Rational evaluation in belief revision

Yongfeng Yuan

pp. 2311-2336

in: Gergely Szekely (ed), Logic and relativity theory, Synthese 192 (7), 2015.

Abstract

We introduce a new operator, called rational evaluation, in belief change. The operator evaluates new information according to the agent’s core beliefs, and then exports the plausible part of the new information. It belongs to the decision module in belief change. We characterize rational evaluation by axiomatic postulates and propose two functional constructions for it, based on the well-known constructions of kernel sets and remainder sets, respectively. The main results of the paper are two representation theorems with respect to the two functional constructions. We also compare and connect the evaluation operator with some related operators in belief revision, including contraction, set contraction, and prioritized multiple revision.