Deductive Reasoning Systems

Wolfgang Bibel, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

Christoph Kreitz, Institut für Informatik, Universität Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
This article is a revision of the previous edition article by W. Bibel, volume 5, pp. 3346–3349, Ó 2001 Elsevier Ltd.

Abstract

This article explains the relevance of reasoning for prediction and explanation, i.e., for abilities that are fundamental for
human survival. Since humans are prone to mistakes in their reasoning, reasoning systems offer desirable support. Deductive
reasoning systems operate on a model of reasoning that results from a number of abstractions applied to human reasoning.
These abstractions concern the language, the inferential relationship, and the syntactic nature of inference. By way of these
abstractions, other modes of reasoning such as inductive reasoning are also covered. Basic issues concerning research in
deductive systems, their performance and applications, and the psychology of human reasoning, are summarized.

Reasoning is one of the fundamental capabilities associated with embryonic state. Therefore, the study of reasoning so far can
intelligence as manifested in humans. It is a mental activity by only be carried out at a higher level of abstraction. For more
which we generate knowledge not available prior to the act of than two millennia, this study has been carried out at the level
generation. Experience shows that knowledge generated by of language, thus abstracting from the processes that engage
reasoning on the basis of already available knowledge enables many subsystems in the brain including, for instance, those
humans involved in the mental imagery system (Kosslyn, 1995). Since
natural language is still too complex as a basis for the study
l To predict states of the world not experienced before and to
of reasoning, further abstractions have been used. These are
act accordingly and
discussed in the present section.
l To explain phenomena experienced in the world so that we
can understand the reasons why they happened, and make
them happen again or avoid them in the future.
Formal Languages
Prediction and explanation, and their combination, are
Any spoken or written text in natural language involves
fundamental and characteristic ingredients of the human way
numerous linguistic constructs that carry a variety of informa-
of life. In consequence, this is the case for reasoning as well,
tional content. Since reasoning relates assertions, we may for
thus demonstrating its fundamental importance.
present purposes abstract from most of these linguistic
Experience also shows that humans have a sense for the
constructs and restrict our focus on propositions (in the sense
correctness of reasoning chains and also an understanding that
of logic). “The sun is shining” is a simple example of such
correct reasoning chains do not result in arbitrary predictions or
a propositional statement.
arbitrary explanations. Rather, there is a correlation between
Because of the complexity, ambiguity, and redundancy of
the correctness of the underlying chain of reasoning and its
natural language constructs even after the restriction just made,
usefulness for predictions or explanations in the real world:
we further abstract from such propositions by use of some
only predictions and explanations based on correct reasoning
formal language. This should be rich enough to be able to
chains turn out to be useful in general.
express all our propositional knowledge, but simple enough to
On the other hand, humans are prone to mistakes in their
be useful for the manipulations needed in modeling reasoning,
reasoning. In coping with this and other weaknesses lies the
and concise enough to avoid ambiguities and redundancies.
motivation for the mechanization of reasoning in the form of
There are a number of formal languages meeting these criteria.
reasoning systems. They might assist our reasoning, point out
They differ in the level of abstraction taken for the represen-
mistakes in it, or generate a correct chain of reasoning in cases
tation of knowledge and in the emphasis given to the various
too complex to be coped with by humans.
concepts involved.
This article describes the formal basis for reasoning systems,
The language of propositional logic takes the highest level of
points out a number of issues of particular importance for the
abstraction by formalizing knowledge at the level of entire
design of such systems, surveys their numerous applications,
propositions. For instance, the statement “The sun is shining”
addresses the philosophy and psychology of reasoning, and
is taken as an atomic element in the language, thus abstracting
offers some literature on the subject.
from its intrinsic structure altogether. In the formalism the
statement may therefore be abbreviated by any propositional
variable, say S. As seen in section Variants, Specializations and
Abstractions Extensions, it is amazing how far the modeling power of this
relatively poor language can already lead us.
Reasoning takes place in human minds. The understanding of The language of first-order logic (FOL) is less abstract and
the processes in the brain involved in reasoning is still in an hence much more expressive. In our example, it allows the

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 5 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.43036-9 933
934 Deductive Reasoning Systems
distinction between the subject “The sun” in the noun phrase
from the property “is shining” expressed in the verb phrase (or
predicate) as well as the modeling of their relationship in
a functional way, e.g., as is_shining(The_sun). In this way, it lays
emphasis on the functional, or - after the philosopher Gottlob
Frege - Fregean, relationships among relations, properties, and
objects. Many knowledge representation formalisms are first-
order formalisms in disguise. Among those are the Aristotelian
language, which emphasizes sets rather than functions, the
language of description logics (Bader, 2003) emphasizing
concepts, associative nets emphasizing the relationships
among objects and concepts in a graphical representation, and
so forth. So FOL is probably the most popular formal
language for knowledge representation, especially in the
context of reasoning systems.
