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Five Faces of Recovery

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Frontiers in Belief Revision

Part of the book series: Applied Logic Series ((APLS,volume 22))

Abstract

One of the basic principles of the AGM theory [Alchourrón et al., 1985] is that belief changes should take place with minimal loss of previous beliefs. In the opinion of the AGM trio, the postulate of recovery guarantees minimal loss of contents in the contraction process.1 However, several authors have criticised the recovery postulate [Fermé, 1998; Makinson, 1987; Levi, 1991; Levi, 1997; Lindström and Rabinowicz, 1991; Hansson, 1991; Niederée, 1991; Nayak, 1994; Makinson, 19971. The present work describes recovery from five angles or models in which it is possible to define the AGM contraction: Postulates, partial meet functions, epistemic entrenchment, safe/kernel contraction and sphere-systems. It also shows how the intuitions or non-intuitions that surround recovery appear or disappear in each of them and consequently, the status of recovery turns out to differ substantially among the five approaches.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Eduardo L. Fermé

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  1. Eduardo L. Fermé
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Newcastle, Australia

    Mary-Anne Williams

  2. University of Regensburg, Germany

    Hans Rott

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© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Fermé, E.L. (2001). Five Faces of Recovery. In: Williams, MA., Rott, H. (eds) Frontiers in Belief Revision. Applied Logic Series, vol 22. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9817-0_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9817-0_12

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5720-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-015-9817-0

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