A LOGIC FOR UNCERTAIN PROBABILITIES推荐.pdf

Preprint of article published in: International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based Systems, Vol. 9, No. 3 (June 2001) Errata in the printed version have been corrected in this version. Last updated 15 October 2002. A LOGIC FOR UNCERTAIN PROBABILITIES AUDUN JØSANG Distributed Systems Technology Centre Faculty of Information Technology, Queensland University of Technology GPO Box 2434, Brisbane, Qld 4001, Australia Received February 1998 Revised February 2000 We first describe a metric for uncertain probabilities called opinion, and subsequently a set of logical operators that can be used for logical reasoning with uncertain propositions. This framework which is called subjective logic uses elements from the Dempster-Shafer belief theory and we show that it is compatible with binary logic and probability calculus. Keywords: Belief, evidence, reasoning, uncertainty, probability, logic. 
    In standard logic, propositions are considered to be either true or false. However, a fun- damental aspect of the human condition is that nobody can ever determine with absolute certainty whether a proposition about the world is true or false. In addition, whenever the truth of a proposition is assessed, it is always done by an individual, and it can never be considered to represent a general and objective belief. This indicates that important aspects are missing in the way standard logic captures our perception of reality, and that it is more designed for an idealised world than for the subjective world in which we are all living. Several alternative calculi and logics which take uncertainty and ignorance into