According to the cognitive model of psychopathology, maladaptive beliefs about oneself, others, and the world are the main factors contributing to the development and persistence of various forms of mental suffering. Therefore, the key therapeutic process of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)—a therapeutic approach rooted in the cognitive model—is cognitive restructuring, i.e., a process of revision of such maladaptive beliefs. In this paper, I examine the philosophical assumptions underlying CBT and offer theoretical reasons to think that the effectiveness of (...) class='Hi'>belief revision in psychotherapy is very limited. This is the case, I argue, because the cognitive model wrongly assumes that our body of beliefs is unified, while it is in fact fragmented. (shrink)

This is a survey paper. Contents: 1 Introduction -- 2 The representation of belief -- 3 Kinds of belief change -- 4 Coherence constraints for belief revision -- 5 Different modes of belief change -- 6 Two strategies for characterizing rational changes of belief - 6.1 The postulates strategy - 6.2 The constructive strategy -- 7 An abstract view of the elements of belief change -- 8 Iterated changes of belief -- 9 (...) Further developments - 9.1 Variants and extensions of belief revision - 9.2 Updates - 9.3 Default inferences as expectation revision - 9.4 Belief merging -- 10 Concluding remarks. (shrink)

We present a general framework for representing belief-revision rules and use it to characterize Bayes's rule as a classical example and Jeffrey's rule as a non-classical one. In Jeffrey's rule, the input to a belief revision is not simply the information that some event has occurred, as in Bayes's rule, but a new assignment of probabilities to some events. Despite their differences, Bayes's and Jeffrey's rules can be characterized in terms of the same axioms: "responsiveness", which (...) requires that revised beliefs incorporate what has been learnt, and "conservativeness", which requires that beliefs on which the learnt input is "silent" do not change. To illustrate the use of non-Bayesian belief revision in economic theory, we sketch a simple decision-theoretic application. (shrink)

Belief revision theory studies how an ideal doxastic agent should revise her beliefs when she receives new information. In part I, I have first presented the AGM theory of belief revision. Then I have focused on the problem of iterated belief revisions. In part II, I will first present ranking theory (Spohn 1988). Then I will show how it solves the problem of iterated belief revisions. I will conclude by sketching two areas of future (...) research. (shrink)

This paper extends the AGM theory of belief revision to accommodate infinitary belief change. We generalize both axiomatization and modeling of the AGM theory. We show that most properties of the AGM belief change operations are preserved by the generalized operations whereas the infinitary belief change operations have their special properties. We prove that the extended axiomatic system for the generalized belief change operators with a Limit Postulate properly specifies infinite belief change. This (...) framework provides a basis for first-order belief revision and the theory of revising a belief state by a belief state. (shrink)

We propose a dynamic hyperintensional logic of belief revision for non-omniscient agents, reducing the logical omniscience phenomena affecting standard doxastic/epistemic logic as well as AGM belief revision theory. Our agents don’t know all a priori truths; their belief states are not closed under classical logical consequence; and their belief update policies are such that logically or necessarily equivalent contents can lead to different revisions. We model both plain and conditional belief, then focus on (...) dynamic belief revision. The key idea we exploit to achieve non-omniscience focuses on topic- or subject matter-sensitivity: a feature of belief states which is gaining growing attention in the recent literature. (shrink)

The Bayesian maxim for rational learning could be described as conservative change from one probabilistic belief or credence function to another in response to newinformation. Roughly: ‘Hold fixed any credences that are not directly affected by the learning experience.’ This is precisely articulated for the case when we learn that some proposition that we had previously entertained is indeed true (the rule of conditionalisation). But can this conservative-change maxim be extended to revising one’s credences in response to entertaining propositions (...) or concepts of which one was previously unaware? The economists Karni and Vierø (2013, 2015) make a proposal in this spirit. Philosophers have adopted effectively the same rule: revision in response to growing awareness should not affect the relative probabilities of propositions in one’s ‘old’ epistemic state. The rule is compelling, but only under the assumptions that its advocates introduce. It is not a general requirement of rationality, or so we argue. We provide informal counterexamples. And we show that, when awareness grows, the boundary between one’s ‘old’ and ‘new’ epistemic commitments is blurred. Accordingly, there is no general notion of conservative change in this setting. (shrink)

In this paper two systems of AGM-like Paraconsistent Belief Revision are overviewed, both defined over Logics of Formal Inconsistency (LFIs) due to the possibility of defining a formal consistency operator within these logics. The AGM° system is strongly based on this operator and internalize the notion of formal consistency in the explicit constructions and postulates. Alternatively, the AGMp system uses the AGM-compliance of LFIs and thus assumes a wider notion of paraconsistency - not necessarily related to the notion (...) of formal consistency. (shrink)

We present different constructions for nonprioritized belief revision, that is, belief changes in which the input sentences are not always accepted. First, we present the concept of explanation in a deductive way. Second, we define multiple revision operators with respect to sets of sentences (representing explanations), giving representation theorems. Finally, we relate the formulated operators with argumentative systems and default reasoning frameworks.

