Contradicting Beliefs and Communication

We address the issue of the representation as well as the evolution of (possibly) mistaken beliefs. We develop a formal setup (a mutual belief space) in which agents might have a mistaken view of what the model is. We then model a communication process, by which agents communicate their beliefs to one another. We define a revision rule that can be applied even when agents have contradictory beliefs. We study its properties and, in particular, show that, when mistaken, agents do not necessarily eventually agree after communicating their beliefs. We finally address the dynamics of revision and show that when beliefs are mistaken, the order of communication may affect the resulting belief structure.