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The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 1994 45(3):865-897; doi:10.1093/bjps/45.3.865
© 1994 by British Society for the Philosophy of Science
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Changing the Theory of Theory Change: Towards a Computational Approach

Neil Tennant

Department of Philosophy, The Ohio State University and Churchill College Cambridge

The Theory of theory change has contraction and revision as its central notions. Of these, contraction is the more fundamental. The best-known theory, due to Alchourrón, Gärdenfors, and Makinson, is based on a few central postulates. The most fundamental of these is the principle of recovery: if one contracts a theory with respect to a sentence, and then adds that sentence back again, one recovers the whole theory.

Recovery is demonstrably false. This paper shows why, and investigates how one can nevertheless characterize contraction in a theoretically fruitful way. The theory proposed lends itself to implementation, which in turn could yield new theoretical insights. The Main proposal is a ‘staining algorithm’ which identifies which sentences to reject when contracting a theory. The algorithm requires one to be clear about the structure of reasons one has for including sentences within one's theory.


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