A possibility theory-oriented discussion of conceptual pattern structures

A fruitful analogy between possibility theory and formal concept analysis has recently contributed to show the interest of introducing new operators in this latter setting. In particular, another Galois connection, distinct from the classical one that defines formal concepts, has been laid bare which allows for the decomposition of a formal context into sub-contexts when possible. This paper pursues a similar investigation by considering pattern structures which are known to offer a generalization of formal concept analysis. The new operators as well as the other Galois connection are introduced in this framework, where an object is associated to a structured description rather than just to its set of properties. The description may take many different forms. In this paper, we more particularly focus on two important particular cases, namely ordered lists of intervals, and propositional knowledge bases, which both allow for incomplete descriptions. They are then extended to fuzzy and uncertain descriptions by introducing fuzzy intervals and possibilistic logic bases respectively in these two settings. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg