John McCarthy coined the term Artificial Intelligence in the 1950s. From his point of view, AI is not about imitating human reasoning and the human way of solving problems, but about finding the essence of abstract reasoning and problem solving. At present, AI focuses on the study of intelligent agents, that is, of autonomous entities capable of perceiving their environment and which, like humans, have the capacity to act so as to optimize their objectives.

Soft computing is a branch of Artificial Intelligence that studies the techniques used in the resolution of problems that handle incomplete, uncertain, and/or inaccurate information. Fuzzy sets are fundamental in the theory of uncertainty. Fuzzy sets and soft computing provide numerous theoretical and practical tools for complex linguistic and numerical modelling applications. Fuzzy set approaches are usually most appropriate when human evaluations and the modelling of human knowledge are needed. IE uses a significant number of applications of fuzzy set theory.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to gather a collection of articles on the latest research and developments in this field of research, which includes topics such as automated reasoning and inference, heuristic search, natural language processing, applications in medical sciences and bioinformatics, knowledge representation, extensions and generalizations of fuzzy sets, aggregation operations, information content measures, preference modelling and multicriteria evaluation, and reasoning under uncertainty. Original research and review articles are welcome.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Mathematical logic and mathematical foundation
• Heuristic search in soft computing
• Soft computing applications in medical sciences and bioinformatics
• Foundations of soft computing
• Fuzzy set theory
• Reasoning under uncertainty
• Extensions and generalizations of fuzzy sets
• Knowledge representation
• Web-based intelligence
• Heuristic search in soft computing
• Soft computing applications in medical sciences and bioinformatics
• Mathematical and computational biology