Modal, transitional, and higher order languages including
lambda calculus extend the expressiveness of first-order
languages even further. For the purpose of this article we put
the emphasis on FOL, which includes propositional logic as
a special case. Most of our considerations generalize in some
way to the other more general languages.
The Inferential Relationship
Reasoning takes place with a given body of knowledge, say K,
already available. In the predictive mode of reasoning we want to
determine what facts, say P, could be true in the future. Correct
reasoning distinguishes between facts possible on the basis of K
and those that are impossible. In other words, there is a relation
that associates K and P in the positive case. Following Frege this
relation is formally denoted by . That is, K P is short for
expressing that P is a correct reasoning prediction on the basis of
K. In the predictive mode of reasoning, we thus want to determine
P such that K P holds, or test for a given P whether it holds.
Human reasoning is mostly done with respect to chrono-
logical processes and to a significant extent also concerns
knowledge about actions and changes taking place in time. On
the other hand, a large part of the inferential relation is so to
speak “timeless”. To simplify further, most logical studies have
abstracted from the issues concerning time and change. Only in
the last few decades have those issues become of great interest
within Intellectics, the field studying intelligent behavior and
systems within Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cognitive Science,
and Neuroscience. The result of those recent studies is that the
timeless part of is already expressive enough to model the
part involving time as well and thus the entire relation .
Insofar this abstraction from time is without restriction of
generality. Under this abstraction the predictive mode of
reasoning is called the deductive mode of reasoning. Because
of what we just said, deductive reasoning is timeless reasoning
at the surface, but may model general predictive reasoning.
In the explanatory mode of reasoning based on K, we start
with some observation O and basically look for some expla-
nation E so that K,E O. This mode of reasoning is called
abductive or inductive depending on the circumstances con-
cerning O and E. Since is a relation, the difference to
deductive reasoning is minor; instead of the second argument
of the relation here just (part of) the first one is to be
determined. The relationship is even closer. In abductive or
inductive reasoning, we employ additional metaknowledge,
say M, which guides the process of generalizing from given
observations. Taking this into account, inductive reasoning
actually boils down exactly to deductive reasoning, namely, in
the form K,M,O E whereby now the explanation E is deduced
from K and O guided by M in some way.
In summary, all prevailing modes of human reasoning may
actually be regarded as deductive reasoning. This explains why
deductive reasoning systems have such a great importance for
modeling inference in all its generality.
Syntactic Inference
The fundamental observation already made more than two
thousand years ago by Aristotle and his predecessors is that
reasoning (apart from psychological considerations) is
a matter of form rather than of content. This became apparent
once knowledge was represented in a formalized way. The
knowledge “apes are mammals”, in the sense of “whenever the
property of being an ape holds then also the mammal prop-
erty holds”, or A/M, and “mammals have hairs”, M/H,
allows us to conclude that “apes have hairs”, A/H. The
inference is valid independently of the meaning of the words
apes, mammals, and hairs, or of the symbols A, M, and H for
that matter. Rather it is exclusively the form of the knowledge
that sanctions the validity of such an inference. This funda-
mental property of reasoning enables machines, which to date
are ignorant of the meaning of words or symbols, to perform
correct inferences.
The example demonstrates a fundamental rule of inference:
A/M and M/H imply A/H. It is called (a restricted form of)
resolution or (a slightly generalized form of) modus ponens. As we
see, it produces new knowledge (A/H) by eliminating the
intermediate atom M; thus, the rule may also be seen as
implementing a form of transitive closure.
In order to program computers to search for chains of
inferences we first need rules of inference such as the one just
discussed in addition to the formal languages mentioned
before. The combination of a formal language along with a set
of rules is called a (formal or logical) calculus. If F is some
formula, i.e., a propositional expression in the formal language
under consideration, viz. FOL according to our convention,
and G is a formula obtained from F by applying the rules of the
calculus, then we write F G. Since is dependent on the
calculus, say c – which, as in the case of formal languages, can
be chosen from a great variety of alternatives – we should rather
write c but omit the index whenever the calculus is clear from
the context. We want to design calculi in such a way that F G
holds if, and only if, (shortly, iff) F G, in which case we speak
of correct (if) and complete (only if) calculi. From now on we
assume that the rules are chosen such that the resulting calculi
are always correct and complete.
We go one step further in the abstraction process described
in this entire section. According to the well-known deduction
theorem, it holds that F G iff F/G. By (iteratively)
applying this theorem, we can always achieve that there are no
formulas to the left of . Most deductive systems in use are
therefore systems that test whether, for some given calculus
and some given formula F, it holds that F (establishing
an affirmative proof), or dually, that :Fh false signaling
a contradiction (proof by contradiction).

