Abstract
The notion of preference is important in philosophy, decision theory, and many other disciplines. It is the interplay of information and preferences that provides the driving force behind what we actually do. The chapter adds a new focus and argues that preference is not static, instead, it changes dynamically when triggered by various kinds of events. We show that how a wide variety of preference changes can be modeled in logic, thereby providing the formal philosopher with a natural extension of the scope of inquiry in the area of preference.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
One might argue that this preference change has a cause, if not a reason: ‘getting bored’ with what we have. But we will not pursue this line.
- 2.
One might also say that this preference change is triggered by information that a moral authority made the statement.
- 3.
This raises delicate issues of consistency of agents’ preferences over time, that have been studied in philosophy and economics, see [24].
- 4.
In this chapter, we use pre-orders since we want to allow for cases where different worlds are incomparable. Total preference orders, the norm in areas like game theory, provide an interesting specialization for our analysis.
- 5.
These models are often called ‘betterness models’ since one may want to reserve the term ‘preference’ for an induced relation between propositions viewed as types of situations. We will not discuss this propositional view of preference, though it is in harmony with our analysis.
- 6.
This very operation was proposed in the early source [70].
- 7.
An alternative notation for this and other preference transformations is in terms of ‘program notation’ for the new relation created our of the old relation R. For radical upgrade, this would be ⇑ φ(R) := (?φ; R; ?φ) ∪ (?¬φ; R; ?¬φ) ∪
- 8.
Hansson [29] looked at the changes caused by multiple or several sentences and showed its relationship with single step change.
- 9.
- 10.
An early source for the idea that conditionals effect model changes is [60], which explains conditionals as changing current rankings among worlds.
- 11.
We will state only one way of deriving preferences, taken from [1].
- 12.
van Benthem and Grossi [67] suggest that classic scenarios from meta-ethics provide systematic cues for extracting, not just deontic inferences as is usually done, but also normative priority structure, as well as relevant changes in both.
- 13.
An example is deleting redundant double occurrences of the same proposition.
- 14.
These are the two main topics of [44].
- 15.
Such statements are crucial to analyzing off-equilibrium play in games.
- 16.
A complete dynamic logic of belief change also needs recursion axioms for conditional beliefs and for the existential modality.
- 17.
Here are two illustrations, with link-cutting operation as our knowledge update and ‘suggestion’ as our betterness upgrade: (i) 〈†φ〉〈≤〉ψ ↔〈≤〉〈†φ〉ψ., (ii) 〈♯φ〉〈K〉ψ ↔〈K〉〈♯φ〉ψ.
References
Andréka, H., Ryan, M., & Schobbens, P.-Y. (2002). Operators and laws for combining preferential relations. Journal of Logic and Computation, 12, 12–53.
Aucher, G. (2003). A combined system for update logic and belief revision. Master’s thesis, MoL-2003-03. ILLC, University of Amsterdam.
Aucher, G. (2008). Perspectives on belief and change. Ph.D. thesis, Université de Toulouse.
Baltag, A., Moss, L., & Solecki, S. (1998). The logic of common knowledge, public announcements, and private suspicions. In I. Gilboa (Ed.), Proceedings of the 7th Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge (TARK 98) (pp. 43–56).
Baltag, A., & Smets, S. (2006). Dynamic belief revision over multi-agent plausibility models. In Proceedings of the 7th Conference on Logic and the Foundations of Game and Decision Theory (LOFT 06), Liverpool.
Baltag, A., & Smets, S. (2008). A qualitative theory of dynamic interactive belief revision. In M. W. G. Bonanno & W. van der Hoek (Eds.), Logic and the foundations of game and decision theory (Texts in logic and games, Vol. 3). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Baltag, A., Christoff, Z., Hansen, J. U., & Smets, S. (2008). Logical models of informational cascades. In J. van Benthem & F. Liu (Eds.), Logic across the university: Foundations and applications, Proceedings of the Tsinghua Logic Conference (Studies in logic, Vol. 47, pp. 405–432). London: College Publications.
Baltag, A., Liu, F., Shi, C., & Smets, S. (2017). Belief aggregation via Markov chain. Ongoing work, ILLC, University of Amsterdam.
Belnap, N., Perloff, M., & Xu, M. (2001). Facing the future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Boutilier, C. (1994). Conditional logics of normality: A modal approach. Artificial Intelligence, 68, 87–154.
Boutilier, C., & Goldszmidt, M. (1993). Revision by conditional beliefs. In Proceedings of AAAI’93 (pp. 594–599).
Bovens, L., & Ferreira, J. L. (2010). Monty Hall drives a wedge between Judy Benjamin and the Sleeping Beauty. A reply to Bovens. Analysis, 70(3), 473–481.
