Explaining updates by minimal sums

  • Authors:
  • Karl Schlechta;Jürgen Dix

  • Affiliations:
  • CNRS, Marseille, France;Univ. of Manchester, Manchester, UK

  • Venue:
  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

Human reasoning about developments of the world involves always an assumption of inertia. We discuss two approaches for formalizing such an assumption, based on the concept of an explanation: (1) there is a general preference relation given on the set of all explanations and (2) there is a notion of a distance between models and explanations are preferred if their sum of distances is minimal. Each distance dist naturally induces a preference relation dist. We show exactly under which conditions the converse is true as well and therefore both approaches are equivalent modulo these conditions. Our main result is a general representation theorem in the spirit of Kraus, Lehmann and Magidor. Copyright 2001 Elsevier Science B.V.