This is the first book that integrates nonmonotonic reasoning and belief change into a single framework from an artificial intelligence logic point-of-view.

"The first book that provides a systematic and rigorous logical theory of causality"--.

A formal theory of causal reasoning is presented that encompasses both Pearl’s approach to causality and several key formalisms of nonmonotonic reasoning in Artificial Intelligence. This theory will be derived from a single rationality principle of causal acceptance for propositions. However, this principle will also set the theory of causal reasoning apart from common representational approaches to reasoning formalisms.

A notion of an epistemic state is introduced as a generalization of common representations suggested for belief change. Based on it, a new kind of nonmonotonic inference relation corresponding to belief contractions is defined. A number of representation results is established that cover both traditional AGM contractions and contractions that do not satisfy recovery.

We present a general formalism of causal reasoning that encompasses both Pearl’s approach to causality and a number of key systems of nonmonotonic reasoning in artificial intelligence.

A notion of an epistemic state is introduced as a generalization of common representations suggested for belief change. Based on it, a new kind of nonmonotonic inference relation corresponding to belief contractions is defined. A number of representation results is established that cover both traditional AGM contractions and contractions that do not satisfy recovery.

Nonmonotonic reasoning is a theory of the rational use of assumptions. We describe the relations between NMR and Logic, and two main paradigms of NMR, preferential and explanatory one.

We describe the relation between coherence and foundations approaches to belief change in terms of a correspondence between epistemic entrenchment relations(Gärdenfors and Makinson, 1988; Rott, 1992) and dependence consequence relations from Bochman (1999, 2000a).The general conclusion of the study is that dependence consequence relations are sufficiently expressive to subsume the notion of an epistemic entrenchment and its generalizations.

We introduce a substructural propositional calculus of Sequential Dynamic Logic that subsumes a propositional part of dynamic predicate logic, and is shown to be expressively equivalent to propositional dynamic logic. Completeness of the calculus with respect to the intended relational semantics is established.