Persistence and minimality in epistemic logic

  • Authors:
  • Wiebe van der Hoek;Jan Jaspars;Elias Thijsse

  • Affiliations:
  • Computer Science, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80089, 3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands E-mail: wiebe@cs.uu.nl;Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Amsterdam, Plantage Muidergracht 24, 1018 TV Amsterdam, The Netherlands E-mail: jaspars@wins.uva.nl;Faculty of Arts, Tilburg University, P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands E-mail: thysse@kub.nl

  • Venue:
  • Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence
  • Year:
  • 1999

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Abstract

We give a general approach to characterizing minimal information in a modal context. Our modal treatment can be used for many applications, but is especially relevant under epistemic interpretations of the operator \Box. Relative to an arbitrary modal system, we give three characterizations of minimal information and provide conditions under which these characterizations are equivalent. We then study information orders based on bisimulations and Ehrenfeucht–Fraïssé games. Moving to the area of epistemic logics, we show that for one of these orders almost all systems trivialize the notion of minimal information. Another order which we present is much more promising as it permits to minimize with respect to positive knowledge. In S5, the resulting notion of minimal knowledge coincides with well‐established proposals. For S4 we compare the two orders.