Investigations into a theory of knowledge base revision: preliminary report

TLDR

A fundamental problem in knowledge representation is how to revise knowledge when new, contradictory information is obtained. The paper formulates desirable principles of knowledge revision and investigates a new theory that realizes them. The theory is explained at the knowledge level with a purely model‑theoretic formulation, a syntactic characterization is provided, and its application is illustrated with examples and compared to other approaches. Its application is illustrated with examples and compared to several other approaches.

Abstract

A fundamental problem in knowledge representation is how to revise knowledge when new, contradictory information is obtained. This paper formulates some desirable principles of knowledge revision, and investigates a new theory of knowledge revision that realizes these principles. This theory of revision can be explained at the knowledge level, in purely model-theoretic terms. A syntactic characterization of the proposed approach is also presented. We illustrate its application through examples and compare it with several other approaches.