Parallel Belief Contraction via Order Aggregation. Proceedings of the 34th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2025) 4427–4435. doi:10.24963/ijcai.2025/493publisher (free) · arXiv long version
Overview
My research focuses principally on the philosophical foundations and applications of formal theories of rational choice and inference, spanning topics in artificial intelligence, social choice and voting, philosophical logic, epistemology, decision theory and the philosophy of science. A long-running strand, with Richard Booth, concerns the logic of iterated belief revision; a second concerns judgment and order aggregation.
A single question runs through all of it: what makes reasoning good, and how one would judge a reasoner (human or artificial) against that standard. Current work sits between formal epistemology and social choice, on how a body of belief should respond to several pieces of information at once, and on how methods for combining rankings bear on choice when very little is known.
Earlier, my Australian Research Council Future Fellowship project, Qualitative Models of Rationality: Philosophical Foundations and Applications, developed qualitative alternatives to Bayesian models of belief and evidential support. It supported the KR Conventicle at PRICAI 2019.
Publications
Joint authors are listed as published. Where that order is not alphabetical, it is the order of relative contribution.
Articles in peer-reviewed conference proceedings
2025
2025
Parallel Belief Revision via Order Aggregation. Proceedings of the 34th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2025) 4419–4426. doi:10.24963/ijcai.2025/492publisher (free) · arXiv long version
2020
Revision by Conditionals: From Hook to Arrow. Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR 2020) 233–242. doi:10.24963/kr.2020/24publisher (free) · arXiv long version
2019
Elementary Iterated Revision and the Levi Identity. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Logic, Rationality and Interaction (LORI 2019) 15–28. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-60292-8_2publisher (paywalled) · arXiv long version
2018
On Strengthening the Logic of Iterated Belief Revision: Proper Ordinal Interval Operators. Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR 2018) 210–219.publisher (free) · arXiv long version
2016
Extending the Harper Identity to Iterated Belief Change. Proceedings of the 25th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2016) 987–993.publisher (free) · arXiv long version
Articles in peer-reviewed journals
2023
Elementary Belief Revision Operators. Journal of Philosophical Logic 52(1): 267–311. doi:10.1007/s10992-022-09672-6publisher (free) · accepted manuscript
2020
On Strengthening the Logic of Iterated Belief Revision: Proper Ordinal Interval Operators. Artificial Intelligence 285, 103289. doi:10.1016/j.artint.2020.103289publisher (paywalled) · accepted manuscript
2019
From Iterated Revision to Iterated Contraction: Extending the Harper Identity. Artificial Intelligence 277, 103171. doi:10.1016/j.artint.2019.103171publisher (paywalled) · accepted manuscript
2017
Descriptive Decision Theory. In E. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.publisher (free)
2017
The Irreducibility of Iterated to Single Revision. Journal of Philosophical Logic 46(4): 405–418. doi:10.1007/s10992-016-9404-zpublisher (paywalled) · accepted manuscript
2017
Preservation, Commutativity and Modus Ponens: Two Recent Triviality Results. Mind 126(502): 579–602. doi:10.1093/mind/fzv154publisher (paywalled) · accepted manuscript
2014
Subjective Probabilities Need Not Be Sharp. Erkenntnis 79(6): 1273–1286. doi:10.1007/s10670-013-9597-2publisher (paywalled) · accepted manuscript
2013
Contrastive Confirmation: Some Competing Accounts. Synthese 190(1): 129–138. doi:10.1007/s11229-010-9845-9publisher (paywalled) · accepted manuscript
2013
Acceptance, Aggregation and Scoring Rules. Erkenntnis 78(1): 201–217. doi:10.1007/s10670-012-9375-6publisher (paywalled) · accepted manuscript
2013
Defeat Reconsidered. Analysis 73(1): 49–51. doi:10.1093/analys/ans129publisher (paywalled) · accepted manuscript
2013
Transmission Failure, AGM Style. Erkenntnis 78(2): 383–398. doi:10.1007/s10670-012-9364-9publisher (paywalled) · accepted manuscript
2011
Self-Respect Regained. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 111(2pt2): 311–318. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9264.2011.00311.xpublisher (paywalled) · accepted manuscript
2010
The Lottery Paradox Generalised? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61(3): 667–679. doi:10.1093/bjps/axp056publisher (paywalled) · accepted manuscript
2010
The Transmission of Support: A Bayesian Re-analysis. Synthese 176(3): 333–343. doi:10.1007/s11229-009-9570-4publisher (paywalled) · accepted manuscript
2007
Solving the Tacking Problem with Contrast Classes. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 58(3): 489–502. doi:10.1093/bjps/axm019publisher (paywalled)
2006
Whyte on Desire Fulfilment Conditions: A Simple Problem. Disputatio II(21): 65–68. doi:10.2478/disp-2006-0014publisher (free)
Book chapters
2012
Probability in the Philosophy of Religion: Introduction. In Chandler & Harrison (2012). doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199604760.003.0001publisher (paywalled)
Edited volumes
2012
Probability in the Philosophy of Religion. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199604760.001.0001publisher (paywalled)
Miscellaneous
2017
Review of Spohn, The Laws of Belief. Dialectica 71(1): 141–146. doi:10.1111/1746-8361.12173publisher (paywalled) · accepted manuscript
2009
Review of Huber & Schmidt-Petri (eds.), Degrees of Belief. Philosophy in Review 29(6): 422–424.published version
2000
On Being Inexplicit. University of Sussex Cognitive Science Research Papers #516.