Belief Change, Ontology Repair and Evolution

KR2022 Tutorial

Renata Wassermann

Belief Revision deals with accommodating new information in a knowledge base, where potential inconsistencies may arise. Several solutions have been proposed, turning it into an active field of research from the ’80s. Theoretical results were established in classical propositional logic and became the standard in the area, with rationality postulates, mathematical constructions and representation theorems. More recently, results have been adapted to different knowledge representation formalisms such as Horn Logic and Description Logics.

In this tutorial, I will introduce Belief Revision, starting from the seminal AGM paradigm and giving an overview of the area in the last 35 years. In the second part, I will focus on applying Belief Revision to Description Logics in general and the relation between Revision and Ontology Repair.


The tutorial will benefit both researchers willing to learn about belief revision as those already active in the field and who wish to understand the challenges of applying belief change to description logics and what has been done to address them.