An introduction to the theory of plausible and paradoxical reasoning

Abstract

This paper presents the basic mathematical settings of a new theory of plausible and paradoxical reasoning and describes a rule of combination of sources of information in a very general framework where information can be both uncertain and paradoxical. Within this framework, the rule of combination which takes into account explicitly both conjunctions and disjunctions of assertions in the fusion process, appears to be more simple and general than the Dempster's rule of combination. Through two simple examples, we show the strong ability of this new theory to solve practical but difficult problems where the Dempster-Shafer theory usually fails. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.