Explainable Belief Harmonization under Dynamic Epistemic Partitions

arXiv:2607.21210v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Existing approaches to multi-agent belief combination have established mature foundations for combining uncertain beliefs under common assumptions: consensus methods use iterative averaging, logic-based methods resolve conflicting knowledge bases, and epistemic logic analyzes agents' information states. Typically, these approaches assume that the structure determining what each agent can represent remains fixed. However, in many scenarios, agents gain or lose observational capacity during execution, and what was once admissible may become structurally impossible. This paper presents a formal framework for handling such runtime changes in epistemic partitions over continuous belief profiles. A hybrid approach exploits the advantages of answer set programming in elaboration tolerance, declarative integrity constraints, and explanations, with the numerical flexibility of Python. The framework applies to domains where agents operate at heterogeneous and possibly changing levels of resolution, and provides formal guarantees of admissibility preservation under refinement, unique mass-preserving repair under coarsening, and explanation completeness. Evaluation across 100 randomly generated topology changes confirms complete violation detection and explanation coverage.

Abstract:Existing approaches to multi-agent belief combination have established mature foundations for combining uncertain beliefs under common assumptions: consensus methods use iterative averaging, logic-based methods resolve conflicting knowledge bases, and epistemic logic analyzes agents' information states. Typically, these approaches assume that the structure determining what each agent can represent remains fixed. However, in many scenarios, agents gain or lose observational capacity during execution, and what was once admissible may become structurally impossible. This paper presents a formal framework for handling such runtime changes in epistemic partitions over continuous belief profiles. A hybrid approach exploits the advantages of answer set programming in elaboration tolerance, declarative integrity constraints, and explanations, with the numerical flexibility of Python. The framework applies to domains where agents operate at heterogeneous and possibly changing levels of resolution, and provides formal guarantees of admissibility preservation under refinement, unique mass-preserving repair under coarsening, and explanation completeness. Evaluation across 100 randomly generated topology changes confirms complete violation detection and explanation coverage.

In Proceedings ICLP 2026, arXiv:2607.17707

Logic in Computer Science (cs.LO); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Multiagent Systems (cs.MA)

arXiv:2607.21210 [cs.LO]

(or arXiv:2607.21210v1 [cs.LO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.21210 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

EPTCS 450, 2026, pp. 529-543

https://doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.450.39 Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources

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Explainable Belief Harmonization under Dynamic Epistemic Partitions

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