The Dagstuhl Seminar 04271 on “Preferences: Specification, Inference, Applications” attracted researchers from artificial intelligence, databases, decision sciences, mathematics, and philosophy who are all interested in computational methods for preference handling. The seminar had been organized by Gianni Bosi, Ronen Brafman, Jan Chomicki, and Werner Kießling. It had been held on June 27 - July 2, 2004 in Dagstuhl. The program has been very broad, covering topics such as preference modeling, utility theory, preference representations, preference aggregation, social choice theory, preference queries in data-bases, constraints and preferences, preferences in logic programming, and preference elicitation. The proceedings include the abstracts of the presentations as well as a collection of full papers. The event served as an incubator of the workshop series on advances in preference handling.