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  <front>
    <journal-meta />
    <article-meta>
      <contrib-group>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Marco Schorlemmer</string-name>
          <email>marco@iiia.csic.es</email>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff0">0</xref>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Roberto Confalonieri</string-name>
          <email>confalonieri@iiia.csic.es</email>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff0">0</xref>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Enric Plaza</string-name>
          <email>enric@iiia.csic.es</email>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff0">0</xref>
        </contrib>
        <aff id="aff0">
          <label>0</label>
          <institution>Arti cial Intelligence Research Institute</institution>
          ,
          <addr-line>IIIA-CSIC Bellaterra (Barcelona), Catalonia</addr-line>
          ,
          <country country="ES">Spain</country>
        </aff>
      </contrib-group>
      <abstract>
        <p>We address the problem on how newly invented concepts are evaluated with respect to a background ontology of conceptual knowledge so as to decide which of them are to be accepted into a system of familiar concepts, and how this, in turn, may a ect the previously accepted conceptualisation. As technique to tackle this problem we explore the applicability of Paul Thagard's computational theory of coherence. In particular, we propose a formalisation of Thagard's notion of conceptual coherence for concepts represented in the AL description logic and explore by means of an illustrative example the role coherence may play in the process of conceptual blending.</p>
      </abstract>
      <kwd-group>
        <kwd>conceptual blending</kwd>
        <kwd>coherence</kwd>
        <kwd>description logics</kwd>
      </kwd-group>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
  <body>
    <sec id="sec-1">
      <title>Introduction</title>
      <p>
        Combinational creativity |when novel ideas (concepts, theories, solutions, works
of art) are produced through unfamiliar combinations of familiar ideas| is, of
the three forms of creativity put forward by Boden, the most di cult to
capture computationally [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref2">2</xref>
        ]. Putting concepts together to generate new concepts is,
in principle, not a di cult task; but doing this in a computationally tractable
way, and being able to recognise the value of newly invented concepts for better
understanding a certain domain, is not as straightforward.
      </p>
      <p>
        An important development that has signi cantly in uenced the current
understanding of the general cognitive principles operating during concept
invention is Fauconnier and Turner's theory of conceptual blending [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6 ref7">6, 7</xref>
        ]. Fauconnier
and Turner proposed conceptual blending as the fundamental cognitive
operation underlying much of everyday thought and language, and modelled it as a
process by which humans subconsciously combine particular elements and their
relations of originally separate conceptual spaces into a uni ed space, in which
new elements and relations emerge, and new inferences can be drawn.
      </p>
      <p>
        The theory has been primarily applied as an analytic tool for describing
already existing blends of ideas and concepts in a varied number of elds, such as
linguistics, music theory, poetics, mathematics, theory of art, political science,
discourse analysis, philosophy, anthropology, and the study of gesture and of
material culture [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref20">20</xref>
        ]. But it has been also widely recognised to be a theory that
can serve as a basis for computational models of creativity [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref10 ref15 ref21 ref5 ref9">5, 9, 10, 15, 21</xref>
        ].
      </p>
      <p>Copyright © 2016 for this paper by its authors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes.</p>
      <p>
        To guide the concept invention process, in addition to the blending
mechanism per se, at least two additional dimensions need to be considered, namely
the origin and destination of concept invention, i.e., from where (and how) input
concepts are selected and to whom the concept invention is headed. Confalonieri
et al. have proposed a process model for concept invention in which these
dimensions are taken into account [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3">3</xref>
        ]. Inputs are selected based on a similarity measure
that is computed relative to a Rich Background, and blends are evaluated
using an argumentation framework based on value preferences of the audience for
which concepts are invented.
      </p>
      <p>
        In this paper, we aim at showing how Thagard's computational theory of
coherence [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref19">19</xref>
        ] could also serve as an additional mechanism for triggering concept
invention and evaluating newly blended concepts. In [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref18">18</xref>
        ], Thagard suggested to
use coherence as a model for the closely related cognitive process of conceptual
combination, where the focus is primarily on language compositionality such
as noun-noun or adjective-noun combinations [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref17">17</xref>
        ]. Kunda and Thagard, for
instance, show how conceptual coherence can be used for describing how we reason
with social stereotypes [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref12">12</xref>
        ].
