close enough”.

Decidability and Complexity of Fuzzy Description Logics

Fuzzy description logics (FDLs) have been introduced to represent concepts for which membership cannot be determined in a precise way, i.e., where instead of providing a strict border between being a member and not being a member, it is more appropriate to model a gradual change from membership to non-membership. First approaches for reasoning in FDLs where based either on a reduction to reasoning in classical description logics (DLs) or on adaptations of reasoning approaches for DLs to the fuzzy case. However, it turned out that these approaches in general do not work if expressive terminological axioms, called general concept inclusions (GCIs), are available in the FDL. The goal of this project was a comprehensive study of the border between decidability and undecidability for FDLs with GCIs, as well as determining the exact complexity of the decidable logics. As a result, we have provided an almost complete classification of the decidability and complexity of FDLs with GCIs.

Answering Fuzzy Conjunctive Queries Over Finitely Valued Fuzzy Ontologies

Fuzzy Description Logics (DLs) provide a means for representing vague knowledge about an application domain. In this paper, we study fuzzy extensions of conjunctive queries (CQs) over the DL $${\mathcal {SROIQ}}$$ based on finite chains of degrees of truth. To answer such queries, we extend a well-known technique that reduces the fuzzy ontology to a classical one, and use classical DL reasoners as a black box. We improve the complexity of previous reduction techniques for finitely valued fuzzy DLs, which allows us to prove tight complexity results for answering certain kinds of fuzzy CQs. We conclude with an experimental evaluation of a prototype implementation, showing the feasibility of our approach.

DL-Lite Ontology Revision Based on An Alternative Semantic Characterization

Ontology engineering and maintenance require (semi-)automated ontology change operations. Intensive research has been conducted on TBox and ABox changes in description logics (DLs), and various change operators have been proposed in the literature. Existing operators largely fall into two categories: syntax-based and model-based. While each approach has its advantages and disadvantages, an important topic that has rarely been explored is how to achieve a balance between syntax-based and model-based approaches. Also, most existing operators are specially designed for either TBox change or ABox change, and cannot handle the general ontology revision task—given a DL knowledge base (KB, a pair consisting of a TBox and an ABox), how to revise it by a set of TBox and ABox axioms ( i.e. , a new DL KB). In this article, we introduce an alternative structure for DL-Lite, called a featured interpretation, and show that featured models provide a finite and tight characterization to the classical semantics of DL-Lite. A key issue for defining a change operator is the so-called expressibility, that is, whether a set of models (or featured models here) is axiomatizable in DLs. It is indeed much easier to obtain expressibility results for featured models than for classical DL models. As a result, the new semantics determined by featured models provides a method for defining and studying various changes of DL-Lite KBs that involve both TBoxes and ABoxes. To demonstrate the usefulness of the new semantic characterization in ontology change, we define two revision operators for DL-Lite KBs using featured models and study their properties. In particular, we show that our two operators both satisfy AGM postulates. We show that the complexity of our revisions is Π P 2 -complete, that is, on the same level as major revision operators in propositional logic, which further justifies the feasibility of our revision approach for DL-Lite. Also, we develop algorithms for these DL-Lite revisions.

Optimising fuzzy description logic reasoners with general concept inclusion absorption

General Concept Inclusion (GCI) absorption algorithms have shown to play an important role in classical Description Logic (DL) reasoners. They allow to transform GCIs into simpler forms to which we may apply specialised inference rules, returning important performance gains. In this work, we develop the first absorption algorithm for fuzzy DLs, implement it in the fuzzyDL reasoner and evaluate it extensively over both classical and fuzzy ontologies. The results show that our algorithm improves the performance of the reasoner significantly.

Generalized fuzzy rough description logics

Description logics (DLs) are a family of logics for representing structured knowledge which have proved to be very useful as ontology languages. Classical DLs are not suitable to represent vague pieces of information. The attempts to achieve a solution have led to the birth of fuzzy DLs and rough DLs. In this work, we provide a simple solution to join these two formalisms and define a fuzzy rough DL. This logic is more general than other related approaches, including tight and loose fuzzy rough approximations and being independent of the fuzzy logic operators considered. We show the usefulness of our approach by presenting some uses case, and we also describe how to extend two reasoning algorithms for fuzzy DLs, which are implemented in the fuzzy DL reasoners fuzzyDL and D eL orean.

