Fuzziness and Approximate Reasoning: Epistemics on Uncertainty, Expectation and Risk in Rational Behavior

ISBN-13: 9783540880868 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 289 str.

Kofi Kissi Dompere

Opis

We do not perceive the present as it is and in totality, nor do we infer the future from the present with any high degree of dependability, nor yet do we accurately know the consequences of our own actions. In addition, there is a fourth source of error to be taken into account, for we do not execute actions in the precise form in which they are imaged and willed. Frank H. Knight R4.34, p. 202] The "degree" of certainty of confidence felt in the conclusion after it is reached cannot be ignored, for it is of the greatest practical signi- cance. The action which follows upon an opinion depends as much upon the amount of confidence in that opinion as it does upon fav- ableness of the opinion itself. The ultimate logic, or psychology, of these deliberations is obscure, a part of the scientifically unfathomable mystery of life and mind. Frank H. Knight R4.34, p. 226-227] With some inaccuracy, description of uncertain consequences can be classified into two categories, those which use exclusively the language of probability distributions and those which call for some other principle, either to replace or supplement.

Spis treści

Fuzzy Rationality, Uncertainty and Expectations.- Fuzzy Rationality and Classical Sub-optimal Rationality.- Fuzzy Rationality, Ambiguity and Risk in Decision-Choice Process.- Epistemics of Risk and Optimal Decision-Choice Rationality.- Reflections on Some Decision-Choice Theories on Uncertainty and Risk.- Fuzzy Decision-Choice Rationality and Paradoxes in Decision-Choice Theories.

Blurb

This monograph is special in its orientation and contribution to current state of our understanding of decision-choice process and knowledge production. Its special orientation is to bring to the scientific community the discussions on the epistemic structure of the relationships among uncertainty, expectations, risk, possibility, probability and how the rules of fuzzy paradigm and the methods of fuzzy rationality bring new and different understanding to the relationships. At the level of theory of knowledge, it presents the structure and epistemic analysis of uncertainty, expectations and risk in decision-choice actions through the characteristics of substitution-transformation and input-output processes in categorial dynamics of actual-potential duality. The interactive effects of rationality and expectation are examined around belief, prospect, time and conditions of belief justification where the relationship between possibility and probability as a sequential link between potential and actual is analyzed to provide some understanding of the role of relative costs and benefits in defining risk in both nature and society. The concepts of possibilistic and probabilistic beliefs are explicated in relation to rationality and the decision-choice process where the analytical relationship between uncertainty and expectation formation is presented leading to the introduction of two types of uncertainty composed of fuzzy uncertainty and stochastic uncertainty.