The concept of knowledge can be modelled in epistemic modal logic and, if modelled by using a standard modal operator, it is subject to the problem of logical omniscience. The classical solution to this problem is to distinguish between implicit and explicit knowledge and to construe the knowledge operator as capturing the concept of implicit knowledge. In addition, since a proposition is said to be implicitly known just in case it is derivable from the set of propositions that are explicitly (...) known by using a certain set of logical rules, the concept of implicit knowledge is definable on the basis of the concept of explicit knowledge. In any case, both implicit and explicit knowledge are typically characterized as factive, i.e. such that it is always the case that what is known is also true. The aim of the present paper is twofold: first, we will develop a dynamic system of explicit intersubjective knowledge that allows us to introduce the operator of implicit knowledge by definition; secondly, we will show that it is not possible to hold together the following two theses: (1) the concept of implicit knowledge is definable along the lines indicated above and (2) the concept of implicit knowledge is factive. (shrink)

The new paradigm in the psychology of reasoning draws on Bayesian formal frameworks, and some advocates of the new paradigm think of these formal frameworks as providing a computational-level theory of rational human inference. I argue that Bayesian theories should not be seen as providing a computational-level theory of rational human inference, where by “Bayesian theories” I mean theories that claim that all rational credal states are probabilistically coherent and that rational adjustments of degrees of belief in the light of (...) new evidence must be in accordance with some sort of conditionalization. The problems with the view I am criticizing can best be seen when we look at chains of inferences, rather than single-step inferences. Chains of inferences have been neglected almost entirely within the new paradigm. (shrink)

For deductive reasoning to be justified, it must be guaranteed to preserve truth from premises to conclusion; and for it to be useful to us, it must be capable of informing us of something. How can we capture this notion of information content, whilst respecting the fact that the content of the premises, if true, already secures the truth of the conclusion? This is the problem I address here. I begin by considering and rejecting several accounts of informational content. I (...) then develop an account on which informational contents are indeterminate in their membership. This allows there to be cases in which it is indeterminate whether a given deduction is informative. Nevertheless, on the picture I present, there are determinate cases of informative (and determinate cases of uninformative) inferences. I argue that the model I offer is the best way for an account of content to respect the meaning of the logical constants and the inference rules associated with them without collapsing into a classical picture of content, unable to account for informative deductive inferences. (shrink)

Classical epistemic logic describes implicit knowledge of agents about facts and knowledge of other agents, based on semantic information. The latter is produced by acts of observation or communication, that are described well by dynamic epistemic logics. What these logics do not describe, however, is how significant information is also produced by acts of inference – and key axioms of the system merely postulate “deductive closure”. In this paper, we take the view that all information is produced by acts, and (...) hence we also need a dynamic logic of inference steps showing what effort on the part of the agent makes a conclusion explicit knowledge. Strong omniscience properties of agents should be seen not as static idealizations, but as the result of dynamic processes that agents engage in. This raises two questions: (a) how to define suitable information states of agents and matching notions of explicit knowledge, (b) how to define natural processes over these states that generate new explicit knowledge. To this end, we extend earlier epistemic “awareness models” into a dynamic system that includes acts of public observation, but also adding and dropping formulas from the currently ‘entertained’ set, we give a completeness theorem, and we show how this dynamics updates explicit knowledge. Similar ideas have been proposed before, but they were restricted to update with factual propositions; our new dynamic system applies to arbitrary formulas. We also extend our approach to multi-agent scenarios where awareness changes may happen privately. Finally, we mention further directions and related approaches. (shrink)

The paper develops an interface between syntax-based logical models of awareness and dynamic epistemic logic. The framework is shown to be able to accommodate a variety of notions of awareness and knowledge, as well as their dynamics. This, it is argued, offers a natural formal environment for the analysis of epistemic phenomena typical of multi-agent information exchange, such as how agents become aware of relevant details, how they perform inferences and how they share their information within a group. Technically, the (...) logics presented are all simple refinements of the logic of public announcements. (shrink)

Epistemic logic with its possible worlds semantic model is a powerful framework that allows us to represent an agent’s information not only about propositional facts, but also about her own information. Nevertheless, agents represented in this framework are logically omniscient: their information is closed under logical consequence. This property, useful in some applications, is an unrealistic idealisation in some others. Many proposals to solve this problem focus on weakening the properties of the agent’s information, but some authors have argued that (...) solutions of this kind are not completely adequate because they do not look at the heart of the matter: the actions that allow the agent to reach such omniscient state. Recent works have explored how acts of observation, inference, consideration and forgetting affect an agent’s implicit and explicit knowledge; the present work focuses on acts that affect an agent’s implicit and explicit beliefs. It starts by proposing a framework in which these two notions can be represented, and then it looks into their dynamics, first by reviewing the existing notion of belief revision, and then by introducing a rich framework for representing diverse forms of inference that involve both knowledge and beliefs. (shrink)

