Trustworthiness by default

Abstract

We present a framework for reasoning about information sources, with application to conflict resolution and belief formation at various degrees of reliability. On the basis of an assignment of relative trustworthiness to sets of information sources, a lattice of degrees of trustworthiness is constructed; from this, a priority structure is derived and applied to the problem of forming the right opinion. Consolidated with an unquestioned knowledge base, this provides an unambiguous account of what an agent should believe, conditionally on which information sources are trusted. Applications in multi-agent doxastic logic are sketched. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.