Arthur Van Camp

Modelling practical certainty and its link with classical propositional logic

Arthur Van Camp and Gert de Cooman

Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium on Imprecise Probability: Theories and Applications (ISIPTA 2013), pp. 365 – 374, July 2013.

Poster prize: 4th place.

Abstract

We model practical certainty in the language of accept & reject statement-based uncertainty models. We present three different ways, each time using a different nature of assessment: we study coherent models following from (i) favourability assessments, (ii) acceptability assessments, and (iii) indifference assessments. We argue that a statement of favourability, when used with an appropriate background model, essentially boils down to stating a belief of practical certainty using acceptability assessments. We show that the corresponding models do not form an intersection structure, in contradistinction with the coherent models following from an indifferenc assessment. We construct embeddings of classical propositional logic into each of our models for practical certainty.