Christoff, Z. (2016). Dynamic logics of networks. Information flow and the spread of opinion. Ph.D. dissertation, ILLC, University of Amsterdam.
Dastani, M., Huang, Z., & van der Torre, L. (2000). Dynamic desires. Journal of Applied Non-classical Logics, 12, 200–202.
de Jongh, D., & Liu, F. (2009). Preference, priorities and belief. In T. Grune-Yanoff & S. Hansson (Eds.), Preference change: Approaches from philosophy, economics and psychology (Theory and decision library, pp. 85–108). Dordrecht: Springer.
Dietrich, F., & List, C. (2013). Where do preferences come from? International Journal of Game Theory, 42(3), 613–637.
Dretske, F. (1981). Knowledge and the flow of information. Oxford: Blackwell.
Fillion, N. (2007). Treating knowledge and preferences in game theory via modal logic. Technical report, The University of Western Ontario.
Gabbay, D. M. (2010). Sampling logic and argumentation networks: A manifesto. Manuscript, King’s College London.
Girard, P. (2008). Modal logics for belief and preference change. Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University.
Girard, P., Liu, F., & Seligman, J. (2011). Logic in the community. In Proceedings of the 4th Indian Conference on Logic and its Applications (LNCS, Vol. 6521, pp. 178–188). Springer.
Grossi, D. (2011). An application of model checking games to abstract argumentation. In J. H. van Ditmarsch & S. Ju (Eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Logic, Rationality and Interaction (LORI 2009). (FoLLI-LNAI, Vol. 6953 pp. 74–86). Springer.
Grove, A. (1988). Two modellings for theory change. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 17, 157–170.
Grune-Yanoff, T., & Hansson, S. (Eds.) (2009). Preference change: Approaches from philosophy, economics and psychology (Theory and decision library). Springer.
Hallden, S. (1957). On the logic of “better”. Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup. [Pioneer work in preference logic.]
Hansson, S. (1990). Preference-based deontic logic. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 19, 75–93.
Hansson, S. (1995). Changes in preference. Theory and Decision, 38, 1–28. [The first work to study preference change using AGM framework.]
Hansson, S. (2001). Preference logic. In D. Gabbay & F. Guenthner (Eds.), Handbook of philosophical logic (Vol. 4, pp. 319–393). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Hansson, S. (2010). Multiple and iterated contraction reduced to single-step single-sentence contraction. Synthese, 173, 153–177.
Hansson, S., & Grüne-Yanoff, T. (2006). Preferences. In Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Stanford. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/preferences/.
Hansen, P. G., & Hendricks, V. F. (2014). Infostorms: How to take information punches and save democracy. Cham: Copernicus Books/Springer.
Hendricks, V. (2003). Active agents. Journal of Logic, Language and Information, 12, 469–495.
Hill, B. (2009). Three analyses of source grapes. In T. Grune-Yanoff & S. Hansson (Eds.), Preference change: Approaches from philosophy, economics and psychology (Theory and decision library, pp. 27–56). Springer, Dordrecht.
Holliday, W. H. (2010). Epistemic logic and relevant alternatives. In M. Slavkovik (Ed.), Proceedings of the 15th Student Session of the European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (pp. 4–16).
Hoshi, T. (2009). Epistemic dynamics and protocol information. Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University.
Icard, T., Pacuit, E., & Shoham, Y. (2010). Joint revision of beliefs and intentions. In Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on the Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR 2010) (pp. 572–574). AAAI Publications.
Jeffrey, R. (1965). The logic of decision. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ju, F., & Liu, F. (2011). Update semantics for imperatives with priorities. In J. L. H. van Ditmarsch & S. Ju (Eds.), Proceedings of the 3nd International Workshop on Logic, Rationality and Interaction (LORI 2011) (FoLLI-LNAI, Vol. 6953, pp. 127–140). Springer.
Lang, J., van der Torre, L., & Weydert, E. (2003). Hidden uncertainty in the logical representation of desires. In Proceedings of the 18th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI’03) (pp. 189–231).
Lang, J., & van der Torre, L. (2008). From belief change to preference change. In Proceedings of the 18th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-2008) (pp. 351–355). [Explore various kinds of preference change, and the connection between belief revision and preference change.]
Liang, Z., & Seligman, J. (2011). A logical model of the dynamics of peer pressure. Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, 278, 275–288.
List, C. & Pettit, P. (2002). Aggregating sets of judgments: An impossibility result. Economics and Philosophy, 18, 89–110.
Liu, F. (2008). Changing for the better: Preference dynamics and agent diversity. Ph.D. thesis, ILLC, University of Amsterdam.
Liu, F. (2011a). Reasoning about preference dynamics (Synthese library, Vol. 354). Springer, Dordrecht.
