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Arguing about beliefs and actions

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Applications of Uncertainty Formalisms

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 1455))

Abstract

Decision making under uncertainty is central to reasoning by practical intelligent systems, and attracts great controversy. The most widely accepted approach is to represent uncertainty in terms of prior and conditional probabilities of events and the utilities of consequences of actions, and to apply standard decision theory to calculate degrees of belief and expected utilities of actions. Unfortunately, as has been observed many times, reliable probabilities are often not easily available. Furthermore the benefits of a quantitative probabilistic representation can be small by comparison with the restrictions imposed by the formalism. In this paper we summarise an approach to reasoning under uncertainty by constructing arguments for and against particular options and then describe an extension of this approach to reasoning about the expected values of actions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Advanced Computation Laboratory, Imperial Cancer Research Fund, P.O. Box 123, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, WC2A 3PX, UK

    John Fox

  2. Department of Electronic Engineering, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, London, E1 4NS, UK

    Simon Parsons

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  1. John Fox
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  2. Simon Parsons
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK

    Anthony Hunter

  2. Queen Mary and Westfield College, Department of Electronic Engineering, University of London, London, E1 4NS, UK

    Simon Parsons

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© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Fox, J., Parsons, S. (1998). Arguing about beliefs and actions. In: Hunter, A., Parsons, S. (eds) Applications of Uncertainty Formalisms. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1455. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-49426-X_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-49426-X_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-65312-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49426-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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