I'm reading a paper on this arcaine topic, Evidence Theory. It's basically a way to quantify support and plausibility of a set of evidence. This paper creates some curious relationships between the two. I can see this as a precursor for computer thought and reason as it gives a numerical foothold to practical reasoning (e.g. Is person A lying if blah blah ... ). Now, this is unlike probability, since probability measures the liklihood of A while this measures the plausibility and support of evidence for A. It is a superset of probability theory.
If you're curious, the paper (or perhaps its a copy from a book) is:
"A theory of statistical evidence" by Glenn Shafer.
