Model and sources of uncertainty

Dear Mitch,

The model on types of uncertainty lists only three of them:
1 - Vagueness
2 - Randomness
3 - Ambiguity

How about:
- unreability: knowledge from a source that is not 100% trustfull,
- dissonance: we see the same piece of information, but each have a  
distinct interpretation,
- incompleteness: which is not vagueness, since you can have a clear  
view of just part of the information,
- inconclusiveness: we have clear, deterministic, non ambiguous  
information, which is also complete, we both agree upon it, and the  
source is reliable, but it is not enough to come up with any  
conclusive assertion.

Also, regarding the sources of uncertainty, how about  
interpretation?  Is it within the epistemic label?
I know that our lack of complete knowledge of the things that happen  
in the world (even if they are deterministic) is the cause of  
(epistemic) uncertainty. However, it is not so clear to me that two  
people with complete knowledge about a deterministic phenomena, but  
with distinct interpretations of what they see are an epistemic  
source of uncertainty.
The uncertainty doesn't come from an aleatory source and is not  
caused by incomplete knowledge, but it is an artifact of how those  
human sensors perceive the phenomena.

Thanks,
Paulo



_______________________________
Dr. Paulo Cesar G. da Costa
Assistant Professor - C4I Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA - USA
http://mason.gmu.edu/~pcosta
pcosta@gmu.edu