Incidence Calculus: A Mechanism for Probabilistic Reasoning

Abstract

Mechanisms for the automation of uncertainty are required for expert systems. Sometimes these mechanisms need to obey the properties of probabilistic reasoning. We argue that a purely numeric mechanism, like those proposed so far, cannot provide a probabilistic logic with truth functional connec- tives. We propose an alternative mechanism, Incidence Calculus, which is based on a representation of uncertainty using sets of points, which might represent situations models or possible worlds. Incidence Calculus does provide a probabilistic logic with truth functional connectives.