Contextual reasoning distilled

In this paper we provide a foundation of a theory of contextual reasoning from the perspective of a theory of knowledge representation. Starting from the so-called metaphor of the box, we £rstly show that the mechanisms of contextual reasoning proposed in the literature can be classi£ed into three general forms (called localised reasoning, push and pop, and shifting). Secondly, we provide a justi£cation of this classi£cation, by showing that each mechanism corresponds to operating on a fundamental dimension along which context dependent representations may vary (namely, partiality, approximation, and perspective). From the previous analysis, we distill two general principles of a logic of contextual reasoning. Finally, we show that these two principles can be adequately formalised in the framework of MultiContext Systems. In the last part of the paper, we provide a practical illustration of the ideas discussed in the paper by formalising a simple scenario, called the Magic Box problem.