The well known AGM framework for belief revision has recently been extended to include a model of the research agenda of the agent, i.e. a set of questions to which the agent wishes to find answers (Olsson & Westlund in Erkenntnis , 65 , 165–183, 2006 ). The resulting model has later come to be called interrogative belief revision . While belief revision has been studied extensively from the point of view of modal logic, (...) so far interrogative belief revision has only been dealt with in the metalanguage approach in which AGM was originally presented. In this paper, I show how to model interrogative belief revision in a modal object language using a class of operators for questions. In particular, the solution I propose will be shown to capture the notion of K-truncation , a method for agenda update in the case of expansion constructed by Olsson & Westlund. Two case studies are conducted: first, an interrogative extension of Krister Segerberg’s system DDL, and then a similar extension of Giacomo Bonanno’s modal logic for belief revision. Sound and complete axioms will be provided for both of the resulting logics. (shrink)

Belief revision theory studies how an ideal doxastic agent should revise her beliefs when she receives new information. In part I I will first present the AGM theory of belief revision (Alchourrón & Gärdenfors & Makinson 1985). Then I will focus on the problem of iterated belief revisions.

In this paper we present a new modeling for belief revision that is what we term irrevocable. This modeling is of philosophical interest since it captures some features of suppositional reasoning, and of formal interest since it is closely connected with AGM, yet provides for iterated belief revision. The analysis is couched in terms of dynamic doxastic logic.

Postulational approaches attempt to understand the dynamics of belief revision by appealing to no more than the set of beliefs held by an agent and the logical relations between them. It is argued there that such an approach cannot work. A proper account of belief revision must also appeal to the arguments supporting beliefs, and recognize that those arguments can be defeasible. If we begin with a mature epistemological theory that accommodates this, it can be seen (...) that the belief revision operators on which the postulational theories are based are ill-defined. It is further argued that there is no way to repair the definitions so as to retain the spirit of those theory. Belief revision is better studied from within an independently motivated epistemological theory. (shrink)

I develop a dynamic logic for reasoning about "interrogative belief revision", a new branch of belief revision theory that has been developed in a small number of papers, beginning with E. J. Olsson and D. Westlund's paper "On the role of the research agenda in epistemic change" [12]. In interrogative belief revision, epistemic states are taken to include a research agenda, consisting of questions the agent seeks to answer. I present a logic for (...) class='Hi'>revision of such epistemic states based on the notion of an epistemic strategy, a stable plan of action that determines changes in the agent's research agenda. This idea is a further development of an idea put forward in [6], that changes in the research agenda of an agent should be determined by stable, "long term" research interests. I provide complete axioms and a decidability result for the logic. (shrink)

Belief revision theory concerns methods for reformulating an agent's epistemic state when the agent's beliefs are refuted by new information. The usual guiding principle in the design of such methods is to preserve as much of the agent's epistemic state as possible when the state is revised. Learning theoretic research focuses, instead, on a learning method's reliability or ability to converge to true, informative beliefs over a wide range of possible environments. This paper bridges the two perspectives by (...) assessing the reliability of several proposed belief revision operators. Stringent conceptions of minimal change are shown to occasion a limitation called inductive amnesia: they can predict the future only if they cannot remember the past. Avoidance of inductive amnesia can therefore function as a plausible and hitherto unrecognized constraint on the design of belief revision operators. (shrink)

We show how belief revision can be treated systematically in the format of dynamicepistemic logic, when operators of conditional belief are added. The core engine consists of definable update rules for changing plausibility relations between worlds, which have been proposed independently in the dynamic-epistemic literature on preference change. Our analysis yields two new types of modal result. First, we obtain complete logics for concrete mechanisms of belief revision, based on compositional reduction axioms. Next, we show (...) how various abstract postulates for belief revision can be analyzed by standard modal frame correspondences for model-changing operations. (shrink)

