LP-1998-01: Severe Withdrawal (and Recovery)

LP-1998-01: Rott, Hans and Pagnucco, Maurice (1998) Severe Withdrawal (and Recovery). [Report]

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Abstract

The problem of how to remove information from an agent's stock of beliefs is
of paramount concern in the belief change literature. An inquiring agent may
remove beliefs for a variety of reasons: a belief may be called into doubt or
the agent may simply wish to entertain other possiblities. In the prominent
AGM framework for belief change, upon which the work here is based, one of the
three central operations, contraction, addresses this concern (the other two
deal with the incorporation of new information). Makinson has generalised this
work by introducing the notion of a withdrawal operation.
Underlying the account proffered by AGM is the idea of rational belief change.
A belief change operation should be guided by certain principles or integrity
constraints in order to characterise change by a rational agent. One of the
most noted principles within the context of AGM is the Principle of
Informational Economy. However, adoption of this principle in its purest form
has been rejected by AGM leading to a more relaxed interpretation. In this
paper, we argue that this weakening of the Principle of Informational Economy
suggests that it is only one of a number of principles which should be taken
into account. Furthermore, this weakening points toward a Principle of
Indifference. This motivates the introduction of a new belief removal
operation that we call severe withdrawal. We provide rationality postulates
for severe withdrawal and explore its relationship with AGM contraction.
Moreover, we furnish possible worlds and epistemic entrenchment semantics for
severe withdrawals.

Key words: AGM, belief change, belief contraction, epistemic entrenchment,
severe withdrawal, systems of spheres.

Item Type:	Report
Report Nr:	LP-1998-01
Series Name:	Logic, Philosophy and Linguistics (LP)
Year:	1998
Date Deposited:	12 Oct 2016 14:40
Last Modified:	12 Oct 2016 14:40
URI:	https://eprints.illc.uva.nl/id/eprint/1261

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