Inconsistencies, exceptions and frame systems [knowledge representation]

Although there is no unified approach to the representation of knowledge, various schemes for the representation and storage of knowledge have been proposed. This work concentrates on the Frames approach. Frames are a scheme for the representation of knowledge which allows the description of complex objects. However there is a gap between the knowledge represented by Frame Systems and the knowledge in the real world. Some Frame Systems have been designed in order to reduce this gap. Nevertheless, they do not deal with tasks such as exceptions and the inconsistency phenomenon adequately. A drawback which has been found in those systems is the lack of a formal semantic which deals with exceptions and inconsistency. In this work an inheritance reasoner has been implemented. It represents knowledge through paraconsistent frames and performs inferences over the tangled hierarchies based upon the degree of inconsistency/under-determinedness. Moreover its main characteristic is that it does not eliminate, ab initio, contradictions. The inheritance reasoner has provided a more adequate treatment to exceptions and inconsistent information of Frame Systems with multiple inheritance.