The ability to solve conflicting beliefs is crucial for multi- agent systems where the information is dynamic, incomplete
and dis- tributed over a group of autonomous agents. The proposed distributed belief revision approach consists of a distributed
truth maintenance sy- stem and a set of autonomous belief revision methodologies. The agents have partial views and, frequently,
hold disparate beliefs which are au- tomatically detected by system’s reason maintenance mechanism. The nature of these conflicts
is dynamic and requires adequate methodolo- gies for conflict resolution. The two types of conflicting beliefs addressed in
this paper are Context Dependent and Context Independent Conflicts which result, in the first case, from the assignment, by
different agents, of opposite belief statuses to the same belief, and, in the latter case, from holding contradictory distinct
beliefs.
The belief revision methodology for solving Context Independent Con- flicts is, basically, a selection process based on the
assessment of the cre- dibility of the opposing belief statuses. The belief revision methodology for solving Context Dependent
Conflicts is, essentially, a search process for a consensual alternative based on a “next best” relaxation strategy.