Self-Conditional Probabilities and Probabilistic Interpretations of Belief Functions

  • Authors:
  • Roger Cooke;Philippe Smets

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Mathematics, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands r.m.cooke@its.tudelft.nl;IRIDIA, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 50 av. Roosevelt, CP 194-6, 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium E-mail: psmets@ulb.ac.be http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~psmets

  • Venue:
  • Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

We present an interpretation of belief functions within a pure probabilistic framework, namely as normalized self-conditional expected probabilities, and study their mathematical properties. Interpretations of belief functions appeal to partial knowledge. The self-conditional interpretation does this within the traditional probabilistic framework by considering surplus belief in an event emerging from a future observation, conditional on the event occurring. Dempster's original interpretation, in contrast, involves partial knowledge of a belief state. The modal interpretation, currently gaining popularity, models the probability of a proposition being believed (or proved, or known). The versatility of the belief function formalism is demonstrated by the fact that it accommodates very different intuitions.