Belief revision and default reasoning : syntax-based approaches

Abstract

Belief revision leads to temporal nonmonotonicity, i.e., the set of beliefs does not grow monotonically with time. Default reasoning leads to logical nonmonotonicity, i.e., the set of consequences does not grow monotonically with the set of premises. The connection between these forms of nonmonotonicity will be studied in this paper focusing on syntax-based approaches. It is shown that a general form of syntax-based belief revision corresponds to a special kind of partial meet revision in the sense of variants of logics for default reasoning. Additionally, the computational complexity of the membership problem in revised belief sets and of the equivalent problem of derivability in default logics is analyzed, which turns out to be located at the lower end of the polynomial hierarchy.