Belief Dependence, Revision and Persistence

摘要

A rational formalism which makes the choice between belief revision and beliefpersistence computable is presented. A rational agent, when confronted with information inconsistency with his beliefs will either revise his beliefs in order to incorporate this new information, or persist in his beliefs and reject this information. A less rational agent even may revise his beliefs without there being a real conflict with the new information. A rational balance strategy between belief revision and belief persistence in a multiple agent environment is proposed based on the framework of logic of belief dependence. The proposed strategy, called the 'confidence priority strategy', has the impact that the more confidently a formula is believed by an informant, the more credible the belief is. The strategy is plausible for cooperative multiple agent environments. The distinct roles played by the agents are determined in order to capture an intuitive understanding of the strategy.