Reasoning with belief structures: non monotonic compatibility relations

This work uses of Dempster-Shafer belief structure to provide a representation, in a granular form, of knowledge about a variable when the authors have some uncertainty in their knowledge, and introduces compatibility relations for representing the possible joint values of two variables.

Abstract

Our concern is with getting information about one variable using knowledge of a second variable. We use of Dempster-Shafer belief structure to provide a representation, in a granular form, of knowledge about a variable when we have some uncertainty in our knowledge. We introduce compatibility relations for representing the possible joint values of two variables. Our inference scheme involves using a compatibility relation and a belief structure on one variable to infer a belief structure on the second variable. Our concern is with the representation of different types of compatibility relations. A distinction introduced is between monotonic and non-monotonic compatibility relations. We provide for the representation of both types.