Classical epistemic logic describes implicit knowledge of agents about facts and knowledge of other agents based on semantic information. The latter is produced by acts of observation or communication that are described well by dynamic epistemic logics. What these logics do not describe, however, is how significant information is also produced by acts of inference— and key axioms of the system merely postulate "deductive closure". In this paper, we take the view that all information is produced by acts, and hence (...) we also need a dynamic logic of inference steps showing what effort on the part of the agent makes a conclusion explicit knowledge. Strong omniscience properties of agents should be seen not as static idealizations, but as the result of dynamic processes that agents engage in. This raises two questions: (a) how to define suitable information states of agents and matching notions of explicit knowledge, (b) how to define natural processes over these states that generate new explicit knowledge. To this end, we use a static base from the existing awareness literature, extending it into a dynamic system that includes traditional acts of observation, but also adding and dropping formulas from the current ' awareness' set. We give a completeness theorem, and we show how this dynamics updates explicit knowledge. Then we extend our approach to multi-agent scenarios where awareness changes may happen privately. Finally, we mention further directions and related approaches. Our contribution can be seen as a ' dynamification' of existing awareness logics. (shrink)

The Interrogative Model of Inquiry and Dynamic Epistemic Logics are two central paradigms in formal epistemology. This paper is motivated by the observation of a significant complementarity between them: on the one hand, the IMI provides a framework for investigating inquiry represented as an idealized game between an Inquirer and Nature, along with an account of the interaction between questions and inferences in information-seeking processes, but is lacking a formulation in the multi-agent case; on the other hand, DELs model various (...) operations of information change in multi-agent systems, but the field is lacking a proper integration of question and inference dynamics, along with an application to the investigation of inquiry processes. The goal of this paper is to integrate the two paradigms in such a way as to combine their respective insights. To this end, we develop a formal system called DEL $$_\mathrm{IMI }$$ IMI which aims to represent the interaction between question and inference dynamics in inquiry—as described by the IMI—in a multi-agent setting, and this in such a way as to enable an investigation of inquiry games with multi-agent dimensions. The DEL $$_\mathrm{IMI }$$ IMI system is designed to represent the possible moves of such inquiry games through three types of epistemic actions: agents addressing questions to Nature, agents addressing questions to other agents, agents drawing logical inferences. We then show how the resulting framework can be used to formally define multi-agent inquiry games. We conclude by evaluating the interest of the DEL $$_\mathrm{IMI }$$ IMI system for the IMI and DELs paradigms. (shrink)

In this paper we show how defeasible logic could formally account for the non-monotonic properties involved in motivational attitudes like intention and obligation. Usually, normal modal operators are used to represent such attitudes wherein classical logical consequence and the rule of necessitation comes into play, i.e., ⊢A/⊢ □A, that is from ⊢A derive ⊢ □A. This means that such formalisms are affected by the Logical Omniscience problem. We show that policy-based intentions exhibit non-monotonic behaviour which could be captured through a (...) non-monotonic system like defeasible logic. To this end we outline a defeasible logic of intention that specifies how modalities can be introduced and manipulated in a non-monotonic setting without giving rise to the problem of logical omniscience. In a similar way we show how to add deontic modalities defeasibly and how to integrate them with other motivational attitudes like beliefs and goals. Finally we show that the basic aspect of the BOID architecture is captured by this extended framework. (shrink)

The paper presents a new logic for reasoning about the formation of beliefs through perception or through inference in non-omniscient resource-bounded agents. The logic distinguishes the concept of explicit belief from the concept of background knowledge. This distinction is reflected in its formal semantics and axiomatics: we use a non-standard semantics putting together a neighborhood semantics for explicit beliefs and relational semantics for background knowledge, and we have specific axioms in the logic highlighting the relationship between the two concepts. Mental (...) operations of perceptive type and inferential type, having effects on epistemic states of agents, are primitives in the object language of the logic. At the semantic level, they are modelled as special kinds of model-update operations, in the style of dynamic epistemic logic. Results about axiomatization, decidability and complexity for the logic are given in the paper. (shrink)

Classical propositional logic plays a prominent role in industrial applications, and yet the complexity of this logic is presumed to be non-feasible. Tractable systems such as depth-bounded boolean logics approximate classical logic and can be seen as a model for resource-bounded agents whose reasoning style is nonetheless classical. In this paper we first study a hierarchy of tractable logics that is not defined by depth. Then we extend it into a modal logic where modalities make explicit the assumptions discharged in (...) propositional proofs, thereby expressing blueprints for proofs. A natural deduction system is provided that permits to reason about and manage such proof blueprints. (shrink)

The paper proposes a logical framework representing the notion of explicit knowledge as the combination of awareness of and awareness that. The setting, semantically combining neighbourhood models with ideas from awareness logic, separates the mere fact of entertaining some information (being aware of $\varphi$) from the acknowledgement that the information is indeed the case (being aware that $\varphi$ holds). The text discusses not only the main properties these concepts obtain under the given representation, but also several of the epistemic actions (...) that can be defined, and the way they affect the agent’s awareness (and thus her knowledge). (shrink)