Measuring inconsistency in knowledgebases

It is well-known that knowledgebases may contain inconsistencies. We provide a measure to quantify the inconsistency of a knowledgebase, thereby allowing for the comparison of the inconsistency of various knowledgebases, represented as first-order logic formulas.. We use quasi-classical (QC) logic for this purpose. QC logic is a formalism for reasoning and analysing inconsistent information. It has been used as the basis of a framework for measuring inconsistency in propositional theories. Here we extend this framework, by using a first-order logic version of QC logic for measuring inconsistency in first-order theories. We motivate the QC logic approach by considering some formulae as database or knowledgebase integrity constraints. We then define a measure of extrinsic inconsistency that can be used to compare the inconsistency of different knowledgebases. This measure takes into account both the language used and the underlying domain. We show why this definition also captures the i...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: JIIS
• Authors: John Grant, Anthony Hunter
• Keywords: Inconsistency, JIIS 2006, Logic, QC Logic