      </p>
      <p>Building upon Thagard's intuitions and principles for modelling coherence,
we propose a formalisation of Thagard's notion of conceptual coherence for
concepts represented in a description logic |we take the basic description logic AL
as a start| and further explore its applicability to conceptual blending. But
instead of interpreting coherence or incoherence based on statistical correlations or
causal relations (i.e., on frequencies of positive or negative association), we
determine coherence and incoherence as dependent on how concept descriptions are
stated. Failure to nd conceptual blends that cohere with some given background
knowledge leads to a search for alternative conceptual blends that eventually
increase the overall coherence of the blend with the background knowledge.</p>
      <p>The paper is organised as follows: In Section 2 we give a brief overview of
Thagard's computational theory of coherence, in Section 3 we introduce some
core de nitions regarding coherence and coherence graphs, and in Section 4 we
provide a formalisation of conceptual coherence for the description logic AL.</p>
      <p>Conceptual blending in AL is described in Section 5, and coherence is applied
to blending in Section 6. We conclude in Section 7.
2</p>
      <p>
        Thagard's Computational Theory of Coherence
Thagard addresses the problem of determining which pieces of information, such
as hypotheses, beliefs, propositions or concepts, to accept and which to reject
based on how they cohere and incohere among them, given that, when two
elements cohere, they tend to be accepted together or rejected together; and
when two elements incohere, one tends to be accepted while the other tends to
be rejected [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref19">19</xref>
        ].
      </p>
      <p>This can be reformulated as a constraint satisfaction problem as follows.</p>
      <p>Pairs of elements that cohere between them form positive constraints, and pairs
of elements that incohere between them form negative constraints. If we partition
the set of pieces of information we are dealing with into a set of accepted elements
and a set of rejected elements, then a positive constraint is satis ed if both
elements of the constraint are either among the accepted elements or among
the rejected ones; and a negative constraint is satis ed if one element of the
constraint is among the accepted ones and the other is among the rejected ones.</p>
      <p>The coherence problem is to nd the partition that maximises the number of
satis ed constraints.</p>
      <p>Note that in general we may not be able to partition a set of elements as to
satisfy all constraints, thus ending up accepting elements that incohere between
them or rejecting an element that coheres with an accepted one. The objective
is to minimise these undesired cases. The coherence problem is known to be
NP-complete, though there exist algorithms that nd good enough solutions of
the coherence problem while remaining fairly e cient.</p>
      <p>Depending on the kind of pieces of information we start from, and on the way
the coherence and incoherence between these pieces of information is determined,
we will be dealing with di erent kinds of coherence problems. So, in explanatory
coherence we seek to determine the acceptance or rejection of hypotheses based
on how they cohere and incohere with given evidence or with competing
hypotheses; in deductive coherence we seek to determine the acceptance of rejection of
beliefs based on how they cohere and incohere due to deductive entailment or
contradiction; in analogical coherence we seek to determine the acceptance or
rejection of mapping hypotheses based on how they cohere or incohere in terms
of structure; and in conceptual coherence we seek to determine the acceptance or
rejection of concepts based on how they cohere or incohere as the result of the
positive or negative associations that can be established between them. Thagard
discusses these and other kinds of coherence.</p>
      <p>Although Thagard provides a clear technical description of the coherence
problem as a constraint satisfaction problem, and he enumerates concrete
principles that characterise di erent kinds of coherences, such as those discussed
later in Section 4 for conceptual coherence, he does not clarify the actual nature
of the coherence and incoherence relations that arise between pieces of
information, nor does he suggest a precise formalisation of the principles he discusses.</p>
      <p>
        Joseph et al. have proposed a concrete formalisation and realisation of deductive
coherence [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref11">11</xref>
        ], which they applied to tackle the problem of norm adoption in
normative multi-agent systems. In this paper, we shall focus on the problem of
conceptual coherence and its applicability to conceptual blending.