This is a discussion of the problem of extending the basic AGM belief revision theory to iterated belief revision: the problem of formulating rules, not only for revising a basic belief state in response to potential new information, but also for revising one’s revision rules in response to potential new information. The emphasis in the paper is on foundational questions about the nature of and motivation for various constraints, and about the methodology of the (...) evaluation of putative counterexamples to proposed constraints. Some specific constraints that have been proposed are criticized. The paper emphasizes the importance of meta-information—information about one’s sources of information—and argues that little of substance can be said about constraints on iterated belief revision at a level of abstraction that lacks the resources for explicit representation of meta-information. (shrink)

I present a possible worlds semantics for a hyperintensional belief revision operator, which reduces the logical idealization of cognitive agents affecting similar operators in doxastic and epistemic logics, as well as in standard AGM belief revision theory. (Revised) belief states are not closed under classical logical consequence; revising by inconsistent information does not perforce lead to trivialization; and revision can be subject to ‘framing effects’: logically or necessarily equivalent contents can lead to different revisions. (...) Such results are obtained without resorting to non-classical logics, or to non-normal or impossible worlds semantics. The framework combines, instead, a standard semantics for propositional S5 with a simple mereology of contents. (shrink)

Epistemic conditionals have often been thought to satisfy the Ramsey test : If A, then B is acceptable in a belief state G if and only if B should be accepted upon revising G with A. But as Peter Gärdenfors has shown, RT conflicts with the intuitively plausible condition of Preservation on belief revision. We investigate what happens if RT is retained while Preservation is weakened, or vice versa. We also generalize Gärdenfors' approach by treating belief (...) revision as a relation rather than as a function.In our semantic approach, the same relation is used to model belief revision and to give truth-conditions for conditionals. The approach validates a weak version of the Ramsey Test — essentially, a restriction of RT to maximally consistent belief states. (shrink)

Philosophical logicians proposing theories of rational belief revision have had little to say about whether their proposals assist or impede the agent's ability to reliably arrive at the truth as his beliefs change through time. On the other hand, reliability is the central concern of formal learning theory. In this paper we investigate the belief revision theory of Alchourron, Gardenfors and Makinson from a learning theoretic point of view.

Krister Segerberg proposed irrevocable belief revision, to be contrasted with standard belief revision, in a setting wherein belief of propositional formulas is modelled explicitly. This suggests that in standard belief revision is revocable: one should be able to unmake (‘revoke’) the fresh belief in the revision formula, given yet further information that contradicts it. In a dynamic epistemic logical setting for belief revision, for multiple agents, we investigate what the (...) requirements are for revocable belief revision. By this we not merely mean recovering belief in non-modal propositions, as in the recovery principle for belief contraction, but recovering belief in modal propositions: beliefs about beliefs. These requirements are almost never met, a surprising result. (shrink)

In 1985 Alchourrón, Gärdenfors and Makinson presented their now classic theory of theory change . In 1988 Adam Grove, generalizing David Lewis's theory of counterfactuals, presented a model theory suitable for the AGM theory. Although AGM and Grove mentioned object languages, neither used them. But recently, Maarten de Rijke has shown how object languages can be brought into the picture. In the present paper we take de Rijke's idea further, addressing the question whether there is a particular doxastic or epistemic (...) logic implicit in AGM. (shrink)

We are fallible creatures, prone to making all sorts of mistakes. So, we should be open to evidence of error. But what constitutes such evidence? And what is it to rationally accommodate it? I approach these questions by considering an evolutionary debunking argument according to which (a) we have good, scientific, reason to think our moral beliefs are mistaken, and (b) rationally accommodating this requires revising our confidence in, or altogether abandoning the suspect beliefs. I present a dilemma for such (...) debunkers, which shows that either we have no reason to worry about our moral beliefs, or we do but we can self-correct. Either way, moral skepticism doesn’t follow. That the evolutionary debunking argument fails is important; also important, however, is what its failure reveals about rational belief revision. Specifically, it suggests that getting evidence of error is a non-trivial endeavor and that we cannot learn that we are likely to be mistaken about some matter from a neutral stance on that matter. (shrink)

When a new piece of information contradicts a currently held belief, one has to modify the set of beliefs in order to restore its consistency. In the case where it is necessary to give up a belief, some of them are less likely to be abandoned than others. The concept of epistemic entrenchment is used by some AI approaches to explain this fact based on formal properties of the belief set (e.g., transitivity). Two experiments were designed to (...) test the hypothesis that contrary to such views, (i) belief is naturally represented by degrees rather than in an all-or-nothing manner, (ii) entrenchment is primarily a matter of content and not only a matter of form, and (iii) consequently prior degree of belief is a powerful factor of change. The two experiments used Elio and Pelletier's (1997) paradigm in which participants were presented with full simple deductive arguments whose conclusion was denied, following which they were asked to decide which premise to revise. (shrink)

