Eduardo Fermé: An introduction to Belief change

Eduardo Fermé, full professor of computer science at the Universidade da Madeira in Portugal, is spending one month as a visiting researcher at Limics.

He is internationally recognized for his research in Artificial Intelligence, particularly in knowledge representation and the formalization of common-sense reasoning — key pillars of explainability in modern AI applications.

Title: An introduction to Belief change

Abstract: The 1985 paper by Carlos Alchourrón (1931–1996), Peter Gärdenfors, and David Makinson (AGM), “On the Logic of Theory Change: Partial Meet Contraction and Revision Functions”, was the starting-point of a large and rapidly growing literature that employs formal models in the investigation of changes in belief states and databases. In this talk, the first 40 years of this development are briefly summarized. The topics covered include equivalent characterizations of AGM operations, extended representations of the belief states, change operators not included in the original framework, iterated change, applications of the model, its connections with other formal frameworks, and criticism of the model.