Iterated Ontology Revision by Reinterpretation
This work addresses ontology evolution for knowledge representation systems, but it is incremental as it builds on existing reinterpretation operators and classical postulates.
The paper tackles the problem of iterated ontology revision by applying reinterpretation operators to resolve conflicts through bridging axioms, focusing on adaptations of Darwiche and Pearl's iteration postulates. The main result shows that these operators fulfill the postulates for sequences with atomic triggers but not for complex triggers, with reasons provided for the latter case.
Iterated applications of belief change operators are essential for different scenarios such as that of ontology evolution where new information is not presented at once but only in piecemeal fashion within a sequence. I discuss iterated applications of so called reinterpretation operators that trace conflicts between ontologies back to the ambiguous of symbols and that provide conflict resolution strategies with bridging axioms. The discussion centers on adaptations of the classical iteration postulates according to Darwiche and Pearl. The main result of the paper is that reinterpretation operators fulfill the postulates for sequences containing only atomic triggers. For complex triggers, a fulfillment is not guaranteed and indeed there are different reasons for the different postulates why they should not be fulfilled in the particular scenario of ontology revision with well developed ontologies.