Improving Inconsistency Resolution by Considering Global Conflicts

Abstract

Over the years, inconsistency management has caught the attention of researchers of different areas. Inconsistency is a problem that arises in many different scenarios, for instance, ontology development or knowledge integration. In such settings, it is important to have adequate automatic tools for handling potential conflicts. Here we propose a novel approach to belief base consolidation based on a refinement of kernel contraction that accounts for the relation among kernels using clusters. We define cluster contraction based consolidation operators as the contraction by falsum on a belief base using cluster incision functions, a refinement of (smooth) kernel incision functions. A cluster contraction-based approach to belief bases consolidation can successfully obtain a belief base satisfying the expected consistency requirement. Also, we show that the application of cluster contraction-based consolidation operators satisfy minimality regarding loss of information and are equivalent to operators based on maxichoice contraction.