Revision by Translation

Dov Gabbay, Odinaldo Rodrigues and Alessandra Russo

Abstract

In this paper, we show that it is possible to accomplish belief revision in any logic which is translatable to classical logic. We start with the example of the propositional modal logic K and show that a belief operation in K defined in terms of K's translation to classical logic verifies the AGM postulates. We also consider the case of non-classical logics by taking Belnap's four-valued logic as an example. A sound and complete axiomatization of that logic in classical logic is given and then used in the definition of a belief revision operator for the logic in terms of a classical AGM operator. We show that the operator also verifies the AGM postulates whenever they make sense in the context of non-classical logics.

The paper is available over the Web: [pdf version]. It will appear in Information, Uncertainty and Fusion, B. Bouchon-Meunier, R.R. Yager and L.A. Zadeh editors, Kluwer Scientific Publishers. A short version of this paper will also appear in a book in Honour of Johan van Benthem.






This research was sponsored by the EPSRC, under a research project entitled Managing Inconsistency in Software Engineering.