3
      </p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-2">
      <title>Preliminaries: Coherence Graphs</title>
      <p>In this section we give precise de nitions of the concepts intuitively introduced
in the previous section.</p>
      <p>De nition 1. A coherence graph is an edge-weighted, undirected graph G =
hV; E; wi, where:</p>
      <sec id="sec-2-1">
        <title>1. V is a nite set of nodes representing pieces of information.</title>
        <p>2. E V (2) (where V (2) = ffu; vg j u; v 2 V g) is a nite set of edges
representing the coherence or incoherence between pieces of information.</p>
        <sec id="sec-2-1-1">
          <title>3. w : E ! [ 1; 1] n f0g is an edge-weighted function that assigns a value to the</title>
          <p>coherence between pieces of information.</p>
        </sec>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-2-2">
        <title>Edges of coherence graphs are also called constraints.</title>
        <p>When we partition the set V of vertices of a coherence graph (i.e., the set of
pieces of information) into a set A of accepted elements and a set R = V n A
of rejected elements, then we can say when a constraint |an edge between
vertices| is satis ed or not by the partition.</p>
        <p>De nition 2. Given a coherence graph G = hV; E; wi, and a partition (A; R)
of V , the set of satis ed constraints C(A;R) E is given by:</p>
        <p>C(A;R) = nfu; vg 2 E
u 2 A i v 2 A; whenever w(fu; vg) &gt; 0 o
u 2 A i v 2 R; whenever w(fu; vg) &lt; 0</p>
        <sec id="sec-2-2-1">
          <title>All other constraints (i.e., those in E n C(A;R)) are said to be unsatis ed.</title>
          <p>The coherence problem is to nd the partition of vertices that satis es as
much constraints as possible, i.e., to nd the partition that maximises the
coherence value as de ned as follows, which makes coherence to be independent of
the size of the coherence graph.</p>
          <p>De nition 3. Given a coherence graph G = hV; E; wi, the coherence of a
partition (A; R) of V is given by
X</p>
          <p>jw(fu; vg)j
(G; (A; R)) = fu;vg2C(A;R)
jEj</p>
          <p>Notice that there may not exist a unique partition with a maximum coherence
value. Actually, at least two partitions have the same coherence value, since
(G; (A; R)) = (G; (R; A)) for any partition (A; R) of V .
4</p>
          <p>
            Conceptual Coherence in Description Logics
Thagard characterises conceptual coherence with these principles [
            <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref19">19</xref>
            ]:
Symmetry: Conceptual coherence is a symmetric relation between pairs of
concepts.
          </p>
          <p>Association: A concept coheres with another concept if they are positively
associated, i.e., if there are objects to which they both apply.</p>
          <p>Given Concepts: The applicability of a concept to an object may be given
perceptually or by some other reliable source.</p>
          <p>Negative Association: A concept incoheres with another concept if they are
negatively associated, i.e., if an object falling under one concept tends not
to fall under the other concept.</p>
          <p>Acceptance: The applicability of a concept to an object depends on the
applicability of other concepts.</p>
          <p>To provide a precise account of these principles we shall formalise Association
and Negative Association between concepts expressed in a description logic, since
these are the principles de ning coherence and incoherence. We shall assume
coherence between two concept descriptions when we have explicitly stated that
one subsumes the other (\there are objects to which both apply"); and we shall
assume incoherence when we have explicitly stated that they are disjoint (\an
object falling under one concept tends not to fall under the other concept").</p>
        </sec>
        <sec id="sec-2-2-2">
          <title>De nition 4. Given a Tbox T in description logic AL and a pair of concept</title>
          <p>descriptions C; D 62 f&gt;; ?g, we will say that:
{ C coheres with D, if C v D 2 T , and that
{ C incoheres with D, if C v :D 2 T or C u D v ? 2 T .</p>
        </sec>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-2-3">
        <title>In addition, coherence and incoherence between concept descriptions depend on</title>
        <p>the concept constructors used, and we will say that, for all atomic concepts A,
atomic roles R, and concept descriptions C; D 62 f&gt;; ?g:
{ :A incoheres with A;
{ C u D coheres both with C and with D;
{ 8R:C coheres (or incoheres) with 8R:D, if C coheres (or incoheres) with D.1</p>
