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Exploring Automated Reasoning in First-Order Logic: Tools, Techniques and Application Areas

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Abstract

This paper describes state-of-the-art automated reasoning techniques and applications. We explore mainly first-order logic theorem proving, though our discussion also covers other domains: higher-order logic, propositional logic. We review applications of theorem proving systems in mathematics, formal verification, and other areas.

It is known that resolution is the most popular reasoning technique in first-order logic. Nevertheless, studying other algorithms could facilitate the development of automated reasoning. This article presents a survey of some promising methods. In particular, we give a detailed description of Maslov’s inverse method that is applicable to a broad range of theories and also can be used as a decision procedure. However, this method is not well studied and its real potential is yet to be realized. We describe the architecture of our reasoning system that we use to compare the inverse method with the resolution method in practice. We also present some actual results of experiments.

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Pavlov, V., Schukin, A., Cherkasova, T. (2013). Exploring Automated Reasoning in First-Order Logic: Tools, Techniques and Application Areas. In: Klinov, P., Mouromtsev, D. (eds) Knowledge Engineering and the Semantic Web. KESW 2013. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 394. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41360-5_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41360-5_9

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