Abwägung, „Belief Revision“ und Rangtheorie

Abstract

An approach to analyse the structure of balancing is the idea of defeasible reasoning. This is often explained by using a non-monotonic logic, admitting that new information can invalidate formerly valid inferences. A more fruitful alternative seems to be the the- ory of belief revision, which allows not only invalidating inferences, but to define how beliefs should change facing new information. A sophisticated version of belief revi- sion theory is developed by Wolfgang Spohn in his “ranking theory”. The issue of this paper is to analyse how this “ranking theory” fits into the structure of normative argu- mentation, distinguishing four types of balancing: epistemic, normative, relative, and intersubjective balancing.