Logical Reasoning

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11 papers in the last four weeks, up 175% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

Jul 13Week of Sep 28

Latest papers 123

Sep 30, 2026cs.AI

A Simple Doxastic Deontic Logic for Norm-Guided Decision Making

Making decisions despite conflicting norms and incomplete or unreliable information is a fundamental challenge for autonomous systems. We introduce a simple doxastic deontic logic for this setting: a classically reducible fragment of Chellas' Minimal Deontic Logic, extended with explicit conditional norms and combined with multi-agent KD45, so that norms can depend on agents' beliefs about both facts and norms. On this logic we define the Doxastic Norm Compliance Optimization Problem, where an agent chooses a decision minimizing weighted norm violations. We distinguish subjective optimization (relative to the agent's beliefs) from objective optimization (relative to the actual facts). We give conditions under which (i) the two coincide and (ii) optimal decision-making can be reduced to weighted partial MaxSAT in polynomial time.
Sep 29, 2026cs.AI

Learning to Prove, Not Just to Answer: Reinforcement Learning from Formal Verification for Natural-Language Logical Reasoning

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed for natural-language logical reasoning, where the final answer is easy to check but the proof behind it is not. In natural-language logical reasoning, an intermediate conclusion should follow from its premises, and the resulting derivation should support the final answer. Existing methods lack machine-checkable verification of intermediate conclusions and answer-supporting proof dependencies, so they may assign credit to invalid or answer-irrelevant steps. We propose Proof-R1, an RL framework from formal verification that trains LLMs to construct verifiable proofs for natural-language logical reasoning. Proof-R1 admits a generated conclusion into the verified proof state only when the corresponding reasoning action satisfies the proof obligations through UNSAT-based machine-checkable formal verification. Proof-R1 also recovers the answer-supporting dependency closure to trace the proof structure of the final answer and align outcome credit with the proof dependencies. Experiments demonstrate that Proof-R1 improves answer accuracy across three logical reasoning benchmarks and four backbone models and outperforms training-free agents and training-based methods in terms of reasoning-process verifiability.
Sep 28, 2026cs.AI

A decision-support system applied to Law: Reasoning and explainability of the decision

The emergence of the digital transition brought an increasing need to control the processing of digital information, including in Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). At the EU level, in recent years, many regulations have emerged to control data processing and exchange. Texts other than the GDPR, such as the ''Law Enforcement Directive (LED)'', appeared to regulate specifically how Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) could process data. A formal representation of these regulations can be part of decision systems that support LEAs in processing data in compliance with the regulations. Although many new formalisms have emerged to represent legal norms and rules, few are provided with a reasoning mechanism. Furthermore, systems used in decision-making processes in critical contexts such as medical diagnoses or legal decisions cannot be fully automated, and the explainability of their results is essential to ensure user confidence in decisions. This explainability aspect, while crucial, is lacking in most modern approaches that rely on machine learning. This paper describes a framework to operate formal rules from regulations, by focusing on explainability of the decision. After describing the general architecture of the proposed decision support framework, the paper showcases how symbolic AI and the SPARQL query language can support legal reasoning. It then describes an algorithm to generate a justification for the reasoning results, and outlines the procedure to be followed when the reasoning does not lead to a satisfactory conclusion. We notably focus on a method based on decision trees to determine what additional information to request from the user.
Sep 16, 2026cs.AI

What Do Current Systematic Generalization Tasks Miss? A Reasoning-Centered Analysis

Systematic generalization, the ability to solve novel problems by recombining known atomic elements, is central to human intelligence but difficult to study rigorously under controlled settings. Existing studies therefore rely on simplifications such as elemental composition, productivity-based tests, and action-explicit goals, which make systematic generalization easier to study but omit some essential aspects of this capability. To characterize what these simplifications miss, we adopt a reasoning-centered lens and introduce TranSGrid, a testbed that brings deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning together within a unified task. Experiments with seven Transformer models on 4,800 TranSGrid instances show that all models perform much worse on TranSGrid than on a held-out test set: the largest model solves 79.6% of the test set, but only 55.3% of TranSGrid and 15.8% of the hardest subset. The gap remains within the training length range, showing that productivity alone is not sufficient to evaluate systematic generalization. Additionally, we reintroduce the other two simplifications into TranSGrid: one variant limits interactions among action effects to approximate elemental composition (reducing the inductive demand); the other makes goals action-explicit (reducing the abductive one). In both, solve rates return to roughly the test set level, showing that either simplification alone is enough to reduce TranSGrid to an ordinary held-out test set. Together, our results show that existing tasks reduce either or both of the inductive and abductive demands of systematic generalization, and that comprehensively measuring this capability requires a task that involves all three forms of reasoning.
Sep 16, 2026cs.AI

