Abstract
The paper provides a formal representation of goal systems. The focus is on three properties: consistency, conflict, and coherence. An aim is to attain conceptual clarity of these properties. It is argued that consistency is adequately regarded as a property relative to the decision situation or, more specifically, the set of alternatives that the agent faces. Moreover, as a condition of rationality, consistency is stronger than some writers have claimed. Conflict is adequately regarded as a relation over subsets of a given goal system and should likewise be regarded as relative to the set of alternatives that the agent faces. Coherence is given a probabilistic interpretation, based on a support relation over subsets of goal systems.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alchourrón, C. E., and E. Bulygin, Normative Systems, Springer, 1971.
Alchourrón C.E., Gärdenfors P. and Makinson D. (1985). ‘On the logic of theory chance: partial meet contraction and revision functions’. Journal of Symbolic Logic 50: 510–530
Allais, M., ‘The foundations of a positive theory of choice involving risk and a criticism of the postulates and axioms of the American school’, in M. Allais and O. Hagen (eds.), Expected Utility Hypotheses and the Allais Paradox, D. Reidel, 1953[1979].
Brendel E. (1999). ‘Coherence theory of knowledge: a gradational account’. Erkenntnis 50: 293–307
Broersen J., Dastani M., Hulstijn J. and van der Torre L. (2002). ‘Goal generation in the BOID architecture’. Cognitive Science Quarterly Journal 2: 428–447
da Costa Pereira, C., and A.G.B. Tettamanzi, ‘Goal generation with ordered beliefs’, pp. 133–144 in Basili, R., and M. T. Pazienza (eds.), AI*IA 2007: Artificial Intelligence and Human-Oriented Computing, Springer, 2007.
Dastani, M., and L. van der Torre, ‘Specifying the Merging of Desires into Goals in the Context of Beliefs’, in M. H. Shafazand and A. M. Tjoa (eds.), EurAsia ICT 2002: Proceedings of the First Eurasian Conference on Advances in Information and Communication Technology, Springer, 2002, pp. 824–831.
Edvardsson E. (2004). ‘Using goals in environmental management: the Swedish system of environmental objectives’. Environmental management 34: 170–180
Edvardsson, K., ‘Rational environmental goals and sustainable planning’, in U. Mander, C. A. Brebbia, and E. Tiezzi (eds.), The Sustainable City IV: Urban Regeneration and Sustainability, WTI Press, 2006, pp. 477–486.
Edvardsson, K., How to Set Rational Environmental Goals: Theory and Applications, Licentiate thesis, Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm), 2006.
Edvardsson E. and Hansson S.O. (2005). ‘When is a goal rational?’. Social Choice and Welfare 24: 343–361
de Finetti B. (1937). ‘La prévision: ses lois logiques, ses sources subjectives’. Annales de l’Institut Henri Poincaré 7: 1–68
Fuhrmann, A., An Essay on Contraction, CSLI Publications (Stanford), 1997.
Gärdenfors, P., Knowledge in Flux. Modeling the Dynamics of Epistemic States, MIT Press, 1988.
Hansson, S. O., Belief Base Dynamics, PhD thesis, Uppsala University, 1991.
Hansson, S. O., A Textbook of Belief Dynamics. Theory Change and Database Updating, Kluwer, 1999.
Hansson S.O. (2000). ‘Formalization in philosophy’. Bullentin of Symbolic Logic 6: 162–175
Hansson, S. O., ‘Preference logic’, in D. M. Gabbay and F. Guenthner (eds.), Handbook of Philosophical Logic, vol. 4 (2nd ed.), Dordrecht, 2001, pp. 319–393.
Hansson S.O. (2006). ‘Coherence in epistemology and belief revision’. Philosophical Studies 128: 93–108
Hansson, S. O., and D. Makinson, ‘Applying normative rules with restraint’, in M. L. Dalla Chiara (ed.), Logic and Scientific Methods, Kluwer, 1997, pp. 313–332.
Hansson S.O. and Olsson E.J. (1999). ‘Providing foundations for coherentism’. Erkenntnis 51: 243–265
Keeney, R. L., and H. Raiffa, Decisions with Multiple Objectives. Preferences and Value Tradeoffs, Cambridge University Press, 1993 (first published in 1976).
Krantz D.H., Raiffa H. and Tversky A. (1971). Foundations of Measurement. Part I. Additive and Polynomial Representation. Academic Press, New York
Levi, I., The Enterprise of Knowledge, MIT Press, 1980.
Levi, I., Decisions and Revisions, Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Lewis, C. I., An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, Open Court (LaSalle, Ill.), 1946.
Mele, A. R., and P. Rawling (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Rationality, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Millgram E. (2000). ‘Coherence: the price of the ticket’. Journal of Philosophy 97: 82–93
Olsson E.J. (1997). ‘A coherence interpretation of semi-revision’. Theoria 63: 105–134
Olsson E.J. (1998). ‘Making beliefs coherent: the substraction and addition strategies’. Journal of Logic, Language and Information 7: 143–163
Olsson E.J. (2002). ‘What is the problem of coherence and truth?’. Journal of Philosophy 99: 246–272
Olsson, E. J., Against Coherence. Truth, Probability, and Justification, Oxford University Press, 2005.
Rahwan, I., and L. Amgoud, ‘An argumentation based approach for practical reasoning’, in P. Stone, and G. Weiss (eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems AAMAS ’06, ACM (New York), 2006, pp. 347–354.
Ramsey, F.P., ‘Truth and probability’, in R. B. Braithwaite (ed.), The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays, Humanities Press, 1931.
Richardson, H. S., Practical Reasoning about Final Ends, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Rosencrantz, H., ‘Rational policy goals: road safety in Scandinavia’, in D. A. Brebbia and V. Dolezel (eds.), Urban Transport XII. Urban Transport and the Environment in the 21st Century, WIT Press, 2006, pp. 151–157.
Rosencrantz H., Edvardsson K. and Hansson S.O. (2007). ‘Vision Zero: is it irrational?’. Transportation Research Part A. Policy and Practice 41: 559–567
Russell, B., Human Society in Ethics and Politics, Allen and Unwin, 1954.
Savage, L., The Foundations of Statistics, Wiley, 1954.
Sen A.K. (1969). ‘Quasi-transitivity, rational choice and collective decisions’. Review of Economic Studies 35: 381–393
Sen A.K. (1971). ‘Choice functions and revealed preference’. Review of Economic Studies 38: 307–317
Sen, A. K., Rationality and Freedom, Belknapp Press of Harvard University, 2002.
Shapiro, S., Y. Lesp´erance, and H.J. Levesque, ‘Goal change’, in L. Pack Kaelbling and A. Saffiotti (eds.), IJCAI-05. Proceedings of the Nineteenth Internat. Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Professional Book Center, 2005, pp. 582–588.
Shogenji T. (1999). ‘Is coherence truth-conducive?’. Analysis LIX: 338–345
Simon, H., Reason in Human Affairs, Basil Blackwell, 1983.
Spohn W. (2002). ‘The many facets of the concept of rationality’. Croatian Journal of Philosophy 2: 247–262
Tarski, A., Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics. Papers from 1923 to 1938, Clarendon Press, 1956.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rosencrantz, H. Properties of Goal Systems: Consistency, Conflict, and Coherence. Stud Logica 89, 37–58 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11225-008-9117-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11225-008-9117-6