Let us illustrate the result of this abstraction process by our
apes–mammal–hair example. The example asserts that A/M
and M/H implies A/H. Using the logical symbol ^ instead
of “and” the assertion reads (A/M) ^ (M/H) (A/H).
Applying the deduction theorem yields (A/M) ^ (M/H)
/ (A/H). The formula to the right of is an example for
what was briefly denoted by F above. It could be presented as
input to a deductive system, which would easily verify that the
formula is valid. If the system works by contradiction, the
presented formula would rather be :[(A/M) ^ (M/H) /
(A/H)].
The field in which such systems are developed, studied, and
applied is called automated deduction (AD) or automated
reasoning (AR). It has applications in any field where reasoning
of any kind is relevant, which actually is most of science, or
most of human endeavors for that matter. Since AD’s first
application was to mathematics, the field is also known as
automated theorem proving (ATP).
Issues in Automated Deduction
There are numerous deductive systems that differ in the formal
languages or the set of rules making up the underlying calculus.
Further distinctions are the strategies used for the proof search,
the data structures used for the representation of the formal
constructs involved, the programming language used for the
code, and so forth. Some of these issues are discussed in the
present section.
Clausal Form, Resolution, Tableaux, and Connection Method
A very popular language is a version of the language of FOL,
called clause form. It uses sets of clauses. A clause is a disjunction
of literals. A literal is an atom or its negation. An atom is the
simplest propositional construct such as is_shining(The_sun) or
the A in the ape example, i.e., without involving any logical
connections.
Any formula of FOL can be transformed into clause form by
a straightforward algorithm based on well-known laws of
propositional logic (and techniques discussed in the next
section); the algorithm is not explained here in detail. Its appli-
cation to our formula :[(A / M) ^ (M / H) / (A / H)]
leads to the following set of four clauses: {(:A n M), (:M n H),
A, :H}. The meaning of the comma separating the clauses in
the set may be viewed as that of a conjunction ^.
A correct and complete calculus based on clause sets is given
by (essentially) the single rule of resolution, which was
mentioned already in section Syntactic inference. In clause
form, it operates on two selected clauses in the given clause set;
the two clauses must be of the form 1 n A n 2 and 3 n :A n
4, where the numbers stand for arbitrary, possibly empty
clausal parts. The pair {A, :A} is called complementary, or
a connection. The result of a resolution step then is 1 n 2 n 3 n
4, called the resolvent. For example, the resolvent of the first
two clauses :AnM and :MnH in our example is :AnH. The
resolvent (of each resolution step in the derivation) is added to
the set of clauses. If the next resolution step selects this last
resolvent and the clause A, then the newly added resolvent
thereof is H. If this resolvent again is selected together with the
Deductive Reasoning Systems 935
clause :H then the empty clause results as resolvent. The empty
clause represents false. Its occurrence in this process is the
criterion for success. Once this criterion is fulfilled it is guar-
anteed that the original formula, from which the deduction
process started off, is indeed valid.
A deductive system based on resolution works as a satura-
tion process. It takes the given clause set, and iteratively applies
resolution until the empty clause is obtained. The advantage of
this type of system is the simplicity of the data structures
involved (clause sets) and of the operations performed at each
iteration (resolution). The problem is that without additional
constraints the system produces relevant and irrelevant inter-
mediate results alike, and for hard problems often is drowned
in up to billions of generated clauses. An irrelevant interme-
diate result in our earlier example might be that “apes have
eyes” on the basis of the additional knowledge that “mammals
have eyes” when our only interest is in the question about
hairs. Strategies (like the so-called set-of-support strategy) and
reduction rules to some extent help to reduce the amount of
irrelevant clauses generated.
An alternative to this saturation-based approach are goal-
oriented tableaux-based deductive systems. Human proofs, i.e.,
chains of inferences, may be regarded as treelike structures, or
(closed) tableaux, which in each branch start out from an
obviously valid fact. The basic data structure of tableaux-based
systems is a (not necessarily closed) tableau. Starting with the
tableau consisting of the (denial of the) given formula, the
tableau is extended at each iteration with the goal of closing it.
The data structure (tableau) and the operations (extension of
tableau) are more complicated than those in the saturation-
based systems, which complicates the system development. But
the approach lends itself to a more goal-oriented fine-tuning
of the search for the final proof and can therefore avoid some
of the redundancy involved in resolution systems without
extra efforts.
Systems based on the connection method may be regarded as
a compactly coded form of tableaux systems. In this method,
all information coded by a tableau is attached in an extremely
condensed form to the parts of the given formula as structural
information. Starting with an initial structure of this kind, only
the structure is modified at each iteration until a certain final
structure signaling validity of the formula is reached; in contrast
to the previous kinds of methods, the formula itself is not
changed at all in the process. As we saw already in the resolu-
tion method, connections (i.e., complementary pairs of
literals) play a fundamental role in proofs. In the connection
method they guide the proof search. In the final structure just
mentioned, a so-called spanning set of connections for the
formula is identified, which characterizes the validity of the
formula. For our example, this structure consisting of three
spanning connections is illustrated in the following picture.
