Technical reports

Belief revision and a theory of communication

Julia Rose Galliers

May 1990, 30 pages

DOI: 10.48456/tr-193

Abstract

This report concerns choices about changing belief. It describes research to establish and model a principled theoretical basis by which rational agents autonomously choose whether, as well as how to revise their beliefs. Aspects of the various problems in belief revision are discussed, and solved in the context of an AI tool for reason maintenance extended to cover situations of new evidence as not assumed ‘truth’. Primarily this results from the inclusion of a non numeric theory of strength of belief, which relates strength to persistence in the context of challenge. Such autonomous belief revision is presented as the basis of a theory of communication, as a special case of reasoning about change in an uncertain world with incomplete information, comprising others similarly constrained.

Full text

PDF (2.2 MB)

BibTeX record

@TechReport{UCAM-CL-TR-193,
  author =	 {Galliers, Julia Rose},
  title = 	 {{Belief revision and a theory of communication}},
  year = 	 1990,
  month = 	 may,
  url = 	 {https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-193.pdf},
  institution =  {University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory},
  doi = 	 {10.48456/tr-193},
  number = 	 {UCAM-CL-TR-193}
}