Evidential Decision Theory via Partial Markov Categories
Elena Di Lavore, Mario Román · 2023
We introduce partial Markov categories. In the same way that Markov categories encode stochastic processes, partial Markov categories encode stochastic processes with constraints, observations and updates. In particular, we prove a synthetic Bayes theorem; we apply it to define a syntactic partial theory of observations on any Markov category whose normalisations can be computed in the original Markov category. Finally, we formalise Evidential Decision Theory in terms of partial Markov categories, and provide examples.