        <p>Symmetry follows from the de nition above, and Acceptance is captured by
the aim of maximising coherence in a coherence graph. For this we need to de ne
how a TBox determines a coherence graph, and, in order to keep the graph
nite, we express coherence and incoherence only between non-trivial concept
descriptions (i.e., excluding &gt; and ?) that are explicitly stated in the TBox.</p>
        <sec id="sec-2-3-1">
          <title>De nition 5. Let T be a TBox in AL. The set of non-trivial subconcepts of</title>
        </sec>
        <sec id="sec-2-3-2">
          <title>T is given as</title>
          <p>sub(T ) =
[</p>
          <p>sub(C) [ sub(D)</p>
          <p>CvD2T
where sub is de ned over the structure of concept descriptions as follows:
sub(A) = fAg
sub(?) = ;
sub(&gt;) = ;
sub(:A) = f:A; Ag
sub(C u D) = fC u Dg [ sub(C) [ sub(D)
sub(8R:C) = f8R:Cg [ sub(C)
sub(9R:&gt;) = f9R:&gt;g
1 Note that since AL allows only for limited existential quanti cation we cannot
provide a general rule for coherence between concept descriptions of the form 9R:&gt;.</p>
        </sec>
        <sec id="sec-2-3-3">
          <title>De nition 6. The coherence graph of a TBox T is the edge-weighted, undi</title>
          <p>rected graph G = hV; E; wi whose vertices are non-trivial subconcepts of T (i.e.,
V = sub(T )), whose edges link subconcepts that either cohere or incohere
according to De nition 4, and whose edge-weight function w is given as follows:
w(fC; Dg) =
( 1 if C and D cohere</p>
        </sec>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-2-4">
        <title>1 if C and D incohere</title>
        <p>5</p>
        <p>
          Conceptual Blending in AL
We follow the modelling principles and techniques of [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref4">4</xref>
          ], where the process of
conceptual blending is characterised by the notion of amalgams [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1 ref14">1, 14</xref>
          ]. According
to this approach, the process of conceptual blending can be described as follows:
1. We take a taxonomy of concepts described in a background ontology
expressed as a Tbox T .
2. A mental space of an atomic concept A is modelled, for the purpose of
conceptual blending, by means of a subsumption A v C specifying the necessary
conditions we are focusing on.
3. The new concept to be invented is represented by the concept description
that conjoins the atomic concepts to be blended.
4. With amalgams we generalise the input spaces based on the taxonomy in
our TBox until a satisfactory blend is generated.
        </p>
        <p>Formally, the notion of amalgams can be de ned in any representation
language L for which a subsumption relation between formulas (or descriptions) of
L can be de ned, and therefore also in the set of all AL concept descriptions
with the subsumption relation vT .</p>
        <p>To formally specify an amalgam we rst need to introduce some notions. Let
NC be a set of concept names, NR be a set of role names, and L(T ) be the nite
set of all AL concept descriptions that can be formed with the concept and role
names occurring in an AL TBox T . Then:</p>
        <sec id="sec-2-4-1">
          <title>De nition 7. Given two descriptions C1; C2 2 L(T ):</title>
          <p>{ A most general specialisation (MGS) is a description Cmgs such that Cmgs vT</p>
        </sec>
        <sec id="sec-2-4-2">
          <title>C1 and Cmgs vT C2 and for any other description D such that D vT C1</title>
          <p>and D vT C2, then D vT Cmgs.
{ A least general generalisation (LGG) is a description Clgg such that C1 vT</p>
        </sec>
        <sec id="sec-2-4-3">
          <title>Clgg and C2 vT Clgg and for any other description D such that C1 vT D and C2 vT D, then Clgg vT D.</title>
          <p>Intuitively, an MGS is a description that has some of the information from both
original descriptions C1 and C2, while an LGG contains what is common to
them.</p>
          <p>An amalgam or blend of two descriptions is a new description that contains
parts from these original descriptions and it can be formally de ned as follows.</p>
        </sec>
        <sec id="sec-2-4-4">
          <title>De nition 8 (Amalgam). Let T be an AL TBox. A description Cam 2 L(T )</title>
          <p>is an amalgam of two descriptions C1 and C2 (with LGG Clgg) if there exist two
descriptions C1 and C2 such that: C1 vT C1 vT Clgg, C2 vT C2 vT Clgg, and
Cam is an MGS of C1 and C2.</p>
          <p>
            The number of blends that satis es the above de nition can be very large and
selection criteria for ltering and ordering them are therefore needed.
