From honeydew.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news.harvard.edu!noc.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!doc.ic.ac.uk!pipex!uunet!sparky!rick Thu Aug 26 19:49:10 EDT 1993 Article: 4600 of news.announce.conferences Xref: honeydew.srv.cs.cmu.edu news.announce.conferences:4600 Newsgroups: news.announce.conferences Path: honeydew.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news.harvard.edu!noc.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!doc.ic.ac.uk!pipex!uunet!sparky!rick From: sattar@kurango.cit.gu.edu.au (Abdul Sattar) Subject: Call For Participation: Australian AI'93 workshop on Belief Revision Message-ID: <1993Aug26.203931.3004@sparky.sterling.com> Sender: rick@sparky.sterling.com (Richard Ohnemus) Organization: Griffith University. Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1993 20:39:31 GMT Approved: rick@sparky.sterling.com Expires: Wed, 17 Nov 1993 08:00:00 GMT Lines: 136 X-Md4-Signature: 4776b75ebde89bcccbdac86b7de0d88a FINAL CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ----------------------------- AI'93 Workshop on ``Belief revision: Bridging the gap between theory and practice'' Melbourne, AUSTRALIA November 16, 1993 DESCRIPTION: ----------- The workshop on ``Belief revision: Bridging the gap between theory and Practice'' will be held in Melbourne, Australia in conjunction with The Sixth Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI'93). The need for pragmatic theories of belief revision is becoming increasingly apparent to the AI community. Much of the existing work in this field has involved purely formal studies requiring unrealistic assumptions on the one hand, and implemented knowledge update procedures which are not based on well-understood theories of belief revision on the other. This workshop aims to bring together researchers interested in developing implementable theories of belief change and in building practical belief revision systems. The workshop seeks to address a number of issues involved in developing practical belief revision systems including, but not limited to: - Belief representation frameworks: We do not have a clear idea of what constitutes a computationally plausible, yet sufficiently expressive language for belief representation. The question of what constitutes a belief state needs to be addressed and the debate on the coherence versus foundational approaches needs to be resolved. - Revision operators: There are few reports in the literature on efficient belief revision algorithms. A need exists for complexity studies of existing algorithms, and for a systematic identification of constraints on belief representation languages and the conditions under which they could be relaxed to obtain greater efficiency. The relevance of approximation algorithms and frameworks for resource-limited reasoners also needs to be discussed. - Nonmonotonic reasoning systems: A number of studies have pointed out the close relation between belief revision and nonmonotonic reasoning. The possibility of using implemented nonmonotonic reasoning systems as building blocks for belief revision systems needs to be investigated. - Developing an application-oriented taxonomy of belief change: Although fundamentally identical, the belief revision process can take different forms depending on the nature of the application. One such distinction, for instance, is between revising beliefs in a static world versus updating beliefs in a dynamic world. A clearer understanding of how our account of belief change must be modified with the application is needed. Possible topics that could be addressed include the relationship between belief revision and theories of action, temporal reasoning, and abduction. - Empirical studies: It is becoming increasingly clear that any pragmatic account of belief change will require a better understanding of the process in humans. Reports of empirical studies of belief change on human populations are thus relevant to the workshop theme. - Interdisciplinary studies: Practical theories of belief revision are of interest to researchers in a variety of areas. Database theorists address an almost identical question in defining the semantics for database updates. Since a theory of individual and collective revision of beliefs and preferences is important in understanding a variety of social behaviours, the issue interests social scientists as well. Reports of interdisciplinary studies, such as a study applying the economic theory of maximizing utility in rational choice to the process of choosing amongst the multiple outcomes of a belief change operation, are invited. - Rationality requirements for belief revision operators: There is an obvious need for a consensus on a basic set of requirements that any revision operator should satisfy. Rationality postulates for revision operators exist in the literature, but a variety of studies have indicated that these postulates impose unrealistic expectations in some cases, and ignore important restrictions in some others. Ideally, this workshop should be able to generate, through a panel discussion, a consensus report on a reasonable set of rationality postulates for belief change operators. - Implemented systems: Submissions reporting implemented belief revision systems are strongly encouraged. Prospective participants should submit 5 copies of an extended abstract at most ten pages long. Those who wish to participate but do not intend to present their work must submit a one-page statement of research interests, providing pointers to any relevant previous work. All submissions should include an email address, a telephone/fax number and a mailing address. Prospective participants may contact members of the organizing committee for any further questions or comments. All submissions should be sent either by electronic mail to: sattar@cit.gu.edu.au or by hard copy to: Abdul Sattar School of Computing and Information Technology Griffith University Nathan, Brisbane (Qld.) AUSTRALIA 4111 Accepted abstracts will be compiled and circulated in the workshop as its informal working proceedings. Submission deadline: August 9, 1993 Participants notified: September 10, 1993. Final camera-ready copies: October 11, 1993. Registration fee: Aus $ 30.00 FORMAT: ------- The workshop program will include both invited and submitted papers. Presentations will be organized into a few thematically coherent panels to encourage discussion. Invited speakers: ----------------- Peter Gardenfors Department of Philosophy Lund University, Sweden and Hans Rott Department of Philosophy University of Konstanz, Germany ORGANISING COMMITTEE: -------------------- Norman Foo (Co-chair) University of Sydney norman@karl.cs.su.oz.au Aditya Ghose University of Alberta aditya@cs.ualberta.ca Roderic Girle Griffith University rag@cit.gu.edu.au Randy Goebel (Co-chair) University of Alberta goebel@cs.ualberta.ca Scott Goodwin University of Regina goodwin@cs.uregina.ca Abdul Sattar Griffith University sattar@cit.gu.edu.au Mary-Anne Williams University of Newcastle maryanne@frey.newcastle.edu.au