Addressing the fundamental issues or principles underlying the task of Artificial Intelligence, the editors have selected not only papers now recognized as classics but also many specially commissioned papers that together examine the methodological and theoretical foundations of the discipline from a wide variety of perspectives: computer science and software engineering, cognitive psychology, philosophy and formal logic, and linguistics. Carefully planned and structured, the volume as a whole tackles many of the contentious questions of immediate concern to AI researchers and interested observers. The comprehensiveness of this collection is further enhanced by the full, annotated bibliography.