involvesextended

Involvesextended is a coined term used in theoretical discussions of context-sensitive reasoning and knowledge representation. It denotes a property of statements, questions, or problems that require extending the current information base with additional assumptions, data, or axioms in order to determine their truth conditions or derive conclusions.

Etymology and scope: The word is a portmanteau of “involves” and “extended.” It first appeared in print in discussions of semantic engineering and dynamic reasoning to capture the idea that some inquiries cannot be answered from the present knowledge alone and trigger an extension of the knowledge base or context.

Formal concept: In formal terms, a proposition P is involvesextended with respect to a knowledge base KB if there exists an extension KB' such that KB' is consistent with KB and KB' entails P, while P is not entailed by KB alone. The notion emphasizes the need for extension rather than mere inference within the existing KB. In practice, identifying involvesextended questions can help systems decide when to perform data retrieval, data fusion, or API calls to external sources to resolve a query.

Applications: The concept is used in natural language understanding, information retrieval, and knowledge engineering to categorize tasks that require external information or expanded context. It also informs the design of dynamic knowledge bases and planning systems, which must determine when operations beyond the current KB are necessary to proceed.

Examples: A query such as “What will be the weather in Paris tomorrow?” involves extended information from weather services. A policy question like “What is the optimal response if the supplier cannot deliver on time?” may require extended economic data and timelines beyond the current dataset.

See also: context extension, abductive reasoning, dynamic knowledge bases, information retrieval.