This paper aims at comparing and relating belief revision and argumentation as approaches to model reasoning processes. Referring to some prominent literature references in both fields, we will discuss their (implicit or explicit) assumptions on the modeled processes and hence commonalities and differences in the forms of reasoning they are suitable to deal with. The intended contribution is on one hand assessing the (not fully explored yet) relationships between two lively research fields in the broad area of defeasible (...) reasoning and on the other hand pointing out open issues and potential directions for future research. (shrink)

In the literature of belief revision, it is widely accepted that: there is only one revision phase in belief revision which is well characterized by the Bayes’ Rule, Jeffrey’s Rule, etc.. However, as I argue in this article, there are at least four successive phases in belief revision, namely first/second order evaluation and first/second order revision. To characterize these phases, I propose mainly four rules of belief revision based on agent’s (...) criteria, and make one composition rule to characterize belief revision as a whole. (shrink)

In this article, we propose a belief revision approach for families of (non-classical) logics whose semantics are first-order axiomatisable. Given any such (non-classical) logic , the approach enables the definition of belief revision operators for , in terms of a belief revision operation satisfying the postulates for revision theory proposed by Alchourrrdenfors and Makinson (AGM revision, Alchourrukasiewicz's many-valued logic. In addition, we present a general methodology to translate algebraic logics into classical logic. (...) For the examples provided, we analyse in what circumstances the properties of the AGM revision are preserved and discuss the advantages of the approach from both theoretical and practical viewpoints. (shrink)

The paper attacks the almost universally held view that belief revison theories, as they have been studied in the literature of the past two decades, are founded on a Principle of Minimal Change, or Principle of Informational Economy. The principle comes in two versions. According to the first, an agent should, when accepting new information, aim at a posterior belief set that minimizes the items on which it disagrees with the prior belief set. If there are different (...) ways to effect the belief change, then according to the second version, the agent should give up the beliefs that are least entrenched. Although widely endorsed and advertised by belief revision theorists, the paper argues that both versions of the principle are dogmas that are not in fact (and perhaps should not be) adhered to. Two simple mathematical observations substantiate this claim, and it is defended against four possible objections that involve contractions, reconstructions, dispositions, and truths. (shrink)

The theory of belief revision deals with (rational) changes in beliefs in response to new information. In the literature a distinction has been drawn between belief revision and belief update (see [6]). The former deals with situations where the objective facts describing the world do not change (so that only the beliefs of the agent change over time), while the letter allows for situations where both the facts and the doxastic state of the agent change (...) over time. We focus on belief revision and propose a temporal framework that allows for iterated revision. We model the notion of “minimal” or “conservative” belief revision by considering logics of increasing strength. We move from one logic to the next by adding one or more axioms and show that the corresponding logic captures more stringent notions of minimal belief revision. The strongest logic that we propose provides a full axiomatization of the well-known AGM theory of belief revision. (shrink)

We examine carefully the rationale underlying the approaches to belief change taken in the literature, and highlight what we view as methodological problems. We argue that to study belief change carefully, we must be quite explicit about the ontology or scenario underlying the belief change process. This is something that has been missing in previous work, with its focus on postulates. Our analysis shows that we must pay particular attention to two issues that have often been taken (...) for granted: the first is how we model the agent's epistemic state. (Do we use a set of beliefs, or a richer structure, such as an ordering on worlds? And if we use a set of beliefs, in what language are these beliefs are expressed?) We show that even postulates that have been called beyond controversy are unreasonable when the agent's beliefs include beliefs about her own epistemic state as well as the external world. The second is the status of observations. (Are observations known to be true, or just believed? In the latter case, how firm is the belief?) Issues regarding the status of observations arise particularly when we consider iterated belief revision, and we must confront the possibility of revising by and then by ¬. (shrink)

The Egli-Milner power-ordering is used to define verisimilitude orderings on theories from preference orderings on models. The effects of the definitions on constraints such as stopperedness and soundness are explored. Orderings on theories are seen to contain more information than orderings on models. Belief revision is defined in terms of both types of orderings, and conditions are given which make the two notions coincide.