Visual Compliance via Executable Safety Rule Entailment

Recent advances in LLMs and VLMs have enabled safety systems to reason beyond simple risk patterns toward more contextual and semantic safety concerns. However, as risk patterns continue to evolve and safety rules become more complex, existing training-based end-to-end safeguards face persistent challenges in adaptability and explainable reasoning over complex safety rules. To address these challenges, we propose GuardEn (Guarding by Safety Rule Entailment), an executable safeguard framework that decomposes safety policies into atomic propositions through Safety-Rule Compilation, modeling their composition as executable code. At test time, Scene-Grounded Execution instantiates these atomic propositions with contextual visual information derived from scene graphs, enabling rule-grounded and interpretable safety reasoning. Experiments on SafetyVisionBench demonstrate the effectiveness of programmable safeguard for complex visual safety assessment, achieving an average improvement of 9.8 F1 points over the strongest baseline.
Sep 15, 2026cs.CL

Autoformalizing Argumentative Material Inferences

Natural language arguments are compelling before they are formally explicit. A premise supports a claim through defeasible warrants, background commitments, and exception conditions that the text leaves implicit. However, formal verification requires the opposite. Making such arguments machine-checkable requires constructing the missing commitments, not only translating given sentences into logic. Construction, however, carries a risk that translation does not: a system free to add premises can make any claim provable, and a formally valid proof may assert the claim outright, prove it without the original premise, or establish more than the claim itself. We address this problem by formulating autoformalization for argumentative material inference as guard completion, in which non-monotonic material support is turned into monotonic formal inference relative to an explicitly constructed guard set. A completion is accepted only when its proof both passes the theorem prover and survives contrastive tests of premise dependence and claim selectivity. We implement this formulation in GUARD, a neuro-symbolic framework in which LLMs construct and formalize candidate guards, Isabelle/HOL verifies the resulting theories and returns step-level feedback for iterative refinement, and the system abstains when no faithful completion can be reached. Our empirical results on Debatepedia and ARCT using different LLMs demonstrate that GUARD yields significant improvements in verified-faithful (+35.3, +32.9 points) and substantial reductions in leakage (-25.9, -21.9 points) over the state-of-the-art LLM-driven theorem proving approach. Moreover, we show that the symbolic soft critique and the explicit assumption layer account for most of these gains, with the soft critique also improving the initial validity of the elicited context and reducing the number of iterations required for successful verification.
Sep 14, 2026cs.RO

Legislating World-Model-Based Planning with Legal Reasoning

As robotic systems grow more general, legal norms are needed to integrate them into society. This paper extends the isomorphism problem of aligning legal source texts with their encodings, and measures two key challenges to robot normative control: (1) the grounding isomorphism gap, where perception error grounds false atoms for legal reasoning, and (2) the ontological isomorphism gap, where one legal conclusion admits many faithful translations into planning constraints. The paper introduces a legal planning stack that employs Defeasible Deontic Logic (DDL) to constrain a motion planner. The stack leverages learned world models to plan and to provide legal context, enabling ex ante governance that intervenes before an illegal action is executed. It was deployed on a simulated robot arm pushing a cube across a 3x3 grid. The findings were (1) the legislated agent abided substantially more often than the non-legislated one, and modeling perception uncertainty lifted abidance even further, (2) the legal reasoning ran efficiently at runtime and its verdicts were auditable, and (3) the stack adapted to exogenous signals and endogenous rule changes. Both gaps were measured: (4) world model and probe error corrupted the factual input for the DDL reasoner, and (5) a single law admitted several faithful metric interpretations yielding drastically different abidance. Thus, ex ante legislation functions as intended, and closing these gaps with a standardized mapping from the law to runtime constraints and improved fact grounding from perception will yield robust laws that align robot behavior with society's norms. Project page: https://dylanwaldner-cail.github.io/Legislated-Planner/.
Sep 12, 2026cs.LO

