Towards a theory of belief reconstruction: Application to communication

Abstract

We present a theory of belief reconstruction to be embedded in an agent's communication model, which accounts for both belief persistence and revision. We analyse Cohen and Levesque (1990a)'s theories, highlight problems which arise, and show that our theory does not have these problems. The starting point of our theory is called the observation principle. It accounts for a distinction between what an agent observes from another agent, and the action the latter has really performed. The theory is couched in an autoepistemic logic used objectively, along the same lines as in (Levesque, 1990). When applied to a communication context, it is shown that it correctly predicts the changes in an observer's beliefs in test cases such as sincere assertion and (detected or non-detected) lie. Such test cases highlight the ability of the theory to handle not only normal dialogue situations but also those where problems arise due to erroneous perception, such as misrecognition in spoken communication.