Research in AD pursues all three kinds of approaches, with
the focus in each case being on eliminating redundancy. This
can be achieved in various ways. One way consists of refined
936 Deductive Reasoning Systems
calculi in terms of the rule sets used. For instance, the appli-
cation of resolution may be restricted in many ways without
sacrificing completeness (e.g., linear resolution). This also
includes the application of reduction rules (e.g., subsumption).
Another way to reduce redundancy is by applying various
strategies that guide the rules application. A third is by per-
forming several small steps as a single global step (e.g.,
hyperresolution), which again narrows the search space. A
fourth involves global steps sanctioned by theories involved
(such as equality theory, see section Variants, specializations
and extensions). Finally, ever improved software engineering
techniques and faster machines contribute to a continuous
enhancement of system performance. On top of all, heuristics
try to achieve success faster by sacrificing completeness of the
method.
First-Order Features
For simplicity, the introduction of some AD methods in the
previous subsection has glossed over a number of details.
While speaking of FOL, no first-order features beyond the
propositional ones were actually taken into account. For
instance, the apes example actually talks about objects with
certain properties so that its first-order formula would rather
read cx [(Ax/Mx) ^ (Mx/Hx) / (Ax/Hx)]. In order to
save parentheses, the atoms like Ax are short for the functional
form A(x) reading “x is an ape”. The statement is asserted for all
objects x, formally expressed by the universal quantifier cx. In
addition, FOL features an existential quantifier as in the sen-
tence “any human has a mother”, formally cxdy (Hx/Myx),
whereby Hx is short for “x is human” and Myx abbreviates “y is
mother of x”.
As these examples illustrate, atoms in FOL have an internal
structure. It consists of a predicate symbol like M and a certain
number of arguments, two in the case of M. The arguments can
be variables like x or constants like “The_sun”, or shortly s. They
may even involve functions like “the color of s”, or shortly c(s).
Altogether we speak of terms serving as arguments.
The occurrence of quantifiers in the formulas to be deduced
affects the transformation algorithm into clause form. By
a technique called skolemization existential quantifiers are
eliminated and then all-quantifiers ignored by default. As
a result, a set of clauses looks as before except for the more
complicated atoms involved. For instance, the apes example
would now look like {(:AxnMx), (:MxnHx), Ax, :Hx}.
Connections like {A, :A}, because of the richer structure of
atoms, may now become more complicated such as e.g.,
{A(x,f(z)), :A(b,y)}. Whether or not such a connection can be
made complementary and thus will contribute to a proof is subject
to a further technique called unification, which assigns values (or
rather terms) to the variables involved. In the present example, x
would be assigned the term b, and similarly y the term f(z); in
short, this substitution may be written as {x\b, y\f(z)}, resulting in
the complementary connection {A(b,f(z)), :A(b,f(z))}.
The three types of methods introduced in the previous
subsection engage unification in some way, which will not be
described here in detail. Resolution, enhanced by unification,
allows the elimination of intermediate literals (i.e., connec-
tions) even if they are not exactly identical but can be made
identical by replacing variables in the atoms by terms as just
described. For instance, the resolvent of the first two clauses in
the apes example now is :AxnHx and similarly for the two
other steps. Except for the additional unification the proof
proceeds as before, resulting in the empty clause. In general, the
resolution method requires an additional rule of inference, viz.
factoring, by which two different literals in a clause by way of
unification are factored into a single one.
The proof of our running example in the connection
method is unchanged as well:
Note that each connection corresponds to a respective step
in the resolution derivation described above. For comparison,
recall that resolution in each step adds a new clause to the
clause set and thus with it new connections. In contrast, the
connection method is concerned exclusively with the connec-
tions present in the formula to be proved, although these
connections by the nature of FOL may be required in different
instances. This allows a more focused search, guided by the
structure of the formula in a connection-oriented way. In
addition, in the connection method no transformation into
clause form is required (Otten, 2011). This is an advantage
since this transformation in general introduces redundancy
thus increasing the search space. On the contrary, the given
formula may even be reduced by factoring, making it more
nonnormal, possibly resulting in (much) shorter proofs and
less proof search (Bibel, 2006).
In section Syntactic inference we have made the distinction
between affirmative proofs and proofs by contradiction. Tech-
nically, there is no argument for one or the other form. Any
method can be formalized either way without affecting
performance. In addition, there is an “affirmative” clause form
defined similarly to the one introduced in section Clausal form,
resolution, tableaux, and connection method. Resolution by
historical accident is usually presented as a proof-by-contra-
diction method, while the connection method is usually
affirmative. The tableaux method is used both ways.
