The limits of decidability in fuzzy description logics with general concept inclusions

Abstract

Fuzzy description logics (DLs) can be used to represent and reason with vague knowledge. This family of logical formalisms is very diverse, each member being characterized by a specific choice of constructors, axioms, and triangular norms, which are used to specify the semantics. Unfortunately, it has recently been shown that the consistency problem in many fuzzy DLs with general concept inclusion axioms is undecidable. In this paper, we present a proof framework that allows us to extend these results to cover large classes of fuzzy DLs. On the other hand, we also provide matching decidability results for most of the remaining logics. As a result, we obtain a near-universal classification of fuzzy DLs according to the decidability of their consistency problem.