Semi-contraction: Axioms and construction (Q5937824)

In the context of AGM (Alchourrón-Gärdenfors-Makinson) logic of belief revision, recovery is the postulate of the AGM account of belief contraction that provoked most criticism. Contraction functions that satisfy the AGM basic contraction postulates, except recovery, are known as withdrawal functions. The first author defined (1998) semi-contraction as a withdrawal function that allows satisfaction of both principles of minimal loss of information and of minimal loss of information value (I. Levi; 1991, 1997). Now, the three-fold purpose of this paper may be stated as follows: (a) To propose an axiomatic characterization of semi-contraction. (b) To introduce a constructive approach to semi-contraction, based on semi-saturable sets inspired by Levi's saturable sets (1991). (c) To define and investigate a special kind of semi-contraction which is based on an interpolated semi- contraction function and satisfies the interpolation thesis of S. Lindström and W. Rabinowicz (1991).