Interrogative Belief Revision
Author
Summary, in English
This thesis deals with the theory of interrogative belief revision, a recent development in the subfield of philosophical logic known as belief revision theory. While classical belief revision theory deals with the dynamics of an agent’s beliefs, interrogative belief revision aims to describe the dynamics of the agent’s questions about the world, or research agenda, as well. Great emphasis is put on the interaction between belief change and changes in the research agenda.
I develop both the technical framework for this theory by constructing and investigating modal logics for reasoning about the dynamics of research interests, as well as pursuing further the philosophical foundations and applications of the theory. Among the contributions of the thesis are:
- a novel interpretation of the theory founded on a notion of epistemic strategies
- a solution to the previously open problem of contraction and revision in this context
- several systems of modal logic that can be used to reason about interrogative belief revision
- completeness results and decidability results for these logics
- a characterization of a class of relevant conditionals based on a notion of agenda relevance
I develop both the technical framework for this theory by constructing and investigating modal logics for reasoning about the dynamics of research interests, as well as pursuing further the philosophical foundations and applications of the theory. Among the contributions of the thesis are:
- a novel interpretation of the theory founded on a notion of epistemic strategies
- a solution to the previously open problem of contraction and revision in this context
- several systems of modal logic that can be used to reason about interrogative belief revision
- completeness results and decidability results for these logics
- a characterization of a class of relevant conditionals based on a notion of agenda relevance
Department/s
Publishing year
2011
Language
English
Document type
Dissertation
Topic
- Philosophy
Keywords
- belief revision
- questions
- modal logic
- research agenda
Status
Published
Supervisor
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISBN: 978-91-7473-189-7
Defence date
21 November 2011
Defence time
10:00
Defence place
Sal 104, Kungshuset, Lundagård, Lund
Opponent
- Alexandru Baltag (ass prof)