The Dynamic of Belief in the Transferable Belief Model and Specialization-Generalization Matrices
This work provides theoretical insights into belief dynamics for researchers in uncertainty reasoning, but it is incremental as it builds on existing models without introducing new methods or data.
The paper tackles the problem of belief updating in the transferable belief model by relating it to specialization matrices and the Principle of Minimal Commitment, showing that Dempster's rule of conditioning corresponds to the least committed specialization and that combination rules arise from commutativity requirements.
The fundamental updating process in the transferable belief model is related to the concept of specialization and can be described by a specialization matrix. The degree of belief in the truth of a proposition is a degree of justified support. The Principle of Minimal Commitment implies that one should never give more support to the truth of a proposition than justified. We show that Dempster's rule of conditioning corresponds essentially to the least committed specialization, and that Dempster's rule of combination results essentially from commutativity requirements. The concept of generalization, dual to thc concept of specialization, is described.