---
title: "Reconstructing an Agent's Epistemic State from Observations"
authors:
  - "Richard Booth"
  - "Alexander Nittka"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2005/71"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2005/0071.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 2005
pages: "394-398"
track: ""
keywords:
---

# Reconstructing an Agent's Epistemic State from Observations

Richard Booth, Alexander Nittka

*Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 394-398.

## Abstract

We look at the problem in belief revision of trying to make inferences about what an agent believed – or will believe – at a given moment, based on an observation of how the agent has responded to some sequence of previous belief revision inputs over time. We adopt a “reverse engineering” approach to this problem. Assuming a framework for iterated belief revision which is based on sequences, we construct a model of the agent that “best explains” the observation. Further considerations on this best-explaining model then allow inferences about the agent’s epistemic behaviour to be made. We also provide an algorithm which computes this best explanation.