A Model for the Integration of Prioritized Knowledge Bases Through Subjective Belief Games

Belief merging is concerned with the integration of several belief bases such that a coherent belief base is developed. Various belief merging models that use a belief negotiation game have been developed. These models often consist of two key functions, namely, negotiation and weakening. A negotiation function finds and selects the weakest belief bases among the available belief bases, while the weakening function removes the least valuable set of information from the selected belief base. This process is iteratively repeated until a consistent belief base is developed. In this paper, we extend the current game-based belief merging models by introducing the Subjective belief game model. The Subjective belief game model operates over a Subjective belief profile, which consists of belief bases with Subjectively annotated formulas. The Subjective information attached to each formula enables the proposed model to prioritize the formulas in the merging process. One of the advantages of the proposed game is that it provides room for enhancing the content of the weak belief bases, instead of enforcing their further weakening. Trustworthiness of the information sources is also considered. We provide several instantiations of the model. The Subjective belief game model can be useful for formalizing a negotiation process between the human participants of a design process in cases where discrepancies and conflicts arise. We apply this belief game model to an example case study of collaboratively designing some parts of unified modeling language (UML) class diagram for vehicle design.