Belief Change and Its Problems

Abstract

We have seen in Part Two that epistemic states provide a powerful and versatile representation for nonmonotonic reasoning. In this part we are going to show that epistemic states also constitute a very useful tool for representing and studying belief change. To begin with, we will briefly describe in this chapter the main approaches to representing belief change, as well as common problems arising with these representations. Then we will indicate how these problems can be resolved by taking epistemic states as an alternative background for belief change processes. We will also sketch new opportunities and directions of research about belief change arising in the suggested framework.