Fauconnier and Turner discussed optimality principles [
            <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref7">7</xref>
            ], however, these principles are
di cult to capture in a computational way, and other selection strategies need
to be explored. Since we use a logical theory such as AL, one way to evaluate
a blend is consistency checking. Another alternative, that we will investigate in
this paper, is to evaluate blends in terms of conceptual coherence.
          </p>
          <p>The LGG and the generalised descriptions, needed to compute the amalgam
as de ned above, are obtained by means of a generalisation re nement operator
that allows us to nd generalisations of AL concept descriptions.
Roughly speaking, a generalisation operator takes a concept C as input and
returns a set of descriptions that are more general than C by taking a Tbox T
into account.</p>
          <p>In order to de ne a generalisation re nement operator for AL, we de ne
the upward cover set of atomic concepts. In the following de nition, sub(T )
(De nition 5) guarantees the following upward cover set to be nite.</p>
        </sec>
        <sec id="sec-2-4-5">
          <title>De nition 9. Let T be an AL TBox with concept names from NC . The upward cover set of an atomic concept A 2 NC [ f&gt;; ?g with respect to T is given as:</title>
          <p>UpCov(A) := fC 2 sub(T ) [ f&gt;; ?g j A vT C
(1)
and there is no C0 2 sub(T ) [ f&gt;; ?g
We can now de ne our generalisation re nement operator for AL as follows.
De nition 10. Let T be an AL TBox. We de ne the generalisation re nement
operator inductively over the structure of concept descriptions as follows:
(A) = UpCov(A)
(&gt;) = UpCov(&gt;) = ;
(?) = UpCov(?)
(8r:C) =
(9r:&gt;) = ;
(C u D) = fC0 u D j C0 2 (C)g [ fC u D0 j D0 2 (D)g [ fC; Dg
f&gt;g
f8r:C0 j C0 2 (C)g whenever (C) 6= ;</p>
          <p>otherwise.</p>
          <p>House v Object Resident v Person
Boat v Object Passenger v Person
Land v Medium Person u Medium v ?
Water v Medium Object u Medium v ?</p>
          <p>Water u Land v ? Object u Person v ?</p>
          <p>
            We should notice at this point that can return concept descriptions that are
equivalent to the concept being generalised. One possible way to avoid this
situation is to discard these generalisations [
            <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref4">4</xref>
            ]. Given a generalisation re nement
operator , AL concepts are related by re nement paths as described next.
          </p>
        </sec>
        <sec id="sec-2-4-6">
          <title>De nition 11. A nite sequence C1; : : : ; Cn of AL concepts is a concept re ne</title>
          <p>ment path C1 ! Cn from C1 to Cn of the generalisation re nement operator
i Ci+1 2 (Ci) for all i : 1 i &lt; n. (C) denotes the set of all concepts that
can be reached from C by means of in a nite number of steps.
The repetitive application of the generalisation re nement operator allows us to
nd a description that represents the properties that two or more AL concepts
have in common. This description is a common generalisation of AL concepts,
the so-called generic space that is used in conceptual blending.</p>
        </sec>
        <sec id="sec-2-4-7">
          <title>De nition 12. An AL concept description G is a generic space of the AL concept descriptions C1; : : : ; Cn if and only if G 2 0 (Ci) for all i = 1; : : : ; n.</title>
          <p>5.2</p>
          <p>
            An Example: The House-Boat Blend
The process of conceptual blending in terms of amalgams can be illustrated by
means of a typical blend example: the house-boat [
            <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref7 ref8">7, 8</xref>
            ]. The precise formalisation
is not critical at this point, di erent ones exist [
            <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref15 ref9">9, 15</xref>
            ], but all provide similar
distinctions.
