Possible World Partition Sequences: A Unifying Framework for Uncertain
  Reasoning
  When we work with information from multiple sources, the formalism each
employs to handle uncertainty may not be uniform. In order to be able to
combine these knowledge bases of different formats, we need to first establish
a common basis for characterizing and evaluating the different formalisms, and
provide a semantics for the combined mechanism. A common framework can provide
an infrastructure for building an integrated system, and is essential if we are
to understand its behavior. We present a unifying framework based on an ordered
partition of possible worlds called partition sequences, which corresponds to
our intuitive notion of biasing towards certain possible scenarios when we are
uncertain of the actual situation. We show that some of the existing
formalisms, namely, default logic, autoepistemic logic, probabilistic
conditioning and thresholding (generalized conditioning), and possibility
theory can be incorporated into this general framework.