Variants, Specializations, and Extensions
FOL is a rather expressive formalism in which, for instance, all
of mathematics as well as more or less all of science can be
represented. Typically, deductive tasks arise within a given
theory. For instance, if the task F involves an equation then the
theory has to contain the equality axioms, say T¼ . These are, for
instance, the axioms of reflexivity and substitutivity (for func-
tions and predicates). The formula to be proved thus has the
form T¼/F, and it is straightforward for deductive systems to
attempt a proof for such a formula.
In comparison with the human way to solve equations,
however, this approach involving the equality axioms seems
pretty awkward. Rather, humans proceed in such cases by
substituting terms by equal terms until the equality becomes an
identity. This is the motivation for treating equality in rather
special ways also in deductive systems. For instance, resolution
has a special rule called paramodulation by which equal terms
may be substituted without any reference to axioms. Similar

techniques have been developed for the tableaux and the
connection method. In fact, there is an extensive research area
known as “term rewriting”, in which efficient algorithms for
treating equality theories have been developed. Appropriate
techniques are also available for other special mathematical
tools (like mathematical induction) and theories.
The programming language PROLOG (Clocksin and Mellish,
2003) is a restricted FOL language enriched by control features.
It restricts the formulas to so-called Horn clauses, which in
the contradiction mode means that there is at most one negative
literal in each clause. A PROLOG clause is written
A0 :¼ A1,A2,.,Am, with the left side of :¼ called the head and
the right the body of the clause. For instance, the clause Ax/Mx
from the apes example here reads Mx :¼ Ax, which by
comparison of the two versions shows that :¼ can be interpreted as
an implication from right to left. In the case m ¼ 0 (i.e., no body)
the sign :¼ is deleted. A PROLOG program is a set of PROLOG
clauses. A clause with no negative literal is written ?– A1,A2,.,Am.
It is called a query. Except for these superficial syntactic differences
a PROLOG system behaves much like a deductive system based
on the methods discussed before. One exception is the possibility
of allowing negated atoms not Amþ1 in the clause body, which
are treated with a special technique called “negation as failure”.
In addition, with respect to applications in AI the semantics of
a PROLOG program differs from that of a corresponding classical
formula. The control features allow the programmer to overrule
the system’s built-in control.
In section Formal languages we already mentioned
description logic (DL) as a first-order formalism in disguise.
More precisely, DL is actually a family of formal knowledge
representation languages which, due to certain restrictions,
feature more efficient deductive proof procedures than full FOL
(mostly even decision procedures). It models concepts, roles
and individuals, and their relationships. For instance, woman ¼
adult gender:female might be a definitional statement of the
concept “woman” in DL. In FOL such a concept is represented
as a predicate (like in Woman(mary)). This syntactic difference
is irrelevant from an efficiency point of view; the decisive
difference lies in the restrictions imposed on the operations of
the language, which lead to less expressiveness of the language
but to a higher efficiency of the resulting deductive systems.
Another restricted form of FOL is the formalism of syllo-
gisms, originally invented by Aristotle. It features judgments of
the form all apes are mammals, or AaM, at least one ape is old, or
AiO, and so forth. Along with judgments of these kinds there
are inference rules. For instance, the apes–mammals–hair
example is an instance of what is known as the valid inference
Barbara: AaM, MaH / AaH. The traditional names of these
rules are chosen for mnemotechnical reasons: the three a’s in
the word “Barbara” remind of the three a’s in the rule. In
Brüning (1996) a strict formalism based on syllogisms has
been developed but not yet been realized in a running system.
So far we have discussed restricted forms of FOL.
Conversely, there are numerous extensions of FOL, too many
to discuss here in any detail. We just mention the great variety
of modal and temporal logics that feature additional logical
operators (e.g., the necessity operator , or the possibility
operator >) beyond those of FOL along with corresponding
rules of inference. Higher order logic (HOL) is the most
powerful extension beyond FOL. It allows the quantification
Deductive Reasoning Systems 937
over functions and predicates according to familiar practice,
e.g., in mathematics. A formalism for representing HOL is type
theory. For all these extensions there are deductive formalisms
and systems, analogous to those of FOL, yet more complicated.
All formalisms discussed above test the validity of formulas,
i.e., their truth under any interpretation. Often it is already
sufficient to test the given formula for its satisfiability, i.e., its
truth under one particular interpretation rather than under all
interpretations. This semantic approach has found many
applications especially for the restricted language of
propositional logic. The satisfiability of propositional formulas
is known as the problem class SAT. For instance, the apes–
mammal–hair example formula (A/M) ^ (M/H) /
(A/H) will turn out true if all propositional variables A, M, H
are assigned the value true (and in fact under any assignment
due to the formula’s validity).
