3,277 research outputs found
Nonmonotonic Probabilistic Logics between Model-Theoretic Probabilistic Logic and Probabilistic Logic under Coherence
Recently, it has been shown that probabilistic entailment under coherence is
weaker than model-theoretic probabilistic entailment. Moreover, probabilistic
entailment under coherence is a generalization of default entailment in System
P. In this paper, we continue this line of research by presenting probabilistic
generalizations of more sophisticated notions of classical default entailment
that lie between model-theoretic probabilistic entailment and probabilistic
entailment under coherence. That is, the new formalisms properly generalize
their counterparts in classical default reasoning, they are weaker than
model-theoretic probabilistic entailment, and they are stronger than
probabilistic entailment under coherence. The new formalisms are useful
especially for handling probabilistic inconsistencies related to conditioning
on zero events. They can also be applied for probabilistic belief revision.
More generally, in the same spirit as a similar previous paper, this paper
sheds light on exciting new formalisms for probabilistic reasoning beyond the
well-known standard ones.Comment: 10 pages; in Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on
Non-Monotonic Reasoning (NMR-2002), Special Session on Uncertainty Frameworks
in Nonmonotonic Reasoning, pages 265-274, Toulouse, France, April 200
Probabilistic entailment in the setting of coherence: The role of quasi conjunction and inclusion relation
In this paper, by adopting a coherence-based probabilistic approach to
default reasoning, we focus the study on the logical operation of quasi
conjunction and the Goodman-Nguyen inclusion relation for conditional events.
We recall that quasi conjunction is a basic notion for defining consistency of
conditional knowledge bases. By deepening some results given in a previous
paper we show that, given any finite family of conditional events F and any
nonempty subset S of F, the family F p-entails the quasi conjunction C(S);
then, given any conditional event E|H, we analyze the equivalence between
p-entailment of E|H from F and p-entailment of E|H from C(S), where S is some
nonempty subset of F. We also illustrate some alternative theorems related with
p-consistency and p-entailment. Finally, we deepen the study of the connections
between the notions of p-entailment and inclusion relation by introducing for a
pair (F,E|H) the (possibly empty) class K of the subsets S of F such that C(S)
implies E|H. We show that the class K satisfies many properties; in particular
K is additive and has a greatest element which can be determined by applying a
suitable algorithm
Relevance and Conditionals: A Synopsis of Open Pragmatic and Semantic Issues
Recently several papers have reported relevance effects on the cognitive assessments of indicative conditionals, which pose an explanatory challenge to the Suppositional Theory of conditionals advanced by David Over, which is influential in the psychology of reasoning. Some of these results concern the “Equation” (P(if A, then C) = P(C|A)), others the de Finetti truth table, and yet others the uncertain and-to-inference task. The purpose of this chapter is to take a Birdseye view on the debate and investigate some of the open theoretical issues posed by the empirical results. Central among these is whether to count these effects as belonging to pragmatics or semantics
Probabilistic entailment and iterated conditionals
In this paper we exploit the notions of conjoined and iterated conditionals,
which are defined in the setting of coherence by means of suitable conditional
random quantities with values in the interval . We examine the iterated
conditional , by showing that p-entails if and only if
. Then, we show that a p-consistent family
p-entails a conditional event if
and only if , or for some nonempty
subset of , where is the quasi
conjunction of the conditional events in . Then, we examine the
inference rules , , , and of System~P
and other well known inference rules ( , ,
). We also show that , where
is the conjunction of the conditional events in
. We characterize p-entailment by showing that
p-entails if and only if .
Finally, we examine \emph{Denial of the antecedent} and \emph{Affirmation of
the consequent}, where the p-entailment of from does
not hold, by showing that $(E_3|H_3)|\mathcal{C}(\mathcal{F})\neq1.
Coherent frequentism
By representing the range of fair betting odds according to a pair of
confidence set estimators, dual probability measures on parameter space called
frequentist posteriors secure the coherence of subjective inference without any
prior distribution. The closure of the set of expected losses corresponding to
the dual frequentist posteriors constrains decisions without arbitrarily
forcing optimization under all circumstances. This decision theory reduces to
those that maximize expected utility when the pair of frequentist posteriors is
induced by an exact or approximate confidence set estimator or when an
automatic reduction rule is applied to the pair. In such cases, the resulting
frequentist posterior is coherent in the sense that, as a probability
distribution of the parameter of interest, it satisfies the axioms of the
decision-theoretic and logic-theoretic systems typically cited in support of
the Bayesian posterior. Unlike the p-value, the confidence level of an interval
hypothesis derived from such a measure is suitable as an estimator of the
indicator of hypothesis truth since it converges in sample-space probability to
1 if the hypothesis is true or to 0 otherwise under general conditions.Comment: The confidence-measure theory of inference and decision is explicitly
extended to vector parameters of interest. The derivation of upper and lower
confidence levels from valid and nonconservative set estimators is formalize
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