---
_id: '65567'
abstract:
- lang: eng
  text: "<jats:p>We introduce the notion of contrastive ABox explanations to answer
    questions of the type “Why is a an instance of C, but b is not?”. While there
    are various approaches for explaining positive entailments (why is C(a) entailed
    by the knowledge base) as well as missing entailments (why is C(b) not entailed)
    in isolation, contrastive explanations consider both at the same time, which allows
    them to focus on the relevant commonalities and differences between a and b. We
    develop an appropriate notion of contrastive explanations for the special case
    of ABox reasoning with description logic ontologies, and analyze the computational
    complexity for different variants under different optimality criteria, considering
    lightweight as well as more expressive description logics. We\r\nimplemented a
    first method for computing one variant of contrastive explanations, and evaluated
    it on generated problems for realistic knowledge bases.</jats:p>"
author:
- first_name: Patrick
  full_name: Koopmann, Patrick
  last_name: Koopmann
- first_name: Yasir
  full_name: Mahmood, Yasir
  id: '99353'
  last_name: Mahmood
- first_name: Axel-Cyrille
  full_name: Ngonga Ngomo, Axel-Cyrille
  id: '65716'
  last_name: Ngonga Ngomo
- first_name: Balram
  full_name: Tiwari, Balram
  last_name: Tiwari
citation:
  ama: 'Koopmann P, Mahmood Y, Ngonga Ngomo A-C, Tiwari B. Can You Tell the Difference?
    Contrastive Explanations for ABox Entailments. In: <i>Proceedings of the AAAI
    Conference on Artificial Intelligence</i>. Vol 40. Association for the Advancement
    of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI); 2026:19189-19197. doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v40i23.38993">10.1609/aaai.v40i23.38993</a>'
  apa: Koopmann, P., Mahmood, Y., Ngonga Ngomo, A.-C., &#38; Tiwari, B. (2026). Can
    You Tell the Difference? Contrastive Explanations for ABox Entailments. <i>Proceedings
    of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence</i>, <i>40</i>(23), 19189–19197.
    <a href="https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v40i23.38993">https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v40i23.38993</a>
  bibtex: '@inproceedings{Koopmann_Mahmood_Ngonga Ngomo_Tiwari_2026, title={Can You
    Tell the Difference? Contrastive Explanations for ABox Entailments}, volume={40},
    DOI={<a href="https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v40i23.38993">10.1609/aaai.v40i23.38993</a>},
    number={23}, booktitle={Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence},
    publisher={Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)},
    author={Koopmann, Patrick and Mahmood, Yasir and Ngonga Ngomo, Axel-Cyrille and
    Tiwari, Balram}, year={2026}, pages={19189–19197} }'
  chicago: Koopmann, Patrick, Yasir Mahmood, Axel-Cyrille Ngonga Ngomo, and Balram
    Tiwari. “Can You Tell the Difference? Contrastive Explanations for ABox Entailments.”
    In <i>Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence</i>, 40:19189–97.
    Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2026. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v40i23.38993">https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v40i23.38993</a>.
  ieee: 'P. Koopmann, Y. Mahmood, A.-C. Ngonga Ngomo, and B. Tiwari, “Can You Tell
    the Difference? Contrastive Explanations for ABox Entailments,” in <i>Proceedings
    of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence</i>, 2026, vol. 40, no. 23,
    pp. 19189–19197, doi: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v40i23.38993">10.1609/aaai.v40i23.38993</a>.'
  mla: Koopmann, Patrick, et al. “Can You Tell the Difference? Contrastive Explanations
    for ABox Entailments.” <i>Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence</i>,
    vol. 40, no. 23, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI),
    2026, pp. 19189–97, doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v40i23.38993">10.1609/aaai.v40i23.38993</a>.
  short: 'P. Koopmann, Y. Mahmood, A.-C. Ngonga Ngomo, B. Tiwari, in: Proceedings
    of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Association for the Advancement
    of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2026, pp. 19189–19197.'
date_created: 2026-05-05T15:15:49Z
date_updated: 2026-05-05T15:22:12Z
department:
- _id: '574'
doi: 10.1609/aaai.v40i23.38993
intvolume: '        40'
issue: '23'
language:
- iso: eng
page: 19189-19197
project:
- _id: '117'
  name: TRR 318 - Project Area C
publication: Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
publication_identifier:
  issn:
  - 2374-3468
  - 2159-5399
publication_status: published
publisher: Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
status: public
title: Can You Tell the Difference? Contrastive Explanations for ABox Entailments
type: conference
user_id: '99353'
volume: 40
year: '2026'
...