There are extremely powerful systems for SAT problems and
variants of these, solving problems that may involve millions of
propositional variables. One of the popular techniques uses
binary decision diagrams, or BDDs (Bryant, 1992). This formalism
treats propositional formulas, restricted to the operators
conjunction, disjunction, and negation, in a functional way.
Here conjunction is written like a product, disjunction as sum, and
negation with a bar, e.g., f(A,M,H) ¼ [AM þMHþ 
 AþH]þ  þ H]
A
for the formula after elimination of / according to the rules of
propositional logic. The efficiency of BDDs is achieved basically
by a reduction in the formula by factoring identical subformulas
and by choosing a special order of the variables in the formula.
Answer set programming (Gelfond, 2008), or ASP, is a form
of declarative programming similar to PROLOG, but with
a different semantics and solution technique. The language
uses PROLOG clauses with a number of additional features.
The semantics is based on so-called stable models. The
solution technique includes a grounder and a solver. The
grounder in essence transforms the problem into
a propositional formula; the solver is something like a SAT
solver. Among the additional features are several language
extensions like integrity constraints, choice rules, cardinality
and weight constraints, and so forth. These language features
render ASP a rather expressive representational formalism.
ASP is extremely powerful for solving difficult search
problems. Due to its declarative nature, it offers a great
advantage in comparison to programming such problems in
a conventional programming language.
Complexity, Systems, and Performance
From a theoretical point of view, AD is one of the hard prob-
lems in computer science. SAT solving, i.e., semantic proposi-
tional reasoning, is already NP-complete, which (for the state
of art) essentially means no procedure can solve all proposi-
tional formulas efficiently, even if the formulas are comparably
small. First-order reasoning is even more difficult, since FOL is
undecidable: there is no procedure that can decide for all
formulas if they are valid or not.
Nevertheless, research in AD has produced a variety of
reasoning techniques that can solve most reasoning problems
very efficiently. Propositional reasoning techniques like conflict
analysis, clause learning, backjumping, adaptive branching,
random restarts, and problem reductions have increased the
938 Deductive Reasoning Systems
performance of SAT solvers by many orders of magnitude,
which makes it possible to apply them to formulas with
millions of clauses and variables. In first-order reasoning,
indexing techniques, efficient data structures, and search
heuristics have led to efficient proof systems capable of dealing
with complex reasoning tasks.
In the past years, benchmark collections have made it
possible to evaluate the performance of AD systems, while
annual system competitions in SAT solving (The International
SAT Competitions Web page) and first-order theorem proving
(The CADE ATP System) have resulted in significant improve-
ments. Currently, the best SAT solvers are 3S, ppfolio, and the
ASP system clasp, while systems like Vampire, Waldmeister,
Spass, E, and leanCoP are the most successful first-order theorem
provers. However, the winners of these competitions keep
changing, since the development of reasoning techniques
makes previously unknown systems even more efficient than the
winners of the past years.
Artificial Neural Systems
Human reasoning takes place in brains. The mechanisms
occurring in brains are modeled by connectionist systems. So
the question naturally arises whether reasoning could be
modeled by a connectionist, also termed artificial neural,
system. Since we do not yet know how the brain realizes
reasoning, such a system could be a very first step toward
understanding the brain’s processes in reasoning.
Several neural systems have been developed that perform
deductive (and abductive and other kinds of) inferences,
mostly for propositional logic. The so-called CORE method
(“Connectionist mOdel generation using Recurrent networks
with feedforward core”) achieves such inferences semantically
by generating or approximating a (possibly least) model of the
premises under which a conclusion can be drawn. In the
propositional case, the model can iteratively be computed by
a three-layer feed-forward core (i.e., connectionist network)
until a stable state is reached. Thereby, the output nodes of the
network are recurrently connected back to the input nodes to
allow for the iterations. With a number of additional ideas this
method has been generalized to the first-order case (Baader
et al., 2008). Here, the model can only be approximated,
however, with arbitrary precision.
The CORE method bridges the gap between the discrete
world of logic programs and the continuous world of neural
networks. It integrates distinct functions such as transforming
programs (as background knowledge) into networks, learning
and optimizing networks, generating or approximating models
from networks, drawing inferences by way of the models,
and extracting a logic program from a learned or optimized
network.
Applications
As pointed out in the introduction, reasoning is a fundamental
human capability. Therefore, it pervades many of our activities.
In consequence, reasoning systems have numerous and widely
varied applications. Some of these are briefly discussed in the
present section.
Mathematical Theorem Proving
Originally, mathematics has been the primary field of appli-
cation for AD. Deductive systems have been applied to
virtually all subdisciplines in mathematics, and tens of
thousands of theorems have been proved automatically.
