The aim of a
probabilistic logic (also
probability logic and
probabilistic reasoning) is to combine the capacity of
probability theory to handle uncertainty with the capacity of
deductive logic to exploit structure of
formal argument. The result is a richer and more expressive formalism with a broad range of possible application areas. Probabilistic logics attempt to find a natural extension of traditional logic truth tables: the results they define are derived through probabilistic expressions instead. A difficulty with probabilistic logics is that they tend to multiply the computational complexities of their probabilistic and logical components. Other difficulties include the possibility of counter-intuitive results, such as those of
Dempster-Shafer theory. The need to deal with a broad variety of contexts and issues has led to many different proposals.