This volume presents a collection of refereed papers reflecting the state of the art in the area of over-constrained systems. Besides 11 revised full papers, selected from the 24 submissions to the OCS workshop held in conjunction with the First International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, CP '95, held in Marseilles in September 1995, the book includes three comprehensive background papers of central importance for the workshop papers and the whole field. Also included is an introduction by (...) one of the volume editors together with a bibliography listing 243 entries. All in all this is a very useful reference book relevant for all researchers and practitioners interested in hierarchical, partial, and over-constrained systems. (shrink)

Includes tutorials, invited lectures, and refereed papers on all aspects of logic programming including: Constraints, Concurrency and Parallelism, Deductive Databases, Implementations, Meta and Higher-order Programming, Theory, and Semantic Analysis. September 2-6, 1996, Bonn, Germany Every four years, the two major international scientific conferences on logic programming merge in one joint event. JICSLP'96 is the thirteenth in the two series of annual conferences sponsored by The Association for Logic Programming. It includes tutorials, invited lectures, and refereed papers on all aspects of (...) logic programming including: Constraints, Concurrency and Parallelism, Deductive Databases, Implementations, Meta and Higher-order Programming, Theory, and Semantic Analysis. The contributors are international, with strong contingents from the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Japan. Logic Programming series, Research Reports and Notes. (shrink)

Excerpt: My aim here, as in the previous editions, has been not to construct a new original system of my own, but to resuscitate and make better known to English readers a Psychology that has already survived four and twenty centuries, that has had more influence on human thought and human language than all other psychologies together, and that still commands a far larger number of adherents than any rival doctrine. My desire, however, has been not merely to expound but (...) to expand this old system; not merely to defend its assured truths, but to test its principles, to develop them, to apply them to the solution of modern problems; and to re-interpret its generalizations in the light of the most recent researches. I have striven to make clear to the student of modern thought that this ancient psychology is not quite so absurd, nor these old thinkers quite so foolish, as the current caricatures of their teaching would lead one to imagine; and I believe I have shown that not a little of what is supposed to be new has been anticipated, and that most of what is true can be assimilated without much difficulty by the old system. On the other hand, I have sought to bring the scholastic student into closer contact with modern questions; and to acquaint him better with some of the merits of modern psychological analysis and explanation. There is at least one phase of current psychological literature to which my opposition is in no way diminished -- the prevalent view that the science of psychology and the philosophy of the human mind can be shut up in water-tight compartments and rendered completely independent of each other. Indeed, the now customary vehement protestations of psychologists that their works are innocent of all philosophical beliefs -- if not also devoid of all metaphysical foundations -- and the austere gravity with which they are wont to apologize whenever they make mention of the soul, or allude to such irrelevant matters as the possibility of a future life, the origin of the human mind, or its connection with the body, have often appeared to me liable to give rise to the suspicion that the sense of humour is incompatible with psychological eminence. For it is now taken for granted by the most distinguished of these writers that of all human beings the student of psychology feels least interest in the question as to whether he has a soul, or what is to become of it; and that of all branches of human knowledge the science of the mind has least to say on such a topic. In fact, to trespass in such alien matters is universally assumed to be the gravest of professional delinquencies. Notwithstanding the weight of authority for this view, I have had the temerity to suggest that it is the most misleading and extravagant idolon of the psychological cave at the present day. I have even ventured to maintain throughout this work that to construct such a water-tight science of psychology, from which all metaphysical conceptions and beliefs have been effectually bailed out, is simply impossible. Accordingly, I warn my readers at the start that the analysis of mental activities which commends itself to me as the truest and most thorough, has resulted in the conception of the human mind as an immaterial being endowed with free-will and rational activity of a spiritual order; and that my exposition and interpretation of the phenomena lead back to this conclusion. At the same time my procedure throughout is purely rationalistic, in the sense of being based solely on experience and reasoning. (shrink)