Doxastic logic

Doxastic logic is a type of logic concerned with reasoning about beliefs. The term doxastic derives from the ancient Greek δόξα,
doxa, which means "belief". Typically, a doxastic logic uses to mean "It is believed that is the case", and the set denotes a set
of beliefs. In doxastic logic, belief is treated as amodal operator.

There is complete parallelism between a person who believes propositions and a formal system that derives propositions. Using
doxastic logic, one can express the epistemic counterpart of Gödel's incompleteness theorem of metalogic, as well as Löb's theorem,
and other metalogical results in terms of belief.[1]

Contents
Types of reasoners
Increasing levels of rationality
Gödel incompleteness and doxastic undecidability
Inaccuracy and peculiarity of conceited reasoners
Self-fulfilling beliefs
Inconsistency of the belief in one's stability
See also
References
Further reading

Types of reasoners
To demonstrate the properties of sets of beliefs,Raymond Smullyan defines the following types of reasoners:

Accurate reasoner:[1][2][3][4] An accurate reasoner never believes any false proposition. (modal axiom
T)

Inaccurate reasoner:[1][2][3][4] An inaccurate reasoner believes at least one false proposition.

Conceited reasoner:[1][4] A conceited reasoner believes his or her beliefs are never inaccurate.

A conceited reasoner with rationality of at least type 1 (see below) will necessarily lapse into
inaccuracy.

Consistent reasoner:[1][2][3][4] A consistent reasoner never simultaneously believes a proposition and its negation.
(modal axiom D)
 Normal reasoner:[1][2][3][4] A normal reasoner is one who, while believing also believes he or she believes p
(modal axiom 4).

Peculiar reasoner:[1][4] A peculiar reasoner believes proposition p while also believing he or she does not believe
Although a peculiar reasoner may seem like a strange psychological phenomenon (see Moore's paradox), a peculiar
reasoner is necessarily inaccurate but not necessarily inconsistent.

Regular reasoner:[1][2][3][4] A regular reasoner is one who, while believing , also believes .

Reflexive reasoner:[1][4] A reflexive reasoner is one for whom every proposition has some proposition such that
the reasoner believes .

If a reflexive reasoner of type 4 [see below] believes , he or she will believe p. This is
a parallelism of Löb's theorem for reasoners.

Unstable reasoner:[1][4] An unstable reasoner is one who believes that he or she believes some proposition, but in
fact does not believe it. This is just as strange a psychological phenomenon as peculiarity; however
, an unstable
reasoner is not necessarily inconsistent.

Stable reasoner:[1][4] A stable reasoner is not unstable. That is, for every if he or she believes then he or she
believes Note that stability is the converse of normality. We will say that a reasoner believes he or she is stable if
for every proposition he or she believes (believing: "If I should ever believe that I believe then I
really will believe ").

Modest reasoner:[1][4] A modest reasoner is one for whom every believed proposition , only if he or she
believes . A modest reasoner never believes unless he or she believes . Any reflexive reasoner of type 4
is modest. (Löb's Theorem)

Queer reasoner:[4] A queer reasoner is of type G and believes he or she is inconsistent—but is wrong in this belief.
Timid reasoner:[4] A timid reasoner does not believe [is "afraid to" believe ] if he or she believes

Increasing levels of rationality

Type 1 reasoner:[1][2][3][4][5] A type 1 reasoner has a complete knowledge ofpropositional logic i.e., he or she
sooner or later believes everytautology (any proposition provable bytruth tables). Also, his or her set of beliefs
(past, present and future) islogically closed under modus ponens. If he or she ever believes and then he or
she will (sooner or later) believe .

This rule can also be thought of as stating that belief distributes over implication, as it's
logically equivalent to
 .

Type 1* reasoner:[1][2][3][4] A type 1* reasoner believes all tautologies; his or her set of beliefs (past, present and
future) is logically closed under modus ponens, and for any propositions and if he or she believes then
he or she will believe that if he or she believes then he or she will believe . The type 1* reasoner has "a shade
more" self awareness than a type 1 reasoner.

Type 2 reasoner:[1][2][3][4] A reasoner is of type 2 if he or she is of type 1, and if for every and he or she
(correctly) believes: "If I should ever believe both and , then I will believe ." Being of type 1, he or she also
believes the logically equivalent proposition: A type 2 reasoner knows his or her beliefs
are closed under modus ponens.

Type 3 reasoner:[1][2][3][4] A reasoner is of type 3 if he or she is a normal reasoner of type 2.

Type 4 reasoner:[1][2][3][4][5] A reasoner is of type 4 if he or she is of type 3 and also believes he or she is normal.

Type G reasoner:[1][4] A reasoner of type 4 who believes he or she is modest.

