Probabilistic Logic

The aim of a probabilistic logic (also probability logic and probabilistic reasoning) is to combine the capacity of probability theory to handle uncertainty with the capacity of deductive logic to exploit structure. The result is a richer and more expressive formalism with a broad range of possible application areas. Probabilistic logics attempt to find a natural extension of traditional logic truth tables: the results they define are derived through probabilistic expressions instead. A difficulty with probabilistic logics is that they tend to multiply the computational complexities of their probabilistic and logical components. Other difficulties include the possibility of counter-intuitive results, such as those of Dempster-Shafer theory. The need to deal with a broad variety of contexts and issues has led to many different proposals.