Ranking Functions for Belief Change - A Uniform Approach to Belief Revision and Belief Progression

Aaron Hunter

2014

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the use of ranking functions in reasoning about belief change. It is well-known that the semantics of belief revision can be defined either through total pre-orders or through ranking functions over states. While both approaches have similar expressive power with respect to single-shot belief revision, we argue that ranking functions provide distinct advantages at both the theoretical level and the practical level, particularly when actions are introduced. We demonstrate that belief revision induces a natural algebra over ranking functions, which treats belief states and observations in the same manner. When we introduce belief progression due to actions, we show that many natural domains can be easily represented with suitable ranking functions. Our formal framework uses ranking functions to represent belief revision and belief progression in a uniform manner; we demonstrate the power of our approach through formal results, as well as a series of natural problems in commonsense reasoning.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Hunter A. (2014). Ranking Functions for Belief Change - A Uniform Approach to Belief Revision and Belief Progression . In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 1: ICAART, ISBN 978-989-758-015-4, pages 412-419. DOI: 10.5220/0004812704120419

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icaart14,
author={Aaron Hunter},
title={Ranking Functions for Belief Change - A Uniform Approach to Belief Revision and Belief Progression},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 1: ICAART,},
year={2014},
pages={412-419},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004812704120419},
isbn={978-989-758-015-4},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 1: ICAART,
TI - Ranking Functions for Belief Change - A Uniform Approach to Belief Revision and Belief Progression
SN - 978-989-758-015-4
AU - Hunter A.
PY - 2014
SP - 412
EP - 419
DO - 10.5220/0004812704120419