Type-2 fuzzy description logic

Description logics (DLs) are widely employed in recent semantic web application systems. However, classical description logics are limited when dealing with imprecise concepts and roles, thus providing the motivation for this work. In this paper, we present a type-2 fuzzy attributive concept language with complements (ALC) and provide its knowledge representation and reasoning algorithms. We also propose type-2 fuzzy web ontology language (OWL) to build a fuzzy ontology based on type-2 fuzzy ALC and analyze the soundness, completeness, and complexity of the reasoning algorithms. Compared to type-1 fuzzy ALC, type-2 fuzzy ALC can describe imprecise knowledge more meticulously by using the membership degree interval. We implement a semantic search engine based on type-2 fuzzy ALC and carry out experiments on real data to test its performance. The results show that the type-2 fuzzy ALC can improve the precision and increase the number of relevant hits for imprecise information searches.

Fuzzy Description Logics and t-norm based fuzzy logics

Description Logics (DLs) are knowledge representation languages built on the basis of classical logic. DLs allow the creation of knowledge bases and provide ways to reason on the contents of these bases. Fuzzy Description Logics (FDLs) are natural extensions of DLs for dealing with vague concepts, commonly present in real applications. Hájek proposed to deal with FDLs taking as basis t-norm based fuzzy logics with the aim of enriching the expressive possibilities in FDLs and to capitalize on recent developments in the field of Mathematical Fuzzy Logic. From this perspective we define a family of description languages, denoted by ALC ∗ ( S ) , which includes truth constants for representing truth degrees. Having truth constants in the language allows us to define the axioms of the knowledge bases as sentences of a predicate language in much the same way as in classical DLs. On the other hand, taking advantage of the expressive power provided by these truth constants, we define a graded notion of satisfiability, validity and subsumption of DL concepts as the satisfiability, validity and subsumption of evaluated formulas. In the last section we summarize some results concerning fuzzy logics associated with these new description languages, we analyze aspects relative to general and canonical semantics, and we prove some results relative to canonical standard completeness for some FDLs considered in the paper.

Expressive fuzzy description logics over lattices

It is generally accepted that the management of imprecision and vagueness will yield more intelligent and realistic knowledge-based applications. In this paper we present a fuzzy description logics framework based on certainty lattices. Our main feature is that an assertion is not just true or false like in classical description logics, but certain to some degree, where the certainty value is taken from a certainty lattice. We extend the well known fuzzy description logic based on fuzzy set theory f - SHIN to the fuzzy description logic based on certainty lattices theory L - SHIN . The syntax, semantics and logical properties of the L - SHIN are given, and a sound, complete and terminating tableaux algorithm for deciding fuzzy ABox consistency w.r.t. RBox for the L - SHIN is presented. In this paper various extensions of fuzzy description logics over lattices are also discussed.

A NEUTROSOPHIC DESCRIPTION LOGIC

Description Logics (DLs) are appropriate, widely used, logics for managing structured knowledge. They allow reasoning about individuals and concepts, i.e. set of individuals with common properties. Typically, DLs are limited to dealing with crisp, well defined concepts. That is, concepts for which the problem whether an individual is an instance of it is a yes/no question. More often than not, the concepts encountered in the real world do not have a precisely defined criteria of membership: we may say that an individual is an instance of a concept only to a certain degree, depending on the individual's properties. The DLs that deal with such fuzzy concepts are called fuzzy DLs. In order to deal with fuzzy, incomplete, indeterminate and inconsistent concepts, we need to extend the capabilities of fuzzy DLs further. In this paper, we will present an extension of fuzzy [Formula: see text], combining Smarandache's neutrosophic logic with a classical DL. In particular, concepts become neutrosophic (here neutrosophic means fuzzy, incomplete, indeterminate and inconsistent), thus, reasoning about such neutrosophic concepts is supported. We will define its syntax, its semantics, describe its properties and present a constraint propagation calculus for reasoning.