Warrant Theory

In this paper, we develop warrant theory as a philosophical discipline concerned with the inferential legitimacy of propositions within logical analysis. Warrant theory reconceptualises logic as a normative framework governing the conditions under which propositions may be introduced, accepted, rejected, and inferentially employed. Warrant is understood as inferential entitlement and is distinguished from truth, belief, and other psychological attitudes, while its relation to inferential use and meaning is examined. Warrant-theoretic analysis is then developed as a systematic method for investigating how propositions acquire inferential standing, how that standing develops, and how inferential positions interact through relations of dependence, compatibility, incompatibility, and exclusion. Acceptance and rejection provide the bilateral vocabulary for representing positive and negative inferential positions and the consequences and commitments associated with them. Finally, these elements are brought together in a warrant-theoretic definition of logic as the formal and normative study of the conditions under which propositions may be legitimately accepted or rejected and of the inferential transitions that such legitimacy warrants. On this account, logical consequence and logical failure are understood through the presence, preservation, or absence of inferential entitlement, thus locating the philosophical subject matter of logic in the systematic governance of inferential legitimacy.
Sep 8, 2026cs.AI

Three Types of Negation of Triple and its Elements and an Extension of Triple

In various data models, the classical triple is a typical semantic data model. However, due to the design of the triple as a simple structure for representing positive assertions, it cannot sufficiently express different forms of negation present in the triple and its elements. This paper conceptually proposes that there are three distinct forms of negation within triples and their elements: contradictory negation, opposite negation and intermediary negation. Based on the the set SCOI and the logic LCOI+PLCOI with three kinds of negation, we propose an extension of triple that can distinguish and express these three different negations in the triple and its elements, called the TCOI triple with contradictory negation, opposite negation and intermediary negation. The TCOI triple is a semantic and structural extension of the classical triple. While retaining the ability to express positive assertions, it systematically introduces the three semantic dimensions of three negations, allowing these negations to independently act on the elements of the triple and on the whole triple. This significantly enhances the triple model capability to represent and reasoning about complex negative information. This paper also explores the expressive power and reasoning of the TCOI triple, as well as the application of TCOI triple implication reasoning in counterfactuals and counterfactual reasoning. We propose a truth-value (continuous value) algorithm for TCOI triple implication reasoning and perform its calculation through an example of the counterfactuals and counterfactual reasoning.
Sep 7, 2026cs.AI

Modus Tollens and Counterfactuals and Counterfactual Reasoning Based on Three Types of Negation

Modus Tollens (MT) is a classical logical inference rule, while counterfactuals are hypothetical statements that are contrary to facts, and counterfactual reasoning is a process of reasoning based on counterfactuals. Negation is an indispensable core concept in them. In this paper, based on the logical systems LCOI&PLCOI with contradictory negation, opposite negation and intermediary negation, we propose three variants of Modus Tollens corresponding to distinct negation types, namely MTC: Modus Tollens based on contradictory negation, MTO: Modus Tollens based on opposite negation, and MTI: Modus Tollens based on intermediary negation. We define the implications within MTC, MTO and MTI, provide the truth value algorithms of MTC, MTO and MTI, and discuss the reducibility of these algorithms. To incorporate these three types of negation into counterfactuals and counterfactual reasoning, we differentiate counterfactuals into two types based on whether they possess logical negation, thereby proposing three counterfactuals and counterfactuals reasoning based on different logical negations. In this paper, we further argue that the three counterfactuals reasoning based on different logical negations have the same inference form as MTC, MTO and MTI, respectively. In other words, they share the same inference structure. As a result, the truth value algorithms for MTC, MTO and MTI can be as the truth value algorithms for the three counterfactuals reasoning based on different logical negations. The algorithms indicates that if the first premise of the reasoning is true, the truth values of the reasoning conclusions are identical to the truth values of the three negative premises in the reasoning premises, respectively. This reflects the consistency and accuracy of the truth value algorithms.
Sep 7, 2026cs.AI

