6th Madeira Workshop on Belief Revision, Argumentation, Ontologies, and Norms

March 21st - 25th 2024 - Madeira - Portugal

Previous Editions

Research in Belief Revision has been teeming with activity for the past three decades.
Although investigations in this area had begun earlier, the foundational paper by Alchourrón, Gärdenfords, and Makinson, known today as AGM, was the proposal that captured the attention of the community.
This community was comprised by a variety of interests and, among them, Philosophy, Formal Logic, Economics, and Artificial Intelligence were the ones that became the most involved. Since then, that community has produced a wealth of results on the dynamics of knowledge, with many proposals being put forward and refined to mature approaches.

The Argumentation tradition has ancient roots, but a sharp increase in attention from the researchers of these same areas was almost coincidental with the interest in Belief Revision. The work by Toulmin published in the mid-fifties can perhaps be recognized as a point of departure, but full attention to his proposal was delayed until the beginning of the eighties. Also, the work of Jon Doyle on Truth Maintenance Systems (TMS) could be considered as a starting point for this research, as it attracted attention to the problem of how something comes to be believed.
Interestingly enough, that work can also be regarded as a first effort in focussing on the problems considered in the overlapping area where Belief Revision and Argumentation meet. Again, the researchers working on Argumentation during the past few decades has led to many developments that include both theoretical and practical contributions.

These two areas grew along mostly separate lines of inquiry until recently; indeed, in the last decade there has been a renewed interest in the interplay between Belief Revision and general forms of reasoning. Argumentation represents a reasoning mechanism that is particularly apt for obtaining the consequences of a repository of potentially inconsistent and/or incomplete beliefs, offering the possibility of a greater capability for explaining those conclusions. The area where the two research efforts have become confluent has produced a significant number of interesting results that show a promising opportunity to further our comprehension not only in each individual area, but also advance our understanding of the mechanisms involved in general patterns of reasoning. Clearly, the problems involved in this enterprise call for the participation of both communities.

We started the Madeira Workshops in Belief Revision and Argumentation in 2012. In our previous editions, the presentations of research results and the subsequent lively discussions held in that motivating settings provided an excellent environment for the advancement of the area. The dynamic exchange of ideas contributed to refining the approaches and to discovering new insights that undoubtedly will positively affect the field by advancing the individual research lines.

We would like to acknowledge and extend our deeply felt appreciation to everyone who has contributed for the success of these encounters!

List of Participants in Previous Editions



2012 2015 2017
Adrian Haret
Alexander Bochman
André Fuhrmann
Andreas Herzig
Arthur Casals
Bernhard Nebel
Bruno YUN
Célia da Costa Pereira
Christian Ittner
Daniel Eckert
Dongmo Zhang
Eduardo Fermé
Emil Weydert
Eric Gregoire
Erik Olsson
Florence Bannay  
Francesco Parisi
Frederik S. Herzberg
Gabriele Kern-Isberner
Gabriella Pigozzi
Giovanni Casini
Gregory Wheeler
Guillermo Simari
Jean-Guy Mailly
Jérémie Dauphin
Jérome Delobelle
Jim Delgrande
Joao Leite
John Cantwell
Juliano Maranhao
Ken Satoh
Krister Segerberg
Leon Van Der Torre
Marco Garapa
Marcos Cramer
Massimiliano Giacomin
Matthias Thimm
Mauricio Reis
Mikołaj Podlaszewski
Nir Oren
Odile Papini
Ofer Arieli
Paolo Torroni
Patrick Krumpelmann
Philippe Besnard
Pierre Bisquert
Pietro Baroni
Rafael Testa
Ramón Pino Perez
Renata Wassermann
Richard Booth
Sébastien Konieczny
Serena Villata
Srdjan Vesic
Stefan Ruemmele
Stefan Woltran
Sten Lindström
Sven Ove Hansson
Tjitze Rienstra
Tommie Meyer
Torsten Schaub
Vanina Martinez
Vincent Risch
ZhiQiang Zhuang