Reasoning Systems for Categories
IT8601 Reasoning Systems for Categories S. Prabhavathi AP/IT 1
Reasoning Systems for Categories
• Categories are the primary building blocks of large-scale
knowledge representation schemes.
• This topic describes systems specially designed for
organizing and reasoning with categories.
• There are two types of reasoning systems:
1. Semantic networks
2. Description logics
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Reasoning systems
Semantic networks !
– Visualize knowledge-base in patterns of
interconnected nodes and arcs
– Efficient algorithms for inferring of object on the basis
of its category membership
Description logics
– Formal language for constructing and combining
category definitions
– Efficient algorithms to decide subset and superset
relationships between categories.
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Semantic Networks
• In 1909, Charles S. Peirce proposed a graphical notation
of nodes and edges called existential graphs
• A typical graphical notation displays object or category
names in ovals or boxes, and connects them with
labeled arcs/links
• For Example:
– MemberOf link between Mary and FemalePersons,
corresponding to the logical assertion Mary ∈
FemalePersons
– SisterOf link between Mary and John corresponds to the
assertion SisterOf (Mary, John )
– connect categories using SubsetOf links,
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Semantic Network Example
∀x x∈Persons ⇒
[∀y HasMother(x,y) ⇒ y∈FemalePersons]
A semantic network with four objects (John, Mary, 1, and 2) and
four categories. Relations are denoted by labeled links.
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Semantic Networks
• Allows for inheritance reasoning
– Female persons inherit all properties from person
– Mary inherits the property of having two legs
• The simplicity and efficiency of this inference
mechanism compared with logical theorem has been
one of the main attractions of semantic networks.
• Multiple Inheritance becomes complicated because two
or more conflicting values for answering the query
• For this reason, multiple inheritance is banned in some
object-oriented programming (OOP) languages, such
as Java
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Semantic Networks
• Another form of inference is the use of inverse links
• Example: HasSister is the inverse of SisterOf
• Drawback of semantic network is that the links between
bubbles represent only binary relations.
• For example, the sentence Fly(Shankar, NewYork,
NewDelhi, Yesterday) cannot be asserted directly in a
semantic network.
• But can obtain the effect of n-ary assertions by reifying
the proposition
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Semantic Networks
Semantic network showing representation of logical assertion fly()
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Semantic Networks
• Ability to override the default values
• Example:
– John has 1 leg despite the fact that all persons have 2
legs
– This would be contradiction in a strictly logical KB.
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Description logics
• They are logical notations that are designed to describe
definitions and properties about categories
• It is to formalize the semantic network
• Principal inference task is !
– Subsumption: checking if one category is the subset of
another by comparing their definitions
– Classification: checking whether an object belongs to a
category.
– Consistency: whether the category membership
criteria are logically satisfiable
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Description logics
• The CLASSIC language is a typical description logic
• Any CLASSIC can be written in FOL
• For example, to say that bachelors are unmarried adult
males we would write
• Bachelor = And (Unmarried , Adult , Male )
• The equivalent in first-order logic would be
• Bachelor(x) ⇔ Unmarried(x)∧Adult(x)∧Male(x)
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The syntax of descriptions in a subset
of the CLASSIC language.
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