Updates

 

Once an individual has been created, it may be updated in one of two ways: additional information can be added to the individual, or existing information specified for an individual can be retracted. Both of these types of updates on individuals are described in this section. The definition of a concept also cannot be modified. The instances of a concept, however, can all get modified indirectly, if a rule is created which has that concept as the antecedent, because the rule will then fire on all instances of the concept.

Addition

An individual can be asserted to have additional parents or descriptions, or new fillers for a role, with the addToldInformation  function. The syntax is

• []

  
  (addToldInformation Individual ClassicDescription)
  

where the individual is an existing classic individual, and the description is the information to be added to the individual. For example, to add the information that the existing individual Mary has child John, say:

• [](addToldInformation  Mary (fills child John))

It can also be asserted for an individual that the currently known fillers of a role are the only fillers (via closeRole  in Section 4 above).

Retraction

 

Information previously asserted about an individual can be retracted.

removeToldInformation  retracts information from an individual. The syntax for removeToldInformation is

• []

  
  (removeToldInformation Individual ClassicDescription)
  

For example, to remove the child of Mary above,

• []

  
  (removeToldInformation Mary (fills child John))
  

uncloseRole  removes the told fact that a particular role is closed on an individual. The syntax for uncloseRole  is

• [](uncloseRole Individual Role)

Note that retraction only removes the information directly told by means of individual creation or adding information to individuals. If the information was independantly derived from other information, the retraction will have no effect.