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A Brief Remark on Non-prioritized Belief Change and the Monotony Postulate

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Abstract

The AGM success postulates for belief expansions and revisions have been widely criticized. This has resulted in the development of a number of non-prioritized belief change theories that violate these postulates. It is shown that we must also discard the monotony postulate for belief expansions if we abandon the success postulates. Non-prioritized belief change theories should instead fulfill a weaker postulate, which we call Conditional Monotony.

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Notes

  1. Although the original paper by Alchourrón et al. (1985) is quite clear, the presentation in Gärdenfors (1988) is even more accessible.

  2. In this paper, I use the term “information” to denote any propositional input that is offered to the epistemic subject regardless of whether the subject decides to incorporate it or not. In contrast to that, any previously received information that has actually been incorporated is called a “belief” of the subject. The difference between these two terms was obscured in an earlier draft of this paper. I thank an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to this point as well as for some other helpful comments.

  3. A case in point is, for instance, Hansson’s (1999) revision procedure that involves two steps: (1) A non-closing expansion by the new information and (2) consolidation to reestablish consistency. Although this procedure prevents inconsistent new information from being incorporated in some cases, Hansson’s procedure still satisfies the success postulate for consistent new information. Cf. Sec. 3.12.

  4. See Hansson (1999, p. 238).

  5. The success postulate for expansions is sometimes also referred to as Weak Success. Cf., e.g., Fermé and Hansson (1999) and (Hansson (1997a).

  6. I have adapted this example for the present context from BonJour (1985).

References

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  1. University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

    Gordian Haas

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  1. Gordian Haas
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Haas, G. A Brief Remark on Non-prioritized Belief Change and the Monotony Postulate. Acta Anal 31, 319–322 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-015-0281-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-015-0281-9

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