THE LANDSCAPE OF INCONSISTENCY: A PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The focus of this introduction to this special issue is to draw a picture as comprehensive as possible about various dimensions of inconsistency. In particular, we consider: (1) levels of knowledge at which inconsistency occurs; (2) categories and morphologies of inconsistency; (3) causes of inconsistency; (4) circumstances of inconsistency; (5) persistency of inconsistency; (6) consequences of inconsistency; (7) metrics for inconsistency; (8) theories for handling inconsistency; (9) dependencies among occurrences of inconsistency; and (10) problem domains where inconsistency has been studied. The take-home message is that inconsistency is ubiquitous and handling inconsistency is consequential in our endeavors. How to manage and reason in the presence of inconsistency presents a very important issue in semantic computing, cloud computing, social computing, and many other data-rich or knowledge-rich computing systems.