DODR: Deterministic Operator-Driven Reasoning in Latent Space

Autoregressive (AR) large language models formulate reasoning as token-level probabilistic sampling, which induces three fundamental defects in complex logical reasoning: error accumulation, probability substituting necessity, and the linear-chain information bottleneck. This paper proposes the Deterministic Operator-Driven Reasoning in Latent Space architecture (DODR), which reconstructs reasoning as reasoning-graph computation in a high-dimensional linear-algebraic space. Reasoning states are represented as snapshot vectors whose primitives are semantic units (phrases or sentences) rather than tokens, and each inference step is a deterministic matrix operation with no token sampling. Peirce's three inference types are formalized as three trainable matrix operators: a rank-deficient deduction operator (information collapse), a full-rank induction operator (information expansion), and an abduction operator defined as the Moore-Penrose pseudo-inverse of deduction (information hypothesizing). We prove that the operator set is minimal and complete given Peirce's trichotomy, that no single "super-operator" can realize all three types (a rank obstruction), and that reasoning graphs are Turing-complete with contractive backflow converging by Banach's fixed-point theorem. Experiments on 503 sample records (420 deduplicated samples) across dedicated and end-to-end settings show: deduction loss converges to 1.40e-05; induction achieves 0.9996 generalization coverage with 20/20 hard vetoes on counterexamples; abduction solutions exceed the random baseline by 28x with judgment accuracies of 72.5% (58/80, Wilson 95% CI [61.9%, 81.1%]) and 81.7% (49/60, CI [70.1%, 89.4%]); frozen operators attain 100% (60/60) on unseen cross-domain deduction. The architecture provides a structural zero-hallucination guarantee and a three-layer continual-learning mechanism. All data and code are released.
Sep 2, 2026cs.CL

When Decodability Is Not Enough: Logical Validity Representations, Behavioral Dissociation, and Causal Tests in Language Models

Large language models can look capable of logical reasoning, but correct or incorrect answers alone tell us little about what the model represents internally. We study logical verification in five open-weight transformer models using matched valid--invalid premise--claim pairs that vary across inference families, semantic domains, templates, and difficulty levels. Despite near-chance behavioral performance, logical validity is often almost perfectly decodable from hidden states and remains strongly decodable under held-out templates, domains, and inference families. Validity also remains highly decodable on behaviorally incorrect examples in the conditions where correctness-conditioned evaluation is well defined. At the same time, exhaustive leave-one-out tests reveal clear limits to this generalization, and interventions along probe-derived validity directions have only weak, nonspecific effects compared with random controls. Our results suggest that representing validity, expressing it in behavior, and using it causally are distinct. Validity related information can be strongly decodable from a model's hidden states without being reliably expressed in its output.
Aug 31, 2026cs.CL

Do General NLP Embeddings Capture Ontological Reasoning?

General-purpose NLP embedding models perform well on linguistic tasks, but their ability to capture symbolic ontological structure remains unclear. We introduce AVA, a systematic framework for evaluating whether embeddings distinguish logic-sensitive relational semantics in ontologies and knowledge graphs. AVA comprises 171,007 contrastive triplets derived from 163 heterogeneous ontologies using hierarchy inversion, relation substitution, and disjointness injection. Each triplet contains an ontology statement, a semantically equivalent paraphrase, and a logic-sensitive hard negative with contradictory relational meaning. We evaluate more than 25 state-of-the-art embedding models and find substantial limitations: the best model achieves only 0.739 triplet accuracy, while hard negative accuracy falls to 0.135. Fine-tuning improves discrimination by a large margin but transfers poorly to downstream Semantic Web tasks, including taxonomy discovery and ontology alignment. Further analysis suggests that improvements stem partly from perturbation-specific pattern recognition rather than robust ontological understanding. These findings reveal a persistent gap between linguistic representation learning and ontology-level discrimination, challenging the assumption that strong NLP benchmark performance translates to Semantic Web competence.
Aug 31, 2026cs.CL

Beyond Surface Forms: Symbolic Edits as a Test for Logical Reasoning with LLMs

Logical reasoning with large language models (LLMs) is a critical capability, as it reflects a system's ability to correctly deduce hypotheses from a given context using faithful deductive processes. However, LLM reasoning has often been shown to be sensitive to small surface-level variations in problem formulation, raising questions about whether models truly follow the underlying logical structure. Studying this behavior is challenging because the symbolic components of logical problems, such as operators and predicates, are difficult to systematically manipulate in natural language. We introduce a tool-driven framework for generating controlled, label-preserving edits to logical reasoning problems. Our method operates on symbolic representations of first-order logic and constraint satisfaction problem tasks, enabling targeted modifications to logical operators and other structural components before translating them back into natural language. Using this framework, we evaluate various LLMs under cumulative and individual operator edits and analyze their behavior in response to these changes. Our quantitative and qualitative analyses show that LLM reasoning behavior under controlled operator edits is inconsistent, regardless of model size or family: models sometimes adapt correctly to structural changes but often fail to track their logical consequences. The results from this automated stress test enable an evaluation of language models across different dimensions and help measure the reliability of their reasoning.
Aug 10, 2026cs.AI

