Semantic preferential subsumption

TLDR

The paper introduces a general preferential semantic framework for plausible subsumption in description logics, defining ordered interpretations and two dual non‑deductive subsumption relations analogous to KLM preferential semantics. The framework employs ordered interpretations to define the dual subsumption relations, whose properties enable inductive and abductive reasoning. The authors demonstrate that this preferential subsumption semantics reduces to standard description logic semantics, allowing existing DL algorithms to be extended for plausible subsumption.

Abstract

We present a general preferential semantic framework for plausible subsumption in description logics, analogous to the KLM preferential semantics for propositional entailment. We introduce the notion of ordered interpretations for description logics, and use it to define two mutually dual non-deductive subsumption relations ***⊑ and ***⊑*. We outline their properties and explain how they may be used for inductive and abductive reasoning respectively. We show that the preferential semantics for subsumption can be reduced to standard semantics of a sufficiently expressive description logic. This has the advantage that standard DL algorithms can be extended to reason about our notions of plausible subsumption.