Argument-based Belief in Topological Structures

Chenwei Shi
(ILLC)
Sonja Smets
(ILLC)
Fernando R. Velázquez-Quesada
(ILLC)

This paper combines two studies: a topological semantics for epistemic notions and abstract argumentation theory. In our combined setting, we use a topological semantics to represent the structure of an agent's collection of evidence, and we use argumentation theory to single out the relevant sets of evidence through which a notion of beliefs grounded on arguments is defined. We discuss the formal properties of this newly defined notion, providing also a formal language with a matching modality together with a sound and complete axiom system for it. Despite the fact that our agent can combine her evidence in a 'rational' way (captured via the topological structure), argument-based beliefs are not closed under conjunction. This illustrates the difference between an agent's reasoning abilities (i.e. the way she is able to combine her available evidence) and the closure properties of her beliefs. We use this point to argue for why the failure of closure under conjunction of belief should not bear the burden of the failure of rationality.

In Jérôme Lang: Proceedings Sixteenth Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge (TARK 2017), Liverpool, UK, 24-26 July 2017, Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science 251, pp. 489–503.
Published: 25th July 2017.

ArXived at: https://dx.doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.251.36 bibtex PDF
References in reconstructed bibtex, XML and HTML format (approximated).
Comments and questions to: eptcs@eptcs.org
For website issues: webmaster@eptcs.org