Structure-Preserving Uncertainty Propagation in First-Order Proof Search

GK is a query-directed first-order prover that extends ordinary resolution-based proof search with explicit positive and negative claims, numerical confidence values, and prioritized default rules with exceptions. It works directly with non-ground clauses, including equality and function terms. Candidate proofs are found by bounded first-order proof search; exception conditions of defaults are checked by further bounded searches, recursively when exceptions themselves depend on defaults. This avoids requiring a finite global grounding, while allowing incomplete searches to be reported as such. This paper adds structure-preserving quantitative reporting to that framework. Retained proof histories are used in two calculations. The first reconstructs the uncertain ground premises used by each proof and computes the probability that at least one retained proof is available, without counting shared premises independently. The second resolves positive and negative support at intermediate atoms before that support is propagated through later rules; the same calculation evaluates uncertain exception conditions for individual rule applications. Reports separate positive support, negative support, conflict, and ignorance and identify detected incomplete calculations or fallbacks. The implementation performs bounded reconstruction and dependency traversal after proof search and still requires no global grounding. Analytic examples and independent simulators reproduce the reference calculations on their stated fragments. Comparisons with probabilistic logic, probabilistic ASP, default logic, and goal-directed ASP identify cases of agreement, semantic difference, unsupported translation, and incomplete computation.
Aug 5, 2026cs.CL

Same Formulas, Different Semantics: Do Language Models Follow Modal Logic Specifications?

Reasoning about necessity and possibility depends on assumptions about accessibility between worlds and about which objects exist at each one. The same inference may therefore hold under one modal system and fail under another. Evaluating language models on such problems requires testing whether their judgments follow the stated semantics rather than a familiar logic. We construct paired modal problems with identical premises and conjecture but different frame or domain conditions; automated reasoning verifies opposite labels. A balanced core prevents the semantic condition alone from revealing the answer. On this core, four of five recent models perform below the condition-only baseline under direct prompting. Yet enabling reasoning mode raises DeepSeek V4 Flash from 4.4% to 88.1% on unchanged prompts. Following stipulated modal semantics thus depends strongly on inference mode as well as model identity. When frame conditions are omitted, models often agree but fit different familiar logics best. We release the formulas, oracle artifacts, countermodels, and responses.
Aug 1, 2026cs.AI

Assuming You Knew: Fixing an Epistemic Semantics for Flow Policies Using Agentic AI

Many high-level security requirements are about the allowed flow of information in programs and are difficult to make precise because they involve selective downgrading. Notions from epistemic logic have emerged as a good approach to policy semantics but a robust general framework remains elusive. A paper appearing in CSF 2018, entitled ``Assuming You Know: Epistemic Semantics of Relational Annotations for Expressive Flow Policies'', attempted to provide a unifying framework---but the formalization was sketchy and a correction was announced during the conference presentation. With aid from an agentic AI coding assistant, a corrected formalization has been machine checked in the Rocq proof assistant. The simplicity and generality of the framework may help compare different policy specification styles and enforce them by leveraging existing techniques.
Jul 31, 2026cs.AI

DungeonBench: A Benchmark for Rules-Rich Tactical Reasoning in Dungeons & Dragons Combat

Games and simulators make valuable benchmarks by turning decisions into measurable outcomes, but many current suites under-test rules-rich tactical reasoning: the ability to choose well when geometry, timing, resources, objectives, and rule interactions all matter at once. We introduce DungeonBench, a benchmark for tactical reasoning in Dungeons & Dragons combat, built to cover the vast majority of combat-relevant 2014 System Reference Document content whose effects can be resolved by the simulator while retaining mechanics that simplified combat simulators often abstract away. At each step, DungeonBench exposes a complete tactical observation, a pending decision, and an indexed list of executable options spanning movement, attacks, spells, reactions, objectives, preparation, and scarce resources. The task is to value legal choices whose consequences depend on action economy, creature traits, battlefield geometry, timing windows, and future encounters. DungeonBench has two tracks: Encounter, which evaluates local tactical play in single fights, and Day, which links encounters through persistent hit points, spell slots, consumables, preparation, and short-rest timing, forcing policies to trade off immediate tactical advantage against future survivability. The same engine-generated decision stream supports heuristic controllers, language-model policies, learned option rankers, and masked-action reinforcement-learning agents. We evaluate frontier language-model policies on this shared decision stream. Results show that full tactical observations do not saturate the benchmark: frontier policies often win direct encounters, but linked encounter days expose failures in resource budgeting, rest timing, and rule-aware tactical discipline.
Jul 29, 2026cs.AI

