RELATIVE UNCERTAINTY AND EVIDENCE SETS: A CONSTRUCTIVIST FRAMEWORK

Abstract

Several measures of uncertainty, in its various forms of nonspecificity, conflict, and fuzziness, valid both in finite and infinite domains are investigated. It is argued that dimensionless measures, relating uncertainty situations to the information content of their respective universal sets, can capture uncertainty efficiently both in finite and infinite domains. These measures are also considered more intuitive. To establish them, a more general approach to uncertainly measures is developed. After this, the utilization of these measures is exemplified in the measurement of the uncertainty content of evidence sets. These interval-based set structures, defined through evidence theory, are shown to possess ideal characteristics for the modeling of human cognitive categorization processes, within a constructivist framework.

INDEX TERMS:

• Uncertainty
• uncertainty in infinite domains
• interval based fuzzy sets
• evidence theory
• constructivism
• cognitive categorization

Notes

Luis Mateus Rocha is a Doctorate Candidate at the Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, of the T.J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science at the State University of New York at Binghamton, where he works with George Klir and Howard Pattee. Born in Angola in 1966, he moved to Portugal in 1975. After graduating from a Licentiate Degree in Mechanical Engineering and Control Systems in 1990 at I.S.T. in Lisbon, Portugal, he frequented the Msc, in Industrial Engineering at the Staffordshire University. England. He has published and edited several articles in the areas of Fuzzy Logic, Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Life, and Evolutionary Systems. He works on the utilization of formal tools such as Genetic Algorithms, Fuzzy Logic, Interval Computation, Evidence Theory, and Neural Networks in the development of computational models of evolutionary systems with both self-organizing and evolutionary characteristics. He is interested in semiolic and evolutionary constructivisi models of biological and cognitive systems and its applications to complex systems. He has been the recipient of several scholarships by the European Union and the Portuguese Government, as well as several awards such as the best paper award for the 13th European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research in 1996 and the Gordon Pask memorial award.