Open-world assumption
FORMAL-LOGIC ASSUMPTION THAT THE TRUTH-VALUE OF A STATEMENT IS INDEPENDENT OF WHETHER IT IS KNOWN BY ANY SINGLE OBSERVER OR AGENT TO BE TRUE
Open World Assumption; Open World assumption; Open world assumption; Open-world semantics; Partial-closed world assumption
In a formal system of logic used for knowledge representation, the open-world assumption is the assumption that the truth value of a statement may be true irrespective of whether or not it is known to be true. It is the opposite of the closed-world assumption, which holds that any statement that is true is also known to be true.