Finding minimal observation set for finite (belief) state set in non-deterministic planning

Author(s):  
Zhi-Hua Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Ralph Wedgwood

Wedgwood focuses his discussion around two evaluative concepts: correctness and rationality. Wedgwood proposes that these two concepts are related in the following way: one belief state is more rational than another if and only if the first has less expected inaccuracy than the former. He argues, however, that this view should not be understood as a form of consequentialism since it is not the total consequences of a belief state that determine its rationality. The view is rather a version of epistemic teleology. Wedgwood deploys this view to illuminate the difference between synchronic and diachronic evaluation of belief states as well as to disarm objections that have been leveled against epistemic consequentialism.


Mental fragmentation is the thesis that the mind is fragmented, or compartmentalized. Roughly, this means that an agent’s overall belief state is divided into several sub-states—fragments. These fragments need not make for a consistent and deductively closed belief system. The thesis of mental fragmentation became popular through the work of philosophers like Christopher Cherniak, David Lewis, and Robert Stalnaker in the 1980s. Recently, it has attracted great attention again. This volume is the first collection of essays devoted to the topic of mental fragmentation. It features important new contributions by leading experts in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language. Opening with an accessible Introduction providing a systematic overview of the current debate, the fourteen essays cover a wide range of issues: foundational issues and motivations for fragmentation, the rationality or irrationality of fragmentation, fragmentation’s role in language, the relationship between fragmentation and mental files, and the implications of fragmentation for the analysis of implicit attitudes.


Author(s):  
LAURENT PERRUSSEL ◽  
JEAN-MARC THÉVENIN

This paper focuses on the features of belief change in a multi-agent context where agents consider beliefs and disbeliefs. Disbeliefs represent explicit ignorance and are useful to prevent agents to entail conclusions due to their ignorance. Agents receive messages holding information from other agents and change their belief state accordingly. An agent may refuse to adopt incoming information if it prefers its own (dis)beliefs. For this, each agent maintains a preference relation over its own beliefs and disbeliefs in order to decide if it accepts or rejects incoming information whenever inconsistencies occur. This preference relation may be built by considering several criteria such as the reliability of the sender of statements or temporal aspects. This process leads to non-prioritized belief revision. In this context we first present the * and − operators which allow an agent to revise, respectively contract, its belief state in a non-prioritized way when it receives an incoming belief, respectively disbelief. We show that these operators behave properly. Based on this we then illustrate how the receiver and the sender may argue when the incoming (dis)belief is refused. We describe pieces of dialog where (i) the sender tries to convince the receiver by sending arguments in favor of the original (dis)belief and (ii) the receiver justifies its refusal by sending arguments against the original (dis)belief. We show that the notion of acceptability of these arguments can be represented in a simple way by using the non-prioritized change operators * and −. The advantage of argumentation dialogs is twofold. First whenever arguments are acceptable the sender or the receiver reconsider its belief state; the main result is an improvement of the reconsidered belief state. Second the sender may not be aware of some sets of rules which act as constraints to reach a specific conclusion and discover them through argumentation dialogs.


2019 ◽  
pp. 213-238
Author(s):  
Francesco Berto ◽  
Mark Jago

The case for making belief states the primary focus of our analysis and for including impossible worlds in that analysis is outlined in this chapter. This allows the reader to deny various closure principles, although this won’t help defeat worries about external-world scepticism. The issue that concerns the authors most is the problem of bounded rationality: belief states seem to be closed under ‘easy’ trivial consequence, but not under full logical consequence, and yet the former implies the latter. The solution presented here is that some trivial closure principle must fail on a given belief state, yet it is indeterminate just where this occurs. Formal models of belief states along these lines are given and it is shown that they respect the indeterminacy-of-closure intuition. Finally, the chapter discusses how we might square this approach with the fact that some people seem to believe contradictions.


Author(s):  
Miguel Ángel Lozada Aguilar ◽  
Andrei Khrennikov ◽  
Klaudia Oleschko

As was recently shown by the authors, quantum probability theory can be used for the modelling of the process of decision-making (e.g. probabilistic risk analysis) for macroscopic geophysical structures such as hydrocarbon reservoirs. This approach can be considered as a geophysical realization of Hilbert's programme on axiomatization of statistical models in physics (the famous sixth Hilbert problem). In this conceptual paper , we continue development of this approach to decision-making under uncertainty which is generated by complexity, variability, heterogeneity, anisotropy, as well as the restrictions to accessibility of subsurface structures. The belief state of a geological expert about the potential of exploring a hydrocarbon reservoir is continuously updated by outputs of measurements, and selection of mathematical models and scales of numerical simulation. These outputs can be treated as signals from the information environment E . The dynamics of the belief state can be modelled with the aid of the theory of open quantum systems: a quantum state (representing uncertainty in beliefs) is dynamically modified through coupling with E ; stabilization to a steady state determines a decision strategy. In this paper, the process of decision-making about hydrocarbon reservoirs (e.g. ‘explore or not?'; ‘open new well or not?’; ‘contaminated by water or not?’; ‘double or triple porosity medium?’) is modelled by using the Gorini–Kossakowski–Sudarshan–Lindblad equation. In our model, this equation describes the evolution of experts' predictions about a geophysical structure. We proceed with the information approach to quantum theory and the subjective interpretation of quantum probabilities (due to quantum Bayesianism). This article is part of the theme issue ‘Hilbert's sixth problem’.


Author(s):  
Matthew Haigh ◽  
Jean-François Bonnefon

We examine how the beliefs and desires of a protagonist are used by readers to predict their intentions as a narrative vignette unfolds. Eye movement measures revealed that readers rapidly inferred an intention when the protagonist desired an outcome, even when this inference was not licensed by the protagonist’s belief state. Reading was immediately disrupted when participants encountered a described action that contradicted this inference. During intermediate processing, desire inferences were moderated by the protagonist’s belief state. Effects that emerged later in the text were again driven solely by the protagonist’s desires. These data suggest that desire-based inferences are initially drawn irrespective of belief state, but are then quickly inhibited if not licensed by relevant beliefs. This inhibition of desire-based inferences may be an effortful process as it was not systematically sustained in later steps of processing.


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