Liu, F. (2011b). A two-level perspective on preference. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 40, 421–439. [Provide a richer structure of reason-based preference and study the dynamics of reasons and preference.]
Liu, F., Seligman, J., & Girard, P. (2014). Logical dynamics of belief change in the community. Synthese, 191(11), 2403–2431.
McClure, S. (2011). Decision making. Lecture slides SS100. Stanford University.
Nayak, A., Nelson, P., & Polansky, H. (1996). Belief change as change in epistemic entrenchment. Synthese, 109(2), 143–174.
Nozick, R. (1981). Philosophical explanations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Osborne, M., & Rubinstein, A. (1994). A course in game theory. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Osherson, D., & Weinstein, S. (2012). Preference based on reasons. The Review of Symbolic Logic, 5(1), 122–147.
Osherson, D., & Weinstein, S. (2014). Quantified preference logic. arXiv:1208.2921
Osherson, D., & Weinstein, S. (2014). Deontic modality based on preference. arXiv:1409.0824
Pacuit, E., Parikh, R., & Cogan, E. (2006). The logic of knowledge based on obligation. Synthese, 149, 311–341.
Reisner, A., & Steglich-Petersen, A. (Eds.) (2011). Reasons for belief. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rott, H. (2001). Change, choice and inference: A study of belief and revision and nonmonotonic reasoning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Savage, L. (1954). The foundations of statistics. New York: Wiley.
Searle, J. R., & Veken, D. v. d. (1985). Foundations of illocutionary logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Segerberg, K. (2001). The basic dynamic doxastic logic of AGM’. In M.-A. Williams & H. Rott (Eds.), Frontiers in belief revision (pp. 57–84). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Spohn, W. (1988). Ordinal conditional functions: A dynamic theory of epistemic states. In W. Harper & B. Skyrms (Eds.), Causation in decision, belief change and statistics II (pp. 105–134). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Spohn, W. (2009). Why the received models of considering preference change must fail. In T. Grune-Yanoff & S. Hansson (Eds.), Preference change: Approaches from philosophy, economics and psychology (Theory and decision library, pp. 109–121). Springer, Dordrecht.
Thomason, R., & Gupta, A. (1980). A theory of conditionals in the context of branching time. Philosophical Review, 89(1), 65–90.
Uckelman, J., & Endris, U. (2008). Preference modeling by weighted goals with max aggregation. In G. Brewka & J. Lang (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR-2008) (pp. 579–587). Menlo Park: AAAI Press.
van Benthem, J. (2007). Dynamic logic for belief revision. Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logic, 17, 129–156.
van Benthem, J. (2011a). Exploring a theory of play. In K. R. Apt (Ed.), Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge (TARK-2011) (pp. 12–16). ACM.
van Benthem, J. (2011b). Logical dynamics of information and interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Provide both conceptual and technical introduction to dynamic epistemic logic, as well as its applications.]
van Benthem, J., & Grossi, D. (2011). Normal forms for priority graphs. Technical Report PP-2011-02, ILLC, University of Amsterdam.
van Benthem, J., Grossi, D., & Liu, F. (2010). Deontics = betterness + priority. In G. Governatori & G. Sartor (Eds.), Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Deontic Logic in Computer Science, DEON 2010 (LNAI, Vol. 6181, pp. 50–65). Springer.
van Benthem, J., & Liu, F. (2007). Dynamic logic of preference upgrade. Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logic, 17, 157–182.
van Benthem, J., van Eijck, J., & Frolova, A. (1993). Changing preferences. Technical Report, CS-93-10, Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science, Amsterdam.
van der Torre, L. (1997) Reasoning about obligations: Defeasibility in preference-based deontic logic. Ph.D. thesis, Rotterdam.
van der Torre, L., & Tan, Y. (1999). An update semantics for deontic reasoning. In P. McNamara & H. Prakken (Eds.), Norms, logics and information systems (pp. 73–90). Amsterdam: IOS Press.
van Ditmarsch, H., van der Hoek, W., & Kooi, B. (2007). Dynamic epistemic logic. Berlin: Springer.
Veltman, F. (1996). Defaults in update semantics. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 25, 221–261.
von Wright, G. (1963). The logic of preference. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. [Foundational work in preference logic]
Xue Y., & Parikh, R. (2015). Strategic belief updates through influence in a communit. Studies in Logic, 8,124–143.
Yamada, T. (2008). Logical dynamics of some speech acts that affect obligations and preferences. Synthese, 165(2), 295–315.
Yamada, T. (2010). Scorekeeping and dynamic logics of speech acts. Manuscript, Hokkaido University.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Liu, F. (2018). Preference Change. In: Hansson, S., Hendricks, V. (eds) Introduction to Formal Philosophy. Springer Undergraduate Texts in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77434-3_30
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77434-3_30
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77433-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77434-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)