Belief revision theories standardly endorse a principle of intensionality to the effect that ideal doxastic agents do not discriminate between pieces of information that are equivalent within classical logic. I argue that this principle should be rejected. Its failure, on my view, does not require failures of logical omniscience on the part of the agent, but results from a view of the update as _mighty_: as encoding what the agent learns might be the case, as well as what (...) must be. The view is motivated by consideration of a puzzle case, obtained by transposing into the context of belief revision a kind of scenario that Kit Fine has used to argue against intensionalism about counterfactuals. Employing the framework of truthmaker semantics, I go on to develop a novel account of belief revision, based on a conception of the update as mighty, which validates natural hyperintensional counterparts of the usual AGM postulates. (shrink)

‘Incongruity is never superfluous’Thea Arbee (2016) Is the superfluous a (new) modality?11. Even if much has been written about ingredients that trigger laughter, researchers are still far from hav...

We consider the connections between belief revision, conditional logic and nonmonotonic reasoning, using as a foundation the approach to theory change developed by Alchourrón, Gärdenfors and Makinson (the AGM approach). This is first generalized to allow the iteration of theory change operations to capture the dynamics of epistemic states according to a principle of minimal change of entrenchment. The iterative operations of expansion, contraction and revision are characterized both by a set of postulates and by Grove's construction (...) based on total pre-orders on the set of complete theories of the belief logic. We present a sound and complete conditional logic whose semantics is based on our iterative revision operation, but which avoids Gärdenfors's triviality result because of a severely restricted language of beliefs and hence the weakened scope of our extended postulates. In the second part of the paper, we develop a computational approach to theory dynamics using Rott's E-bases as a representation for epistemic states. Under this approach, a ranked E-base is interpreted as standing for the most conservative entrenchment compatible with the base, reflecting a kind of foundationalism in the acceptance of evidence for a belief. Algorithms for the computation of our iterative versions of expansion, contraction and revision are presented. Finally, we consider the relationship between nonmonotonic reasoning and both conditional logic and belief revision. Adapting the approach of Delgrande, we show that the unique extension of a default theory expressed in our conditional logic of belief revision corresponds to the most conservative belief state which respects the theory: however, this correspondence is limited to propositional default theories. Considering first order default theories, we present a belief revision algorithm which incorporates the assumption of independence of default instances and propose the use of a base logic for default reasoning which incorporates uniqueness of names. We conclude with an examination of the behavior of an implemented system on some of Lifschitz's benchmark problems in nonmonotonic reasoning. (shrink)

In this rather technical paper we establish a useful combination of belief revision and verisimilitude according to which better theories provide better predictions, and revising with more verisimilar data results in theories that are closer to the truth. Moreover, this paper presents two alternative definitions of refined verisimilitude, which are more perspicuous than the algebraic version used in previous publications.

The standard theory for belief revision provides an elegant and powerful framework for reasoning about how a rational agent should change its beliefs when confronted with new information. However, the agents considered are extremely idealized. Some recent models attempt to tackle the problem of plausible belief revision by adding structure to the belief bases and using nonstandard inference operations. One of the key ideas is that not all of an agent's beliefs are relevant for an (...) operation of belief change.In this paper we incorporate the insights pertaining to local change and relevance sensitivity with the use of approximate inference relations. These approximate inference relations offer us partial solutions at any stage of the revision process. The quality of the approximations improves as we allow for more and more resources to be used. We are provided with upper and lower bounds to what would be obtained with the use of classical inference. (shrink)

The paper attacks the widely held view that belief revision theories, as they have been studied in the past two decades, are founded on the Principle of Informational Economy. The principle comes in two versions. According to the first, an agent should, when accepting a new piece of information, aim at a minimal change of his previously held beliefs. If there are different ways to effect the belief change, then the agent should, according to he second version, (...) give up those beliefs that are least entrenched. Although widely proclaimed by belief revision theorists, I argue that both versions of the principle are dogmas that are not (and perhaps should not be) adhered to. I substantiate this claim with two simple mathematical observations, and I defend it against four possible objections that involve contractions, reconstructions, dispositions, and truths. (shrink)

We investigate the discrete (finite) case of the Popper–Renyi theory of conditional probability, introducing discrete conditional probabilistic models for knowledge and conditional belief, and comparing them with the more standard plausibility models. We also consider a related notion, that of safe belief, which is a weak (non-negatively introspective) type of “knowledge”. We develop a probabilistic version of this concept (“degree of safety”) and we analyze its role in games. We completely axiomatize the logic of conditional belief, knowledge (...) and safe belief over conditional probabilistic models. We develop a theory of probabilistic dynamic belief revision, introducing probabilistic “action models” and proposing a notion of probabilistic update product, that comes together with appropriate reduction laws. (shrink)