Inferring with inconsistent OWL DL ontology: A multi-valued logic approach

Abstract

Web ontology language OWL DL has two-valued model theory semantics so that ontologies expressed by it become trivial when contradictions occur. Based on classical description logic SHOIN(D), we propose the four-valued description logic SHOIN(D)4 which has the ability to reason with inconsistencies. By transformation technic, we convert the reasoning problems of SHOIN(D)4 to the counterparts of SHOIN(D). So SHOIN(D)4 provides us with an approach to deal with contradictions by classical reasoning mechanism. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2006.