Reset Reproduction of Preprint Distributed at the Third International Workshop on Nonmonotonic Reasoning, Rational Belief Revision

Theories of rational belief revision recently proposed by GG ardenfors and Nebel illuminate many important issues but impose unnecessarily strong standards for correct revisions and make strong assumptions about what information is available to guide revisions. We reconstruct these theories according to an economic standard of rationality in which preferences are used to select among alternative possible revisions. By permitting multiple partial speciications of preferences in ways closely related to preference-based nonmonotonic logics, the reconstructed theory employs information closer to that available in practice and ooers more exible ways of selecting revisions. We formally compare this notion of rational belief revision with those of GG ardenfors and Nebel, adapt results about universal default theories to prove that there is no universal method of rational belief revision, and examine formally how diierent limitations on rationality aaect belief revision.