A Counterexample to Six Fundamental Principles of Belief Formation

In recent years there has been a growing consensus that ordinary reasoning does not conform to the laws of classical logic, but is rather nonmonotonic in the sense that conclusions previously drawn may well be removed upon acquiring further information. Even so, rational belief formation has up to now been modelled as conforming to some fundamental principles that are classically valid. The counterexample described in this paper suggests that a number of the most cherished of these principles should not be regarded as valid for commonsense reasoning. An explanation of this puzzling failure is given, arguing that a problem in the theory of rational choice transfers to the realm of belief formation.