Automated theorem provers have found new proofs for
known theorems as well as proofs of unsolved mathematical
problems and conjectures that had never been proved by
humans before.
For instance, in 1996, a system called Otter/EQP solved the
so-called Robbins problem, which had been open for more
than 60 years. The machine-generated proof consists of only 13
equations and can therefore be checked easily by human
mathematicians. Finding this proof, however, took more than
7 days of intense machine computation, as several thousand
equations had to be generated and combined in order to
construct the proof (Kolata, 1996, McCune, 1997).
Another famous example is the proof of the four color
theorem, which has been conjectured in 1852 and was the
first theorem to be proved by a computer in 1976 (Appel and
Haken, 1977). To prove the theorem, a special-purpose
computer program had to analyze 1936 different maps.
This resulted in a proof that is infeasible for a human to
check by hand and is not accepted as a convincing proof
by some mathematicians. In 2005, the theorem could be
proved with the help of a general purpose theorem prover
Coq (Gonthier, 2008). Although even this proof cannot be
checked without the help of a computer, it was sufficient to
dispel remaining doubt about the validity of the four color
theorem.
Hardware and Software Verification
One of the most important applications of AD techniques
today is the verification of software and hardware. In the early
1990s, major flaws in hardware design such as the Pentium
FDIV bug resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of
damages and caused the industry to look for tools that could
validate the design of complex hardware circuits. At the same
time, new techniques for eliminating redundancy in proposi-
tional reasoning led to significant efficiency improvements,
which permitted the use of model checkers and SAT solvers in
large-scale applications involving millions of components
(Clarke et al., 1999). As a result, model checkers were adopted
as the standard technique to verify the design of computer
chips before they go into production.
While the verification of hardware involves the analysis of
a huge number of possible states, the problem is finite and can
therefore be represented in propositional logic. In contrast,
software can assume infinitely many different states, which
makes software verification much more complex. For specific
types of software such as compilers, state-based systems like
communication and security protocols, and some commercial
applications, it has been demonstrated that automated proof
systems and software model checkers are capable of con-
structing proofs that guarantee the software’s validity. But in
general these systems do not scale well enough to deal with
the complex formulas that are needed for the description of
real-world software.

Software and Hardware Synthesis
An alternative approach to software validity is based on the
idea that programs and proofs of their correctness should be
developed simultaneously instead of verifying software after it
has been created. Program synthesis aims at using AD to
develop “correct-by-design” software from descriptive specifi-
cations. Ideally, a programmer would focus on designing
a precise formal specification of a given problem and then call
a deductive system to generate the actual implementation. The
programming language PROLOG basically works as such
a deductive system. However, as a programming language, it
also contains nondeclarative control mechanisms and is only
a first step toward “programming in logic”.
Systems that synthesize programs from descriptive specifi-
cations involve strong deductive components to ensure the
correctness of the generated program. The systems KIDS and
Specware/Isabelle have been used in the automated construc-
tion of commercial software and scheduling algorithms that are
not only correct by design but also significantly more efficient
than hand-crafted versions (Smith, 1991, Smith and Parra,
1993). The higher order theorem prover Nuprl has been used
for the semiautomated development and optimization of
distributed software with more than 50 000 lines of code (Liu
et al., 1999). A key to the success of these systems was the
fact that the deductive components were guided by strategies
that incorporate knowledge about algorithmic structures and
efficiency optimizations.
In hardware design, the standard procedure consists of
describing the behavior of circuits in a hardware description
language at logic level followed by extensive verification and
logic synthesis, a process of turning the circuit descriptions into
a design implementation in terms of logic gates. This procedure
consumes significant amounts of time and needs a lot of effort.
While the idea of synthesizing hardware circuits from logical
specifications has been proposed several decades ago, it was
deemed impractical because of its high computational
complexity. Recent developments (Bloem, 2007), however, have
made it applicable to realistic examples, and it is expected that
hardware synthesis based on AD will eventually be used in
industrial applications.
Knowledge Systems
Reasoning generates new knowledge from given knowledge.
Hence, it is an essential feature in any system that incorporates
explicitly represented knowledge. Such a system is variably
called knowledge system, knowledge-based system, expert
system, semantic web, ontologies, and so forth. In the CYC
system an entire encyclopedia of knowledge is encoded in this
way. Numerous special systems encode knowledge of specific
disciplines, allow the manipulation of such knowledge in
a deductive way, or can answer questions in complex scenarios
(Harmelen et al., 2007). For instance, in 2011, the system
WATSON outperformed the two best human players in the US
quiz show Jeopardy. Similarly, the Apple iPhone 4S features
a system Siri, which understands and answers queries in spoken
natural language, not least because of deductive mechanisms.
These are just three examples out of tens of thousands of such
systems. In the emerging technology of real-world awareness,
Deductive Reasoning Systems 939
coping with the masses of information will only be possible if
inductive systems will extract knowledge from the data.