          </p>
          <p>The AL theories for House and Boat introduce the axioms modelling the
mental spaces for house and boat.</p>
          <p>House v 8usedBy:Resident u 8on:Land</p>
          <p>Boat v 8usedBy:Passenger u 8on:Water</p>
          <p>The House and Boat theories cannot be directly blended since they generate
an inconsistency. This is due to the background ontology stating that the medium
on which an object is situated cannot be land and water at the same time
(Figure 1). Therefore, some parts of the House and Boat descriptions need to be
generalised in a controlled manner before these concepts can be blended. The
generic space between a house and a boat|an object that is on a medium and
used-by a person|is a lower bound in the space of generalisations that need
to be explored in order to generalise these concepts and to blend them into a
house-boat. The generic space is obtained according to De nition 12 by applying
the re nement operator .
House</p>
          <p>Boat
House</p>
          <p>Example 1. Let us consider the House and Boat concepts. Their generic space
is: 8usedBy:Personu 8on:Medium and is obtained as follows. In the House concept,
the subconcepts 8usedBy:Resident and 8on:Land are generalised to 8usedBy:Person
and 8on:Medium respectively. In the Boat concept, the subconcepts 8usedBy:
Passenger and 8on:Water are generalised in a similar way.</p>
          <p>From a conceptual blending point of view, the house-boat blend can be created
when the medium on which a house is situated (land) becomes the medium
on which boat is situated (water), and the resident of the house becomes the
passenger of the boat. This blend can be obtained when the input concepts house
and boat are generalised as follows:</p>
          <p>House v 8usedBy:Resident u 8on:Medium</p>
          <p>Boat v 8usedBy:Person u 8on:Water
The house-boat blend is obtained by conjoining the generalised mental spaces
House and Boat (Figure 2). It is easy to see that House u Boat is an amalgam
according to De nition 8.
6</p>
          <p>Evaluating the Coherence of Conceptual Blends
This section describes how coherence is used to evaluate blends. That is, how
coherence graphs are built, and how the di erent coherence values are to be
interpreted. The overall idea is to compute the coherence graph and maximsing
partitions for each blend, and use the maximal coherence degree of the coherence
graphs to rank the blends.</p>
          <p>Let T be the TBox of the background ontology, let A v C and B v D be
the axioms representing our mental spaces, and let A u B be the new concept we
would like to invent. The process of evaluating blends according to conceptual
coherence can be described as follows:
1. Given the mental spaces, we generate a candidate blend according to De
nition 8.
2. We form the coherence graph for T [fA v C; B v Dg, including node AuB,
according to De nition 6.
3. We compute the coherence maximising partitions according to De nition 3
and we associate it to the blend.
4. We repeat this procedure for all the blends that can be generated from the
mental spaces.</p>
          <p>Once the maximising partitions are computed, the coherence of the blend could
be measured in terms of the coherence value of the coherence-maximising
partitions. The degree of the coherence graph directly measures how much a blend
coheres with the background ontology.</p>
          <p>De nition 13. Let G = hV; E; wi the coherence graph of a blend B and let P
the set of partitions of G. The maximal coherence value of B of G is deg(B) =
maxf (G; P )g.</p>
          <p>P 2P
This maximal coherence value can be used to rank blends as follows.</p>
        </sec>
        <sec id="sec-2-4-8">
          <title>De nition 14. Let T be a TBox of a background ontology, let A v C and</title>
        </sec>
        <sec id="sec-2-4-9">
          <title>B v D be the axioms representing mental spaces, let B be the set of blends that</title>
          <p>can be generated from them. For each b1; b2 2 B, we say that b1 is preferred to
b2 (b1 b2) if and only if deg(b1) deg(b2).</p>
          <p>To exemplify how the coherence degree can be used to evaluate blends, we
consider the house-boat example. According to the amalgams process of
conceptual blending described in the previous section, several blends can be generated
by blending the mental space of House and Boat. In particular, the concept
House u Boat is a valid blend.</p>
          <p>The coherence graph blending the House and Boat directly is shown in
Figure 3. As expected the concepts House and Boat positively coheres with
the axioms representing the mental spaces and with the concept House u Boat,
which is representing the blend. The incoherence relation between 8on:Land and
8on:Water is due to the fact that the concepts Water and Land incohere, since
the background ontology contains the disjointness axiom Water u Land v ?. The
coherence graph of House and Boat has a maximal coherence value of 0:84.</p>
          <p>For the sake of our example, we generate new blends by generalising the
axioms modelling our mental spaces. For instance, by applying the generalisations
seen in the previous section that lead to the creation of the house-boat blend, we
obtain the coherence graph in Figure 4.2 The coherence graph of blending House
and Boat has a maximal coherence value of 0:9. This graph yields a higher
coherence degree since generalising 8on:Land to 8on:Medium prevents the appearance
of the incoherence relation between 8on:Land and 8on:Water.</p>
          <p>It is easy to see that the blend House u Boat is preferred to House u Boat
since it has a maximal coherence degree that is higher.
