Belief in Simplicial Complexes

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Sink, Philip, Bjorndahl, Adam
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866918250558783488
author Sink, Philip
Bjorndahl, Adam
author_facet Sink, Philip
Bjorndahl, Adam
contents We provide a novel semantics for belief using simplicial complexes. In our framework, belief satisfies the \textsf{KD45} axioms and rules as well as the ``knowledge implies belief'' axiom ($Kϕ\lthen Bϕ$); in addition, we adopt the (standard) assumption that each facet in our simplicial models has exactly one vertex of every color. No existing model of belief in simplicial complexes that we are aware of is able to satisfy all of these conditions without trivializing belief to coincide with knowledge. We also address the common technical assumption of ``properness'' for relational structures made in the simplicial semantics literature, namely, that no two worlds fall into the same knowledge cell for all agents; we argue that there are conceptually sensible belief frames in which this assumption is violated, and use the result of ``A Note on Proper Relational Structures'' to bypass this restriction. We conclude with a discussion of how an alternative ``simplicial sets'' framework could allow us to bypass properness altogether and perhaps provide a more streamlined simplicial framework for representing belief.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_14647
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Belief in Simplicial Complexes
Sink, Philip
Bjorndahl, Adam
Logic in Computer Science
Logic
03B42
F.4.1
We provide a novel semantics for belief using simplicial complexes. In our framework, belief satisfies the \textsf{KD45} axioms and rules as well as the ``knowledge implies belief'' axiom ($Kϕ\lthen Bϕ$); in addition, we adopt the (standard) assumption that each facet in our simplicial models has exactly one vertex of every color. No existing model of belief in simplicial complexes that we are aware of is able to satisfy all of these conditions without trivializing belief to coincide with knowledge. We also address the common technical assumption of ``properness'' for relational structures made in the simplicial semantics literature, namely, that no two worlds fall into the same knowledge cell for all agents; we argue that there are conceptually sensible belief frames in which this assumption is violated, and use the result of ``A Note on Proper Relational Structures'' to bypass this restriction. We conclude with a discussion of how an alternative ``simplicial sets'' framework could allow us to bypass properness altogether and perhaps provide a more streamlined simplicial framework for representing belief.
title Belief in Simplicial Complexes
topic Logic in Computer Science
Logic
03B42
F.4.1
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.14647