Philosophy and Psychology of Reasoning
As seen in the previous section, deductive systems are
becoming a part of daily life. We want them to behave ratio-
nally in the human sense. Hence, we need to understand
human rationality and reasoning in the first place, a goal
pursued for more than two thousand years first in philosophy,
then in psychology, and more recently in intellectics. In this
section, we discuss philosophical and psychological aspects of
reasoning.
Can Reasoning Be Mechanized?
Logic and the study of deductive reasoning was a primary topic
in philosophy for more than two thousand years (for an
exposition of this history see Kneale and Kneale, 1984). Since
the nineteenth century, it transformed more and more into
a mathematical subject, whereas in the past 60 years it has
become a major topic in AI. Therefore, today the major
contributions to the subject do not originate in philosophy
anymore – with one exception: many philosophers have tried
in thousands of papers to argue in favor of the thesis that the
mechanization of reasoning has strict limitations and will
never be able to reach the human level of performance.
Herbert Dreyfub, John R. Lucas, Roger Penrose, and John
Rogers Searle are some of the philosophical spokesmen in
this debate. The debate is a fruitless one, and the arguments
in favor of the thesis have proved faulty. One of the papers
that have defeated the thesis is LaForte (1998). Although we
indeed do not know in detail how the brain realizes our
thinking, the computationalism underlying intellectics at
present is the best available scientific approach.
Psychology of Reasoning
In many respects, the best available deductive reasoning system
is still the human mind. Psychological studies and thus our
understanding of (the phenomenological part of) human
reasoning can therefore enhance the design of artificial
deductive systems (Evans, 1970). The key idea is that humans –
in contrast to machines – construct internal representations of
the state of affairs described by a logical argument in order to
understand it. These “mental models” are similar to the
models that people use to perceive the world, but
rudimentary and incomplete. Experimental evidence seems to
indicate that human deduction depends less on laws of
inference but rather on a search for alternative models of the
premises that could refute a given conclusion and that
a conclusion is accepted as long as there is no refutation for it.
Most humans, for instance, appear to read an implication as
bi-implication, or equivalence, and draw conclusions like the
following.
l If John is in New York then Cathy is in New York too.
l John is not in New York.
l Therefore Cathy isn’t in New York either.
940 Deductive Reasoning Systems
which obviously is not a correct deduction from the point of
view of classical logic like FOL.
Negation is even more difficult. The sentence
l John wouldn’t have been in New York if Cathy hadn’t been there.
is logically equivalent to the first one above but is perceived
differently.
The theory of mental models aims at capturing the differ-
ence between human and formal reasoning. In this theory, the
process of deductions depends on a semantic procedure that
constructs an internal representation of what has been stated,
tries to draw possible conclusions by formulating a more
elaborate model based on that representation, and attempts to
find a countermodel for that conclusion. If no such counter-
model is found, the conclusion is considered valid and the
process continues by proposing further conclusions and trying
to refute them.
On this basis, cognitive scientists and psychologists have
formulated a comprehensive theory of human inference that
explains propositional, quantificational, and relational reasoning
(Johnson-Laird and Byrne, 1991, Johnson-Laird, 1999). This
theory has been used as a foundation for implementing reason-
ers that appear to be a more appropriate model of the human
intellect. There are also theories that view human deduction as
a process based on factual knowledge (Anderson, 1993, Newell,
1990) or on formal rules of inference (Rips, 1994) similar to
those used in AD. Evidence from a wide range of studies
seems to indicate that the theory of mental models provides the
most appropriate representation of the mechanisms underlying
human deduction. However, in contrast to other areas in psy-
chology such as image processing (Kosslyn, 1995) or “system 1
mental operations” (Kahneman, 2011), reasoning (a system 2
operation) is still poorly understood.
Fitting, 1990 is an excellent textbook on propositional and
first-order logic. Bibel, 1993 is a special textbook on all
aspects of deductive methods and systems. Bibel and Schmitt,
1998 is a reader covering all modern deductive techniques,
a number of very successful systems, and several important
applications. Gabbay et al., 1991 is a handbook that includes
deductive reasoning systems and other topics. Robinson and
Voronkov, 2001 is a handbook covering just deductive
methods, techniques, and systems. Plaisted, 2009 is an
encyclopedia article similar to the present one. Ongoing
research is reported in the Journal of Automated Reasoning
(Kluwer Academic Publishers) and in the proceedings
volumes (published by Springer Verlag) of the International
Conferences on Automated Deduction as well as in other
journals and conferences.
See also: Artificial Intelligence: Connectionist and Symbolic
Approaches; Knowledge Representation; Nonstandard
Reasoning; Organizational Decision Making; Problem Solving
and Reasoning: Case-based.
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