2 Concepts belonging to the background ontology are omitted.
+
+
8usedBy:Residentu
8on:Land</p>
          <p>Passenger +
Resident
+
+</p>
          <p>Person</p>
          <p>Medium
Object
+ +
+ +
House</p>
          <p>Boat
+
+
+</p>
          <p>8on:Water
Land
Water
8usedBy:Passengeru
8on:Water
+
+
8usedBy:Resident
8usedBy:Residentu
8on:Medium</p>
          <p>+</p>
          <p>House</p>
          <p>Boat
+ +
This paper should be seen as a rst attempt to (a) provide a formal account of
conceptual coherence for a particular concept representation language, and (b)
to explore its applicability for guiding the process of conceptual blending.</p>
          <p>
            With respect to (a), we proposed a formalisation of conceptual coherence
between concept descriptions expressed in the basic AL description logic. This is
only a starting point, and obviously this formalisation exercise should be carried
out for more expressive concept representation languages. Usually, coherence and
incoherence are not treated only in binary terms, but it is also natural to take
certain degrees of coherence or incoherence into account. This, for instance, has
also been the approach of Joseph et al. when formalising deductive coherence
[
            <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref11">11</xref>
            ]. Although there is not an obvious way to do so with the formalisation of
conceptual coherence of AL proposed in this paper, we do not discard that this
could be done for more expressive concept representation languages. One could
imagine that description logics with number restrictions or nominals, such as
SROIQ for instance, would allow for expressing degrees of concept overlap that
could be interpreted as degrees of coherence or incoherence.
          </p>
          <p>With respect to (b), we have so far only focused on how the coherence
values of a graph of concept descriptions were evolving dependent on how these
descriptions were changing in our amalgam-based conceptual blending process.
However, we have not discussed yet another important aspect of coherence
theory, namely how to interpret the two parts of a coherence-maximising partition:
the set of accepted and of rejected concepts. The information that a particular
concept description falls in the set of accepted concepts or in the set of rejected
concepts could also be taken into account to decide the acceptance or rejection of
newly invented concepts; or even of already existing concepts in the background
knowledge, in the light of newly invented concepts. With the formalisation in
AL given in this paper we could not see yet a clear way to provide such an
interpretation of acceptance and rejection, but we think this aspect might become
clearer as a wider range of concept representation languages is explored.</p>
          <p>
            In this paper we attempted to see how coherence could be used as another
tool for guiding the process of conceptual blending and for evaluating conceptual
blends in the task of concept invention; an additional technique to those already
proposed, such as optimality principles [
            <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref16">16</xref>
            ], logical consistency [
            <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref13">13</xref>
            ], and values
of audiences [
            <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3">3</xref>
            ]. We believe it is worth to further study the proper combination
of these techniques and to carry out a comprehensive evaluation.
          </p>
          <p>An implementation of conceptual coherence presented in this paper using the
OWL API and Answer Set Programming is available at: https://rconfalonieri@
bitbucket.org/rconfalonieri/coinvent-coherence.git.</p>
        </sec>
      </sec>
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