Towards a Formal Taxonomy of Hybrid Uncertainty Representations

In this paper we present some preliminary ideas about how to formally relate various uncertainty representations together in a taxonomic structure, capturing both syntactic and semantic generalization. Fuzziness and nonspeciicity are presumed as primitive concepts of uncertainty, and transitive and intransitive methods operating with nonspeciicity and fuzziness are introduced to generate a base class of hybrid uncertainty representational forms. Additive, maximal, and interval constraints then complete the characterization of the most important hybrid forms.