Update of nonclassical theories

and its relation with the

Semantic Web
Ivan José Varzinczak
LILaC team, IRIT - Toulouse
 LILaC @ IRIT

• Logic
• Interaction
• Language
• Computation
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 LILaC @ IRIT

• Logic Modal, Paraconsistent, ...

• Interaction MAS, BDI, ...
• Language Speech acts, ...
• Computation Theorem provers,
security, ...

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 ivanzinho @ LILaC

• Modal Logics
• Reasoning About Actions
• Description Logics and Ontologies
• Theory Change
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 A Tale

• If I have a coffee, I have a hot beverage

• If I have a token, I can buy coffee

• After buying, I have a coffee

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 A Tale

Someday, the agent discovers that:

• She has a coffee, but it is cold

• With no power, impossible to buy

• Without heat, after buying no hot beverage

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 A Tale

Hence, her beliefs about:

• the relation between coffee and hot beverage

• the executability of buying
• the effects of buying
have to be changed
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 Outline

• Preliminaries
• Intuition of Change
• Minimal Change
• Relation to Ontologies in SW
• Future Perspectives
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 Dynamic Logic
• Syntax variant of ALC (see further)
• Well defined semantics
• Possible worlds models
• Expressive
• Programs, actions, state constraints
• Decidable
• EXPTIME or PSPACE-complete, though
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 Dynamic Logic
Possible world semantics: Transition Systems

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 Dynamic Logic

• Static Laws

• Executability Laws

• Effect laws
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 Dynamic Logic
Formulas that hold in

✔
✔
✔
✗
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 Dynamic Logic
In our example

• Static Law

• Executability Law

• Effect Law
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 Dynamic Logic
In our example

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 Intuition of Change
• Removing

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 Intuition of Change
• Removing

✗ ✗
✗

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 Intuition of Change
• Removing

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Principles of Theory Change
(Dalal, 1988)

• Irrelevance of Syntax
• Maintenance of Consistency
• Primacy of New Information
• Persistence of Prior Knowledge
• Fairness
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Principles of Theory Change
(Dalal, 1988)

• Irrelevance of Syntax ☹
• Maintenance of Consistency ☺
• Primacy of New Information ☺
• Persistence of Prior Knowledge ☺
• Fairness ☺
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 Choosing Models
• Preference Order between models
• Prefer models that are closest to the original one

• Order dependent on the type of law retracted

• Static law: look at the worlds’ contents
• Effect law: look at target world
• Exec. law: number of removed arrows
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Choosing Models

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 Choosing Models
• Removing

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 Choosing Models
• Removing

Incomparable
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Choosing Models

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 Choosing Models
• Removing

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 Choosing Models
• Removing

Incomparable
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Choosing Models

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 Choosing Models
• Removing

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 Choosing Models
• Removing

Incomparable
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 Contributions
• Better semantics for action theory change
• Distance between models
• Minimal change

• Syntactic operators
• Sound and complete
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 Ongoing Research
• Erase a general formula
• not only

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 Ongoing Research
• Erase a general formula
• not only
• AGM/KM postulates

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 Ongoing Research
• Erase a general formula
• not only
• AGM/KM postulates
• Action theory revision
• Making formulas true in a model
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 Another Tale
• Suppose an airport ontology
• A passenger has a passport
• EU citizens have EU passports
• A foreigner has a non-EU passport
• A double citizen is a foreigner and a EU citizen
• All passengers must pass X-ray scan
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 Another Tale
• In Description Logic ALC:

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 Another Tale
• From this we get

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 Another Tale
• From this we get

• and because

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 Another Tale
• From this we get

• and because

• we get

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 Another Tale
• Now, if we have

This guy will not be controlled!!!

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 Another Tale
• Now, if we have

This guy will not be controlled!!!

• Need for ontology revision/update/debugging

• First: detect the problem
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 Ontology Change
• Partial solution:
• Modular ontologies (JELIA’06,AIJ’07)
• Restricted normal form
• only

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 Ontology Change
• Partial solution:
• Modular ontologies (JELIA’06,AIJ’07)
• Restricted normal form
• only
• Similar to action theory change

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 Ontology Change
• Partial solution:
• Modular ontologies (JELIA’06,AIJ’07)
• Restricted normal form
• only
• Similar to action theory change
• Good solution: will depend on more results for DL
(prime implicants)

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 Current Work

• Contraction/erasure of a general axiom

• Good properties of an ontology

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 Future Perspectives

• Real applications (e.g. Semantic Web)

• Knowledge Engineer’s intuition
• Logic may not be enough
• Ontology revision ≠ Belief revision
• Paraconsistency, approximate reasoning?
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