Abstract
It has long been recognized that the concept of inconsistency is a central part of com-monsense reasoning. In this issue, a number of authors have explored the idea of reasoning with maximal consistent subsets of an inconsistent stratified knowledge base. This paradigm, often called "coherent-based reasoning", has resulted in some interesting proposals for para-consistent reasoning, non-monotonic reasoning, and argumentation systems. Unfortunately, coherent-based reasoning is computationally very expensive. This paper harnesses the approach of approximate entailment by Schaerf and Cadoli [SCH 95] to develop the concept of "approximate coherent-based reasoning". To this end, we begin to present a multi-modal propo-sitional logic that incorporates two dual families of modalities: 2S and 3S defined for each subset S of the set of atomic propositions. The resource parameter S indicates what atoms are taken into account when evaluating formulas. Next, we define resource-bounded consolidation operations that limit and control the generation of maximal consistent subsets of a stratified knowledge base. Then, we present counterparts to existential, universal, and argumentative inference that are prominent in coherence-based approaches. By virtue of modalities 2S and 3S, these inferences are approximated from below and from above, in an incremental fashion. Based on these features, we show that an anytime view of coherent-based reasoning is tenable.