An Argumentation-Based Approach for Computing Inconsistency Degree in Possibilistic Lightweight Ontologies

Abstract

Abstract Reasoning with inconsistent ontologies plays an important role in Semantic Web applications. An important feature of argument theory is that it is able to naturally handle inconsistencies in ontologies and allows a user to represent information in the form of an argument. In argumentation, given an inconsistent knowledge base, arguments compete to decide which are the accepted consequences. In this paper, we are interested in using the argumentation for the inconsistency degree of uncertain knowledge bases expressed in possibilistic DL-Lite (the key notion in reasoning from a possibilistic DL-Lite knowledge base) without going through the negative closure. In the present work, the terminological base is assumed to be fully certain and the uncertainty is only considered on the assertion based. We proved that it is coherent and feasible to use Dung’s abstract argumentation theory to compute the inconsistency degree and how argumentation semantics relate to the state of the art of handling inconsistency.