Soft Computing Evaluation Logic

1.1Intuitive Evaluation as a Logic Decision Process

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

—Albert Einstein

Intuitive evaluation is a frequent mental activity performed in the background of many rational (and irrational) decisions in everyday life. A decision can be defined as a subjective selection of the most appropriate among several alternatives. The decision maker (DM) selects the most appropriate alternative according to an adequate evaluation and selection criterion. This is usually a criterion that evaluates the extent to which an alternative satisfies stakeholder’s requirements and supports the achievement of a specific stakeholder’s goals. At the end of an intuitive evaluation process, DM creates the perception of overall suitability of each evaluated alternative. The alternative that has the highest perception of suitability is the most preferred and proposed for realization.

In the context of evaluation decision making, we define process as a systematic procedural activity consisting of well‐defined and observable steps. Both intuitive and formal decision processes include procedures that start by identifying a set of attributes that contribute to overall suitability and terminate when the overall suitability is obtained either as a subjective percept or as a quantitative score.

The main reason for our interest in the intuitive evaluation process is the fact that no quantitative evaluation method can be acceptable unless ...