Probing the Quantitative-Qualitative Divide in Probabilistic Reasoning

DOI10.1016/J.APAL.2023.103339MaRDI QIDQ6443385zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Duligur Ibeling, Thomas Icard, Krzysztof Mierzewski, Milan Mossé

Publication date 11 July 2023

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1016/J.APAL.2023.103339

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Philosophical and critical aspects of logic and foundations (03A05) Probability and inductive logic (03B48) Axioms; other general questions in probability (60A05) Descriptive complexity and finite models (68Q19)

Abstract: This paper explores the space of (propositional) probabilistic logical languages, ranging from a purely `qualitative' comparative language to a highly `quantitative' language involving arbitrary polynomials over probability terms. While talk of qualitative vs. quantitative may be suggestive, we identify a robust and meaningful boundary in the space by distinguishing systems that encode (at most) additive reasoning from those that encode additive and multiplicative reasoning. The latter includes not only languages with explicit multiplication but also languages expressing notions of dependence and conditionality. We show that the distinction tracks a divide in computational complexity: additive systems remain complete for $mathsfNP$, while multiplicative systems are robustly complete for $existsmathbbR$. We also address axiomatic questions, offering several new completeness results as well as a proof of non-finite-axiomatizability for comparative probability. Repercussions of our results for conceptual and empirical questions are addressed, and open problems are discussed.

Cited in

(7)

• Measurement-theoretic foundations of logic of qualitative conditional probability
• On probabilistic and causal reasoning with summation operators
• Measurement-theoretic foundations of logic of inexact knowledge
• An `elementary' perspective on reasoning about probability spaces
• Infinitary calculus for first-order logic of probability with distribution on the domain
• Sharpening complexity results in quantified probability logic
• On the decision problem for quantified probability logics

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