Abstract Concept Lattices

Concept Lattices Henry Soldano and Véronique Ventos 1 L.I.P.N, UMR-CNRS 7030, Université Paris-Nord, 93430 Villetaneuse, France 2 LRI, UMR-CNRS 8623, Université Paris-Sud, 91405 Orsay, France [email protected], [email protected] Abstract. We present a view of abstraction based on a structure preserving reduction of the Galois connection between a language L of terms and the powerset of a set of instances O. Such a relation is materialized as an extension-intension lattice, namely a concept lattice when L is the powerset of a set P of attributes. We define and characterize an abstraction A as some part of either the language or the powerset of O, defined in such a way that the extension-intension latticial structure is preserved. Such a structure is denoted for short as an abstract lattice. We discuss the extensional abstract lattices obtained by so reducing the powerset of O, together together with the corresponding abstract implications, and discuss alpha lattices as particular abstract lattices. Finally we give formal framework allowing to define a generalized abstract lattice whose language is made of terms mixing abstract and non abstract conjunctions of properties. We present a view of abstraction based on a structure preserving reduction of the Galois connection between a language L of terms and the powerset of a set of instances O. Such a relation is materialized as an extension-intension lattice, namely a concept lattice when L is the powerset of a set P of attributes. We define and characterize an abstraction A as some part of either the language or the powerset of O, defined in such a way that the extension-intension latticial structure is preserved. Such a structure is denoted for short as an abstract lattice. We discuss the extensional abstract lattices obtained by so reducing the powerset of O, together together with the corresponding abstract implications, and discuss alpha lattices as particular abstract lattices. Finally we give formal framework allowing to define a generalized abstract lattice whose language is made of terms mixing abstract and non abstract conjunctions of properties.