Skip to main content

Toward a Peircean Theory of Human Learning: Revealing the Misconception of Belief Revision

  • Conference paper
Conceptual Structures for STEM Research and Education (ICCS 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 7735))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

Belief Revision was conceived to model how humans do think, and has found application in machine learning. This paper argues that Peirce’s theory of inquiry conceives how we must think, if we want to keep improving our knowledge. Distinguishing between these two views, psychological (empirical) and pragmatic (normative), is crucial to our improvement of human learning methodology, especially as we develop interactive engagement methods for learning STEM concepts. Examining efforts to model Belief Revision in AI can reveal the limitations of this conceptualization for human learning, due to its misconception of Peirce’s pragmatic theory of inquiry.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Alchourrón, C., Gärdenfors, P., Makinson, D.: On the Logic of Theory Change: Partial Meet Contradiction and Revision Functions. Journal of Symbolic Logic 50(2), 510–530 (1985)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Aliseda, A.: Abduction Reasoning, Logical Investigations into Discovery and Explanation. Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology, and the Philosophy of Science, Synthese Library (2010), http://www.scribd.com/doc/8145990/Aliseda-Abductive-Reasoning

  • Amini, M.: Logical Machines: Peirce on Psychologism. Disputatio: International Journal of Philosophy II, 335–348 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, D.: The Evolution of Peirce’s Concept of Abduction. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 22(2), 145–164 (1986)

    Google Scholar 

  • Ben-Ari, M.: Constructivism in Computer Science Education. SIGCSE Bulletin 30(1), 257–261 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Benthem, J.: Dynamic Logic for Belief Revision. Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics 17(2), 129–155 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bacchus, F., Grove, A., Halpern, J., Koller, D.: A Response to Believing on the basis of evidence. Computational Intelligence (1994) (Article first published online April 2, 2007), doi:10.1111/j.1467-8640.1994.tb00141.x

    Google Scholar 

  • Boutilier, C., Becher, V.: Abduction As Belief Revision: A Model of Preferred Explanations. In: AAAI 1993 Proceedings, pp. 642–648 (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  • Coolidge, F., Wynn, T.: The Rise of Homo Sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking. Wiley-Blackwell (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  • Cosmides, L., Tooby, J.: The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Oxford U. Press (1992)

    Google Scholar 

  • Darwiche, A., Pearl, J.: On the Logic of Iterated Belief Revision. Artificial Intelligence 89(1-2), 1–29 (1997), ftp://cobase.cs.ucla.edu/pub/stat_ser/R202.ps

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Deacon, T.: Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter. Norton & Company (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  • Doyle, J.: Inference and Acceptance. Computational Intelligence 10(1), 46–48 (1994), http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/faculty/doyle/publications/kyburg94.pdf

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Friedman, N., Halpern, J.: Belief Revision: A Critique. Journal of Logic and Computation 18(5), 721–738 (2008)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Gärdenfors, P.: Knowledge in Flux: Modeling the Dynamics of Epistemic States. MIT Press (1988)

    Google Scholar 

  • Gärdenfors, P. (ed.): Belief Revision, Cambridge Tracts in Theoretical Computer Science, vol. 29. Cambridge U. Press (1992)

    Google Scholar 

  • Gärdenfors, P.: Conceptual Spaces: The Geometry of Thought. MIT Press (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  • Gillies, A.: Two More Dogmas of Belief Revision: Justification and Justified Belief Change (2002), http://rci.rutgers.edu/~thony/just_and_revision.pdf

  • Hake, R.: Interactive-engagement Versus Traditional Methods: A six-thousand-student Survey of Mechanics Test Data for Introductory Physics Courses. American Journal of Physics 66(1), 64–74 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hansson, B.: Infallibility and Incorrigibility. Philosophical Quarterly 18, 207–215 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  • Harper, W.: Rational Belief Change, Popper Functions and Counterfactuals. Synthese 30(1-2), 221–262 (1975)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Hestenes, D., Wells, M., Swackhamer, G.: Force Concept Inventory. Physics Teacher 30, 141–158 (1992)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hilpinen, R.: Peirce’s Logic. In: Handbook of the History of Logic, pp. 611–658. Elsevier BV (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  • Hintikka, J.: Knowledge and Belief. Cornell U. Press (1962)

    Google Scholar 

  • Hintikka, J.: Socratic Epistemology: Explorations of Knowledge-Seeking by Questioning. Cambridge U. Press (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  • Hobbs, J., Stickel, M., Martin, P., Edwards, D.: Interpretation as Abduction. In: ACL 1988 Proceedings, 26th Annual Meeting of Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 95–103 (1988)

    Google Scholar 

  • von Humboldt, W.: Humbolt: On Language. Cambridge U. Press (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  • Kapitan, T.: Peirce and the Structure of Abductive Inference. In: Houser, Roberts, Van Evra (eds.) Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, pp. 477–496. Indiana U. Press (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  • Kasser, J.: Peirce’s Supposed Psychologism. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society XXXV, 501–526 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  • Kasser, J.: How Settled are Settled Beliefs in ‘The Fixation of Belief’? Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 47(2), 226–247 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keeler, M.A., Pfeiffer, H.D.: Building a Pragmatic Methodology for KR Tool Research and Development. In: Schärfe, H., Hitzler, P., Øhrstrøm, P. (eds.) ICCS 2006. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4068, pp. 314–330. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Keeler, M.A.: Revelator Game of Inquiry: A Peircean Challenge for Conceptual Structures in Application and Evolution. In: Priss, U., Polovina, S., Hill, R. (eds.) ICCS 2007. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4604, pp. 443–459. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Keeler, M.A., Majumdar, A.: Revelator’s Complex Adaptive Reasoning Methodology for Resource Infrastructure Evolution. In: Eklund, P., Haemmerlé, O. (eds.) ICCS 2008. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 5113, pp. 88–103. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Keeler, M.A.: Learning to Map the Virtual Evolution of Knowledge. In: Croitoru, M., Ferré, S., Lukose, D. (eds.) ICCS 2010. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 6208, pp. 108–124. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Kelly, K.: The Learning Power of Belief Revision. Recommended citation (1998), http://respository.cmu.edu/philosophy/389

