A logic of graded trust and belief fusion
Robert Demolombe, Churn‐Jung Liau · 2001
In this paper, we propose a logic for integrated reasoning about graded trust and belief fusion in multi-agent systems. Two kinds of graded trust in information sources are analyzed. One is the trust in validity and the other is the trust in completeness. Based on the former, an agent can induce his partial beliefs from what the other agents have told him, whereas by the latter, he can induce his partial beliefs from what the other agents did not tell him. Then an agent would have beliefs of dierent grades when he received information from other agents, so he has to merge these graded beliefs to form his overall belief. The fusion of graded beliefs may be done according to two dierent strategies. In the rst one, if inconsistency occurs at some level, then all beliefs at the lower levels are discarded simultaneously, so it is called level cutting strategy. For the second one, only the level at which the inconsistency occurs is skipped, so it is called level skipping strategy. It is shown that these notions can all be formulated in a modal logic framework. The syntax, semantics and axiomatic systems for such logical formulation are presented in this paper. 1