The Ontology Revision

Abstract

An ontology consists of a set of concepts, a set of constraints imposing on instances of concepts, and the subsumption relation. It is assumed that an ontology is a tree under the subsumption relation between concepts. To preserve structural properties of ontologies, the ontology revision is not only contracting ontologies by discarding statements inconsistent with a revising statement, but also extracting statements consistent with the revising statement and adding some other statements. In the ontology revision, the consistency of a revising statement with the theory of the logical closure of the ontology under the closed world assumption is discussed. The basic postulates of the ontology revision are proposed and a concrete ontology revision is given based on the consistence or inconsistence of an ontology and a revising statement.