Gödel incompleteness and doxastic undecidability

Let us say an accurate reasoner is faced with the task of assigning a truth value to a statement posed to him or her. There exists a
statement which the reasoner must either remain forever undecided about or lose his or her accuracy
. One solution is the statement:

S: "I will never believe this statement."

If the reasoner ever believes the statement it becomes falsified by that fact, making an untrue belief and hence making the
reasoner inaccurate in believing S.

Therefore, since the reasoner is accurate, he or she will never believe Hence the statement was true, because that is exactly what it
claimed. It further follows that the reasoner will never have the false belief that is false. And so the reasoner must remain forever
undecided as to whether the statement is true or false.

The equivalent theorem is that for any formal system F, there exists a mathematical statement which can be interpreted as "This
statement is not provable in formal system F". If the system F is consistent, neither the statement nor its opposite will be provable in
it.[1][4]

Inaccuracy and peculiarity of conceited reasoners

A reasoner of type 1 is faced with the statement "I will never believe this sentence." The interesting thing now is that if the reasoner
believes he or she is always accurate, then he or she will become inaccurate. Such a reasoner will reason: "The statement in question
is that I won't believe the statement, so if it's false then I will believe the statement. Because I am accurate, believing the statement
means it must be true. So if the statement is false then it must be true. It's tautological that if a statement being false implies the
statement, then that statement is true. Therefore the statement is true."
At this point the reasoner believes the statement, which makes it false. Thus the reasoner is inaccurate in believing that the statement
is true. If the reasoner hadn't assumed his or her own accuracy
, he or she would never have lapsed into an inaccuracy
. Formally:

[definition of ]
[elementary tautology]
[because ]
[reasoner believes all tautologies]
[the reasoner is of type 1]
[the reasoner is conceited]
[modus ponens 5 and 6]
[because ]

Additionally, the reasoner is peculiar because he or she believes that he/she doesn't believe the statement (symbolically,
which follows from because ) even though he/she actually believes it.

Self-fulfilling beliefs
For systems, we define reflexivity to mean that for any (in the language of the system) there is some such that is
provable in the system. Löb's theorem (in a general form) is that for any reflexive system of type 4, if is provable in the
system, so is [1][4]

Inconsistency of the belief in one's stability

If a consistent reflexive reasoner of type 4 believes that he or she is stable, then he or she will become unstable. Stated otherwise, if a
stable reflexive reasoner of type 4 believes that he or she is stable, then he or she will become inconsistent. Why is this? Suppose that
a stable reflexive reasoner of type 4 believes that he or she is stable. We will show that he or she will (sooner or later) believe every
proposition (and hence be inconsistent). Take any proposition The reasoner believes hence by Löb's theorem he or
she will believe (because he or she believes where is the proposition and so he or she will believe which is the
proposition ). Being stable, he or she will then believe [1][4]

See also
Belief revision
Common knowledge (logic)
George Boolos
Jaakko Hintikka
Modal logic
Raymond Smullyan

References
1. Smullyan, Raymond M., (1986) Logicians who reason about themselves(http://portal.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=10
29818&type=pdf&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=44077077&CFT OKEN=65318791), Proceedings of the 1986
conference on Theoretical aspects of reasoning about knowledge, Monterey (CA), Morgan Kaufmann Publishers
Inc., San Francisco (CA), pp. 341–352
2. https://web.archive.org/web/20070930165226/http://cs.wwc.edu/KU/Logic/Book/book/node17.html
Belief, Knowledge
and Self-Awareness
3. https://web.archive.org/web/20070213054220/http://moonbase.wwc.edu/~aabyan/Logic/Modal.html
Modal Logics
4. Smullyan, Raymond M., (1987) Forever Undecided, Alfred A. Knopf Inc.
5. Rod Girle, Possible Worlds, McGill-Queen's University Press (2003)ISBN 0-7735-2668-4 ISBN 978-0773526686
Further reading
Lindström, St.; Rabinowicz, Wl. (1999). "DDL Unlimited. Dynamic Doxastic Logic for Introspective Agents".
Erkenntnis. 51 (2–3): 353–385. doi:10.1023/A:1005577906029.
Linski, L. (1968). "On Interpreting Doxastic Logic".Journal of Philosophy. 65 (17): 500–502. JSTOR 2024352.
Segerberg, Kr. (1999). "Default Logic as Dynamic Doxastic Logic". Erkenntnis. 50 (2–3): 333–352.
doi:10.1023/A:1005546526502.
Wansing, H. (2000). "A Reduction of DoxasticLogic to Action Logic".Erkenntnis. 53 (1–2): 267–283.
doi:10.1023/A:1005666218871.

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