CWJess: An expert system shell for computing with words

Computing with Words (CW) is an emerging paradigm in knowledge representation and information processing. It provides a mathematical model to represent the meaning of imprecise words and phrases in natural language, and to perform reasoning on perceptual knowledge. This paper describes a preliminary extension to Jess, CWJess, which allows reasoning in the framework of CW. The resulting inference shell significantly enhances the expressiveness and reasoning power of expert systems and provides a Java API which allows users to express various types of fuzzy concepts, including: fuzzy graphs, fuzzy relations, fuzzy arithmetic expression, and fuzzy quantified propositions. CWJess is fully integrated with Jess and utilizes Jess Rete network to perform a chain of reasoning on fuzzy propositions.