Dynamic Belief Analysis

The process of rational inquiry can be defined as the evolution of the beliefs of a rational agent as a consequence of its internal inference procedures and its interaction with the environment. These beliefs can be modelled in a formal way using belief logics. The possible worlds model and its associated Kripke semantics provide an intuitive semantics for these logics, but they commit us to model agents that are logically omniscient and perfect reasoners. These problems can be avoided with a syntactic view of possible worlds, defining them as arbitrary sets of sentences in a propositional belief logic. In this article this syntactic view of possible worlds is taken, and a dynamic analysis of the beliefs of the agent is suggested in order to model the process of rational inquiry in which the agent is permanently engaged. 1 INTRODUCTION The aim of this work 1 is to model the process of rational inquiry, i.e. the (rationally controlled) transformation of the beliefs of an intelligent..