Expressive probabilistic description logics

The work in this paper is directed towards sophisticated formalisms for reasoning under probabilistic uncertainty in ontologies in the Semantic Web. Ontologies play a central role in the development of the Semantic Web, since they provide a precise definition of shared terms in web resources. They are expressed in the standardized web ontology language OWL, which consists of the three increasingly expressive sublanguages OWL Lite, OWL DL, and OWL Full. The sublanguages OWL Lite and OWL DL have a formal semantics and a reasoning support through a mapping to the expressive description logics SHIF ( D ) and SHOIN ( D ) , respectively. In this paper, we present the expressive probabilistic description logics P- SHIF ( D ) and P- SHOIN ( D ) , which are probabilistic extensions of these description logics. They allow for expressing rich terminological probabilistic knowledge about concepts and roles as well as assertional probabilistic knowledge about instances of concepts and roles. They are semantically based on the notion of probabilistic lexicographic entailment from probabilistic default reasoning, which naturally interprets this terminological and assertional probabilistic knowledge as knowledge about random and concrete instances, respectively. As an important additional feature, they also allow for expressing terminological default knowledge, which is semantically interpreted as in Lehmann's lexicographic entailment in default reasoning from conditional knowledge bases. Another important feature of this extension of SHIF ( D ) and SHOIN ( D ) by probabilistic uncertainty is that it can be applied to other classical description logics as well. We then present sound and complete algorithms for the main reasoning problems in the new probabilistic description logics, which are based on reductions to reasoning in their classical counterparts, and to solving linear optimization problems. In particular, this shows the important result that reasoning in the new probabilistic description logics is decidable/computable. Furthermore, we also analyze the computational complexity of the main reasoning problems in the new probabilistic description logics in the general as well as restricted cases.

Combining interval-based temporal reasoning with general TBoxes

While classical Description Logics (DLs) concentrate on the representation of static conceptual knowledge, recently there is a growing interest in DLs that, additionally, allow to capture the temporal aspects of conceptual knowledge. Such temporal DLs are based either on time points or on time intervals as the temporal primitive. Whereas point-based temporal DLs are well-investigated, this is not the case for interval-based temporal DLs: all known logics either suffer from rather limited expressive power or have undecidable reasoning problems. In particular, there exists no decidable interval-based temporal DL that provides for general TBoxes—one of the most important expressive means in modern description logics. In this paper, for the first time we define an interval-temporal DL that is equipped with general TBoxes and for which reasoning is decidable (and, more precisely, ExpTime-complete).

Reasoning within Fuzzy Description Logics

Description Logics (DLs) are suitable, well-known, logics for managing structured knowledge. They allow reasoning about individuals and well defined concepts, i.e., set of individuals with common properties. The experience in using DLs in applications has shown that in many cases we would like to extend their capabilities. In particular, their use in the context of Multimedia Information Retrieval (MIR) leads to the convincement that such DLs should allow the treatment of the inherent imprecision in multimedia object content representation and retrieval. In this paper we will present a fuzzy extension of ALC, combining Zadeh's fuzzy logic with a classical DL. In particular, concepts becomes fuzzy and, thus, reasoning about imprecise concepts is supported. We will define its syntax, its semantics, describe its properties and present a constraint propagation calculus for reasoning in it.

A Semantics and Complete Algorithm for Subsumption in the CLASSIC Description Logic

This paper analyzes the correctness of the subsumption algorithm used in CLASSIC, a description logic-based knowledge representation system that is being used in practical applications. In order to deal efficiently with individuals in CLASSIC descriptions, the developers have had to use an algorithm that is incomplete with respect to the standard, model-theoretic semantics for description logics. We provide a variant semantics for descriptions with respect to which the current implementation is complete, and which can be independently motivated. The soundness and completeness of the polynomial-time subsumption algorithm is established using description graphs, which are an abstracted version of the implementation structures used in CLASSIC, and are of independent interest.