Introduction: Logic programming, non-monotonicreasoning and reasoning about actions

Abstract

On November 5, 1995, a special symposium on logic programming, non-monotonic reasoning and reasoning about actions, in honor of the 50th birthday of Professor Michael Gelfond, was held in El Paso, Texas. It was the first symposium of the El Paso Shell Oil Symposium series, jointly sponsored by the Shell Oil Company and by the University of Texas at El Paso.

Overall, 16 talks were presented by researchers from the USA (New Mexico State University, Southern Methodist University, Stanford University, Syracuse University, University of Texas at Austin, and University of Texas at El Paso), Canada, and Finland.

This issue contains the (peer-refereed) proceedings of this symposium. We are happy to present this collection to our readers, and we want to thank all those without whom this publication would not be possible: Shell Oil and the University of Texas at El Paso for generous support; the authors and all the participants of the symposium for their contributions; the referees for their tireless work; Martin Golumbic, the Editor-in-Chief of the Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, for the opportunity to publish the proceedings as an issue of this journal; and, last but not the least, Michael Gelfond for being a wonderful person, a brilliant researcher, a good friend, and an inspiring teacher.