Toward a Graph-Theoretic Model of Belief: Confidence, Credibility, and Structural Coherence
This foundational work addresses the need for a more nuanced representation of belief structure in fields like philosophy, AI, and cognitive science, though it is incremental as it builds on existing frameworks without new inference procedures.
The paper tackles the problem of representing belief systems by introducing a graph-theoretic model that distinguishes credibility and confidence, providing a richer classification of epistemic states than existing probabilistic, logical, or argumentation-based approaches.
Belief systems are often treated as globally consistent sets of propositions or as scalar-valued probability distributions. Such representations tend to obscure the internal structure of belief, conflate external credibility with internal coherence, and preclude the modeling of fragmented or contradictory epistemic states. This paper introduces a minimal formalism for belief systems as directed, weighted graphs. In this framework, nodes represent individual beliefs, edges encode epistemic relationships (e.g., support or contradiction), and two distinct functions assign each belief a credibility (reflecting source trust) and a confidence (derived from internal structural support). Unlike classical probabilistic models, our approach does not assume prior coherence or require belief updating. Unlike logical and argumentation-based frameworks, it supports fine-grained structural representation without committing to binary justification status or deductive closure. The model is purely static and deliberately excludes inference or revision procedures. Its aim is to provide a foundational substrate for analyzing the internal organization of belief systems, including coherence conditions, epistemic tensions, and representational limits. By distinguishing belief structure from belief strength, this formalism enables a richer classification of epistemic states than existing probabilistic, logical, or argumentation-based approaches.