This book contains the papers presented at the 2nd IPMU Conference, held in Urbino (Italy), on July 4-7, 1988. The theme of the conference, Management of Uncertainty and Approximate Reasoning, is at the heart of many knowledge-based systems and a number of approaches have been developed for representing these types of information. The proceedings of the conference provide, on one hand, the opportunity for researchers to have a comprehensive view of recent results and, on the other, bring to the attention of a broader community the potential impact of developments in this area for future...

Abstraction is a fundamental mechanism underlying both human and artificial perception, representation of knowledge, reasoning and learning. This mechanism plays a crucial role in many disciplines, notably Computer Programming, Natural and Artificial Vision, Complex Systems, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Art, and Cognitive Sciences. This book first provides the reader with an overview of the notions of abstraction proposed in various disciplines by comparing both commonalities and differences. After discussing the characterizing properties of abstraction, a formal model, the...

Abstraction is a fundamental mechanism underlying both human and artificial perception, representation of knowledge, reasoning and learning. This mechanism plays a crucial role in many disciplines, notably Computer Programming, Natural and Artificial Vision, Complex Systems, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Art, and Cognitive Sciences. This book first provides the reader with an overview of the notions of abstraction proposed in various disciplines by comparing both commonalities and differences. After discussing the characterizing properties of abstraction, a formal model,...