  • Kyburg, H.: Probability and the Logic of Rational Belief. Wesleyan U. Press (1961)

    Google Scholar 

  • Kyburg, H.: Believing on the Basis of Evidence. Computational Intelligence 10, 3–22 (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  • Lehmann, D.: Belief Revision, Revised. In: Proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, vol. 2, pp. 1534–1540. Morgan Kaufmann (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  • Levi, I.: Belief and Action. The Monist 48, 306–316 (1964)

    Google Scholar 

  • Levi, I.: The Enterprise of Knowledge. The MIT Press, Cambridge (1980)

    Google Scholar 

  • Levi, I.: Decisions and Revisions. Cambridge University Press (1984)

    Google Scholar 

  • Levi, I.: Hard Choices: Decision Making Under Unresolved Conflict. Cambridge U. Press (1986)

    Google Scholar 

  • Levi, I.: The Fixation of Belief and Its Undoing. Cambridge U. Press (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  • Levi, I.: For the Sake of Argument: Ramsey Test Condtionals, Inductive Inference, and Nonmonotonic Reasoning. Cambridge University Press (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  • Loviscach, J.: Vorlesungsaufzeichnungen auf YouTube. Herausforderungen, Werkzeuge, Erfahrungen (2012), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A34kAqyw8kM

  • Misak, C.: Peirce, Levi, and the Aims of Inquiry. Philosophy of Science 54(2), 256–265 (1987)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Mazur, E.: Peer Instruction: A User’s Manual. Prentice Hall (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  • Nayak, A., Pagucco, M., Peppas, P.: Dynamic Belief Revision Operators. Artificial Intelligence 146(2), 193–228 (2003)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Nesher, D.: Peirce’s Essential Discovery: ‘Our Senses as Reasoning Machines’ Can Quasi-Prove Our Perceptual Judgments. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society XXXVIII, 175–206 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  • Noschese, F.: What is pseudoteaching? (2001), http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/pt-pseudoteaching-mit-physics/

  • Olsson, E., Enqvist, S. (eds.): Belief Revision Meets Philosophy of Science. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol. 21. Springer (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  • Park, W.: Belief Revision vs. Conceptual Change in Mathematics. In: Magnani, L., Carnielli, W., Pizzi, C. (eds.) Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology. SCI, vol. 314, pp. 121–134. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Pinker, S., Bloom, P.: Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13(4), 707 (1990)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peirce, C.: The Fixation of Belief. Popular Science Monthly (1877)

    Google Scholar 

  • Peirce, C.: Logical Machines. The American Journal of Psychology I, 165–170 (1887)

    Google Scholar 

  • Peirce, C.: Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. In: Hartshorne, C., Weiss, P. (eds.) Elements of Logic, vol. II. Belknap Press of Harvard U. Press, Cambridge (1960)

    Google Scholar 

  • Plotkin, H.: Evolution in Mind, An Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology. Harvard U. Press (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  • Rott, H.: Two Dogmas of Belief Revision. The Journal of Philosophy 97(9), 503–522 (2000)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Santos, E.: On the Generation of Alternative Explanations with Implications for Belief Revsion. In: Proceedings of the Seventh Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, pp. 339–347. Morgan Kaufmann (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  • Shermer, M.: The Believing Brain: How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths. Henry Holt and Co., LLC (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  • Subramanian, S., Mooney, R.: Combining Abduction and Theory Revision. Artificial Intelligence 92, 168 (1992)

    Google Scholar 

  • Swami, V. (ed.): Evolutionary Psychology: A Critical Introduction. British Psychological Society & Blackwell Publishing Ltd. (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  • Thagard, P.: The Best Explanation: Criteria for Theory Choice. The Journal of Philosophy 75(2), 76–92 (1978)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thagard, P.: Computational Philosophy of Science. MIT Press (1988)

    Google Scholar 

  • Thagard, P.: Concepts and Conceptual Change. Synthese 82(2), 255–274 (1990)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thagard, P.: Conceptual Revolutions. Princeton U. Press (1992)

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Fraassen, B.: The Pragmatics of Explanation. American Philosophical Quarterly 14(2), 143–150 (1977)

    Google Scholar 

  • Walliser, B., Zwirn, D., Zwirn, H.: Abductive Logics in a Belief Revision Framework. Language and Information 14(1), 87–117 (2004)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, M.-A., Rott, H.: Frontiers in Belief Revision. Kluwer Academic Publishers (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  • Workman, L., Reader, W.: Evolutionary Psychology, an Introduction. Cambridge U. Press (2004)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Keeler, M., Priss, U. (2013). Toward a Peircean Theory of Human Learning: Revealing the Misconception of Belief Revision . In: Pfeiffer, H.D., Ignatov, D.I., Poelmans, J., Gadiraju, N. (eds) Conceptual Structures for STEM Research and Education. ICCS 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7735. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35786-2_14

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35786-2_14

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-35785-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-35786-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics