Designing visual languages for description logics

Journal of Logic, Language and Information 18 (2):217-250 (2009)
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Abstract

Semantic networks were developed in cognitive science and artificial intelligence studies as graphical knowledge representation and inference tools emulating human thought processes. Formal analysis of the representation and inference capabilities of the networks modeled them as subsets of standard first-order logic (FOL), restricted in the operations allowed in order to ensure the tractability that seemed to characterize human reasoning capabilities. The graphical network representations were modeled as providing a visual language for the logic. Sub-sets of FOL targeted on knowledge representation came to be called description logics, and research on these logics has focused on issues of tractability of subsets with differing representation capabilities, and on the implementation of practical inference systems achieving the best possible performance. Semantic network research has kept pace with these developments, providing visual languages for knowledge entry, editing, and presenting the results of inference, that translate unambiguously to the underlying description logics. This paper discusses the design issues for such semantic network formalisms, and illustrates them through detailed examples of significant generic knowledge structures analyzed in the literature, including determinables, contrast sets, genus/differentiae, taxonomies, faceted taxonomies, cluster concepts, family resemblances, graded concepts, frames, definitions, rules, rules with exceptions, essence and state assertions, opposites and contraries, relevance, and so on. Such examples provide important test material for any visual language formalism for logic.

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Citations of this work

An Essay on Knowledge and Belief.John Corcoran - 2006 - International Journal of Decision Ethics (2):125-144.
Human Rationality Challenges Universal Logic.Brian R. Gaines - 2010 - Logica Universalis 4 (2):163-205.

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References found in this work

Logical foundations of probability.Rudolf Carnap - 1950 - Chicago]: Chicago University of Chicago Press.
A Natural History of Negation.Laurence R. Horn - 1989 - University of Chicago Press.
Dispositions.Stephen Mumford - 1998 - Oxford, GB: Clarendon Press.

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