Related papers: The Force of Proof by Which Any Argument Prevails
(l) I have enough evidence to render the sentence S probable. (la) So, relative to what I know, it is rational of me to believe S. (2) Now that I have more evidence, S may no longer be probable. (2a) So now, relative to what I know, it is…
Proof theory began in the 1920's as a part of Hilbert's program, which aimed to secure the foundations of mathematics by modeling infinitary mathematics with formal axiomatic systems and proving those systems consistent using restricted,…
There has not been an established mathematical measure of evidence. Some Bayesians have argued that probability can be an objectively correct measure of ``rational degrees of belief,'' which we do not distinguish from evidence. However,…
We present a formal measure of argument strength, which combines the ideas that conclusions of strong arguments are (i) highly probable and (ii) their uncertainty is relatively precise. Likewise, arguments are weak when their conclusion…
Several authors have explained that the likelihood ratio measures the strength of the evidence represented by observations in statistical problems. This idea works fine when the goal is to evaluate the strength of the available evidence for…
The combination of argumentation and probability paves the way to new accounts of qualitative and quantitative uncertainty, thereby offering new theoretical and applicative opportunities. Due to a variety of interests, probabilistic…
The role of probability appears unchallenged as the key measure of uncertainty, used among other things for practical induction in the empirical sciences. Yet, Popper was emphatic in his rejection of inductive probability and of the logical…
The likelihood principle makes strong claims about the nature of statistical evidence but is controversial. Its claims are undermined by the existence of several examples that are assumed to show that it allows, with unity probability,…
An agent often has a number of hypotheses, and must choose among them based on observations, or outcomes of experiments. Each of these observations can be viewed as providing evidence for or against various hypotheses. All the attempts to…
The classical propositional assumption-based model is extended to incorporate probabilities for the assumptions. Then it is placed into the framework of evidence theory. Several authors like Laskey, Lehner (1989) and Provan (1990) already…
An agent often has a number of hypotheses, and must choose among them based on observations, or outcomes of experiments. Each of these observations can be viewed as providing evidence for or against various hypotheses. All the attempts to…
The origins of proof-theoretic semantics lie in the question of what constitutes the meaning of the logical connectives and its response: the rules of inference that govern the use of the connective. However, what if we go a step further…
We propose an inequality paradigm for probabilistic reasoning based on a logic of upper and lower bounds on conditional probabilities. We investigate a family of probabilistic logics, generalizing the work of Nilsson [14]. We develop a…
We discuss the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence. We introduce a concept of monotonicity which is related to the diminution of the range between belief and plausibility. We show that the accumulation of knowledge in this framework exhibits…
In logic there is a clear concept of what constitutes a proof and what not. A proof is essentially defined as a finite sequence of formulae which are either axioms or derived by proof rules from formulae earlier in the sequence.…
While Evidence Theory (also known as Dempster-Shafer Theory, or Belief Functions Theory) is being increasingly used in data fusion, its potentialities in the Social and Life Sciences are often obscured by lack of awareness of its…
Reasoning under uncertainty is a fundamental challenge in Artificial Intelligence. As with most of these challenges, there is a harsh dilemma between the expressive power of the language used, and the tractability of the computational…
This paper is about equality of proofs in which a binary predicate formalizing properties of equality occurs, besides conjunction and the constant true proposition. The properties of equality in question are those of a preordering relation,…
Mathematical proofs are both paradigms of certainty and some of the most explicitly-justified arguments that we have in the cultural record. Their very explicitness, however, leads to a paradox, because the probability of error grows…
The problem of combining the evidence concerning an unknown, contained in each of $k$ Bayesian inference bases, is discussed. This can be considered as a generalization of the problem of pooling $k$ priors to determine a consensus prior.…