Elaboration Tolerance of Logical Theories

Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 16

Volume

Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 16

1999 SIGART/AAAI Doctoral Consortium

We consider the development and modification of logical theories (e.g., commonsense theories). During development of such knowledge bases (KBs) a knowledge engineer makes some design and modeling choices. These decisions may later force the KB to undergo some redesign and rewriting when new knowledge needs to be integrated. We then say that the KB lacks Elaboration Tolerance. McCarthy illustrated this problem using example elaborations for the toy problem of the Missionaries and Cannibals.