Abstract
A sentence A is epistemically less entrenched in a belief state K than a sentence B if and only if a person in belief state K who is forced to give up either A or B will give up A and hold on to B. This is the fundamental idea of epistemic entrenchment as introduced by Gärdenfors (1988) and elaborated by Gärdenfors and Makinson (1988). Another distinguishing feature of relations of epistemic entrenchment is that they permit particularly simple and elegant construction recipes for minimal changes of belief states. These relations, however, are required to satisfy rather demanding conditions. In the present paper we liberalize the concept of epistemic entrenchment by removing connectivity, minimality and maximality conditions. Correspondingly, we achieve a liberalization of the concept of rational belief change that does no longer presuppose the postulates of success and rational monotony. We show that the central results of Gärdenfors and Makinson are preserved in our more flexible setting. Moreover, the generalized concept of epistemic entrenchment turns out to be applicable also to relational and iterated belief changes.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
AlchourrónC., GärdenforsP., and MakinsonD., 1985, “On the logic of theory change: partial meet contraction and revision functions,” Journal of Symbolic Logic 50, 510–530.
AlchourrónC. and MakinsonD., 1985, “On the logic of theory change: safe contraction,” Studia Logica 44, 405–422.
AlchourrónC. and MakinsonD., 1986, “Maps between some different kinds of contraction function: the finite case,” Studia Logica 45, 187–198.
Fuhrmann, A., 1988, Relevant Logics, Modal Logics, and Theory Change, PhD thesis, Australian National University, Canberra.
GärdenforsP., 1988, Knowledge in Flux: Modeling the Dynamics of Epistemic States, Bradford Books, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
GärdenforsP. and MakinsonD., 1988, “Revisions of knowledge systems using epistemic entrenchment.” pp. 83–95 in Theoretical Aspects of Reasoning About Knowledge, M.Vardi, ed., Los Altos, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.
GinsbergM., 1986, “Counterfactuals,” Artificial Intelligence 30, 35–79.
HerzbergerH., 1973, “Ordinal preference and rational choice,” Econometrica 41, 187–237.
KatsunoH. and MendelssonA., 1992, “On the difference between updating a knowledge base and revising it.” forthcoming in Belief Revision, P.Gärdenfors, ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
KratzerA., 1981, “Partition and revision: the semantics of counterfactuals,” Journal of Philosophical Logic 10, 201–216.
KrausS., LehmannD., and MagidorM., 1990, “Nonmonotonic reasoning, preferential models and cumulative logics,” Artificial Intelligence 44, 167–207.
Lehmann, D. and Magidor, M., 1990, “What does a conditional knowledge base entail?,” Leibniz Center for Research in Computer Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, TR-90-10 (to appear in Artificial Intelligence).
LewisD., 1981, “Ordering semantics and premise semantics for counterfactuals,” Journal of Philosophical Logic 10, 217–234.
LindströmS. and RabinowiczW., 1991, “Epistemic entrenchment with incomparabilities and relational belief revision.” pp. 93–126 in The Logic of Theory Change, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 465, A.Fuhrmann and M.Morreau, eds., Berlin: Springer.
MakinsonD., 1989, “General theory of cumulative inference.” pp. 1–18 in Non-Monotonic Reasoning-Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop 1988, M.Reinfrank et al., eds., Berlin: Springer.
MakinsonD., 1990, “General patterns in nonmonotonic reasoning.” forthcoming in Handbook of Logic in Artificial Intelligence and Logic Programming, Vol. II: Nonmonotonic and Uncertain Reasoning, D.M.Gabbay et al., eds., Oxford: Oxford UP.
MakinsonD. and GärdenforsP., 1991, “Relations between the logic of theory change and nonmonotonic logic.” pp. 185–205 in The Logic of Theory Change, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 465, A.Fuhrmann and M.Morreau, eds., Berlin: Springer.
MorreauM. and RottH., 1991, “Is it impossible to keep up to data?” pp. 233–243 in Nonmonotonic and Inductive Logic-Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop 1990, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 543, J.Dix, K. P.Jantke and P. H.Schmitt, eds., Berlin: Springer.
NebelB., 1989, “A knowledge level analysis of belief revision.” pp. 301–311 in Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Resasoning, R.Brachman, H.Levesque and R.Reiter, eds., San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.
RottH., 1991a, “Two methods of constructing contractions and revisions of knowledge systems,” Journal of Philosophical Logic 20, 149–173.
RottH., 1991b, “A nonmonotonic conditional logic for belief revision I.” pp. 135–183 in The Logic of Theory Change, A.Fuhrmann and M.Morreau, eds., Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 465, Berlin: Springer.
RottH., 1992, “On the logic of theory change: more maps between different kinds of contraction function.” forthcoming in Belief Revision, P.Gärdenfors, ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
SenA., 1982, Choice, Welfare and Measurement, Oxford: Blackwell.
VeltmanF., 1976, “Prejudices, presuppositions and the theory of counterfactuals.” pp. 248–281 in Amsterdam Papers of Formal Grammar, Vol. I, J.Groenendijk and M.Stokhof, eds., Amsterdam: Centrale Interfaculteit, Universiteit Amsterdam.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rott, H. Preferential belief change using generalized epistemic entrenchment. J Logic Lang Inf 1, 45–78 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00203386
Received:
Revised:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00203386