Many reasoning algorithms and techniques require consistent terminologies to be able to operate correctly and efficiently. However, many ontologies become inconsistent during their evolution and lifecycle. Many methods have been proposed to handle inconsistent terminologies including those that tolerate or repair inconsistencies. Most of these approaches focus on the syntactic properties of ontology terminologies and attempt to address inconsistency from that perspective and satisfy postulates such as the principle of minimal change. In this paper, we will employ evidential reasoning to take into account assertional statements of an ontology as observations and probable indications for the correctness and validity of one axiom over other competing axioms. We will show how ontology assertions are beneficial in ranking axioms to be used in Reiter's hitting set algorithm.

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