CBR Foundations

The foundations of an area are concerned with the basic elements underlying the problems, methods, results and applications of the field. Sometimes this is easy to determine, e.g. when one is concerned with the foundations of logic. In CBR it is not as simple because CBR is in the intersection and the interest of different disciplines of a rather heterogeneous nature. Each discipline has its own roots, its own aspects and its own foundations. That makes an overview over the foundations of CBR a complex task, and one that we will not attempt to address in detail. Instead, we will mention a set of basic problems tackled, related to essential foundational areas. We will discuss foundational issues of CBR related to the influence from cognitive science, from basic AI issues of representation and reasoning, from machine learning, and from mathematics. The areas clearly overlap, but they still capture significant foundational perspectives to CBR.