Making murder sound respectable.

Making inconsistency respectable in software development

The development of software systems inevitably involves the detection and handling of inconsistencies. These inconsistencies can arise in system requirements, design specifications and, quite often, in the descriptions that form the final implemented software product. A large proportion of software engineering research has been devoted to consistency maintenance, or geared towards eradicating i...

Making inconsistency respectable: a logical framework for inconsistency in reasoning

We claim there is a fundamental diierence between the way humans handle inconsistency and the way it is currently handled in formal logical systems: To a human, resolving inconsistencies is not necessarily done by \restoring" consistency but by supplying rules telling one how to act when the inconsistency arises. For artiicial intelligence there is an urgent need to revise the view that inconsi...

Making Inconsistency Respectable: Part 2 - Meta-level handling of inconsistency

Inconsistency in a database, when viewed purely logically, seem undesirable. Indeed the traditional approach to dealing with inconsistency in data is to employ means to restore consistency immediately. However, it is important to study the larger environment containing such databases, and the circumstances surrounding the inconsistency. We argue that within the larger environment, an inconsiste...

Respectable hypnosis.

Making inconsistency respectable 1: A logical framework for inconsistency in reasoning

We claim there is a fundamental difference between the way humans handle inconsistency and the way it is currently handled in formal logical systems: To a human, resolving inconsistencies is not necessarily done by “restoring” consistency but by supplying rules telling one how to act when the inconsistency arises. For artificial intelligence there is an urgent need to revise the view that incon...