Concept

Belief revision

Overview

Belief revision (also called belief change) is the process of changing beliefs to take into account a new piece of information. The logical formalization of belief revision is researched in philosophy, in databases, and in artificial intelligence for the design of rational agents.

What makes belief revision non-trivial is that several different ways for performing this operation may be possible. For example, if the current knowledge includes the three facts "

A

{\displaystyle A}

is true", "

B

{\displaystyle B}

is true" and "if

A

{\displaystyle A}

and

B

{\displaystyle B}

are true then

C

{\displaystyle C}

is true", the introduction of the new information "

C

{\displaystyle C}

is false" can be done preserving consistency only by removing at least one of the three facts. In this case, there are at least three different ways for performing revision. In general, there may be several different ways for changing knowledge.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.

1. Wherever there is change, there is instability, and instability is proof of something the matter, of absence, deficiency, incompleteness. These are the ideas common to the connection between change, becoming and perishing, and Non-Being, finitude and imperfection. Hence complete and true Reality must be changeless, unalterable, so full of Being that it always and forever maintains itself in fixed rest and repose. As…

   John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy

   States what Belief revision is.

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2. It doubtless makes little difference whether a disease be attributed to big or little, black or red, demons or whether the cause be represented by a, b, or c, etc. But where data and hypotheses are such as are capable of verification, i.e., of mutually checking up each other, a change in one without a corresponding modification of the other is the principle of all formal fallacies.[18]

   John Dewey, Creative Intelligence

   States what Belief revision is.

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3. An opinion therefore or belief may be most accurately defined, _a lively idea related to or associated with a present impression_.[6] Here are the heads of those arguments, which lead us to this conclusion. When we infer the existence of an object from that of others, some object must always be present either to the memory or senses, in order to be the foundation of our reasoning; since the mind cannot run up with…

   David Hume, Philosophical Works, v. 1

   Close in meaning to Belief revision; the term itself is not named.

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Philosophers who discussed Belief revision

• Sven Ove Hansson

Related ideas

• Foundationalism
• Artificial intelligence
• Philosophy
• If and only if
• Propositional variable
• Logical equivalence
• Social choice theory
• Reflexive relation
• Frank P. Ramsey
• Coherentism
• Model checking
• Logical consequence
• Logic
• Computational complexity theory
• Possible world
• Deductive closure
• Cyc
• David Makinson

Place in the tradition

Part of Agnosticism.

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