Abstract

The process of revising the beliefs of the actors involved in receiving new information in the form of a representation‐occurrence, i.e. new and contradictory to their current beliefs, can lead to a radical transformation of the latter. This chapter describes two cases such as weak transformation of beliefs and the radical transformation of beliefs. The possible worlds semantics sets out several principles, two of which are of particular interest to us: the rational actor follows a principle of minimal change and seeks to preserve his most “rooted” beliefs. On the contrary, actors who would perform a level 3 Batesonian learning would ipso facto interpret given events in a different way than before, so that they would now interpret the same one in a context that has become different. Such learning would introduce a temporal disruption in individual actors' flow of thoughts, and consequently in the evolution of their network.