Formalizing typicality of objects and context-sensitivity in ontologies

In multiagent systems ontologies are essential because they facilitate tasks like communications and reasoning. In this paper, inspired by studies in cognitive psychology, we present a theoretical framework of ontologies that model concepts and properties in a way that typicality of objects can be reflected, and in which context plays a major role in determining the interpretation of the concepts. Typicality is a very common phenomenon observed in different cognitive tasks, while context has been proved to have significant influences on reasoning and categorization. This framework brings together these issues and gives a formal representation of context-sensitive ontologies. Categories and Subject Descriptors I.2.4 [Artificial Intelligence]: Knowledge Representation Formalisms and Methods--semantic networks General Terms Human Factors, Theory Keywords Semantic Web, Ontologies, Agent Communications, Context

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: ATAL
• Authors: Ching-man Au Yeung, Ho-fung Leung
• Keywords: ATAL 2006, Context-sensitive Ontologies, Intelligent Agents, Knowledge Representation Formalisms, Multiagent Systems Ontologies