PIE-APT: Abductive Planning over Temporal Dynamic Knowledge Graphs via Incremental Reasoning

Planning over Temporal Dynamic Knowledge Graphs (TDKGs) presents theoretical challenges in open-world environments with incomplete information. Existing action formalisms often face decidability issues and the Ramification Problem, while structural abduction requires expansive combinatorial search spaces. We introduce a unified framework with two modules--PIE-Abducer (incremental direct-derivation abduction) and PIE-APT (Abductive Planning for TDKGs)--operating natively on the expressive SROIQ Description Logic. Modeling state transitions as non-monotonic updates to deductively closed DL theories, we represent actions natively in OWL. This leverages an incremental reasoner to preserve decidability and natively bypass the Ramification Problem. To address incomplete knowledge, PIE-Abducer circumvents Minimal Hitting Set (MHS) enumeration. Instead of combinatorial search, it injects the logical negation of a goal into a consistent DL branch and synthesizes missing premises via direct refutation consequences. PIE-APT employs a recursive Generate-and-Test architecture, interleaving backward-chaining A* search with PIE-Abducer to synthesize both action sequences and abductive assumptions. Candidates undergo strict validation via forward-chaining Temporal Projection to evaluate logical trajectories. We evaluate four OWL benchmarks targeting semantic abilities missing from classical planning: parameterized goals with witness search, mid-search DL entailment, open-world assumption injection, and adversarial plan synthesis. Results show qualitative superiority over classical planners and prove our direct-derivation approach significantly outperforms an MHS-faithful baseline in abductive enrichment.
Jul 28, 2026cs.SE

Model-Driven Requirements Configuration with Three-Valued Uncertainty Scoring

Context: Large Language Models (LLMs) offer natural-language flexibility for automated requirements elicitation but frequently generate structurally invalid requirements and logical inconsistencies, lacking formal correctness guarantees. Objectives: This study aims to eliminate logical inconsistencies and enforce structural conformance in LLM-generated requirements while quantifying the LLM's pre-validation decision uncertainty within a formal domain model. Methods: We present a neuro-symbolic multi-agent architecture that operationalizes the Object-Oriented Method for Requirements Authoring and Management (OOMRAM) lattice. The LLM acts as a non-deterministic heuristic for lattice traversal, while a deterministic symbolic validator enforces all structural constraints. We introduce a three-valued (T, I, F) -- Truth, Indeterminacy, Falsity -- framework to classify and score the LLM's requirement decisions before and after validation. Results: Evaluated across 37 natural-language project visions in eleven application families, the system completely eliminated structural inconsistencies in 35 out of 37 cases (94.6%), with the remaining two containing only 6 unresolved structural errors (0.39% of decisions) due to iteration limits. Three-valued analysis revealed that 24.7% of all decisions are indeterminate -- structurally valid but discretionary choices not explicitly mandated by the stakeholder. Conclusion: Offloading structural integrity to a deterministic symbolic layer successfully guarantees structural conformance, while the three-valued classification provides a formal way to measure neural uncertainty, facilitating safe LLM deployment in formal requirements engineering.
Jul 24, 2026cs.AI

Semiotic logical hexagon theory for LLM logical reasoning

Large language models (LLMs) have become powerful tools for language understanding and logical reasoning. However, they still make mistakes when a problem requires both understanding meaning and following logic. A key reason is that natural-language statements often carry implicit semantic relations before any formal reasoning begins. If these hidden meanings are not properly organized, the model may reach incorrect conclusions even when the subsequent reasoning process appears logically valid. Existing methods improve reasoning through decomposition, symbolic translation, external solvers, or self-verification, but pay comparatively less attention to the semantic structure on which reasoning depends. In this paper, we further investigate how semantic organization influences logical reasoning in LLMs. To this end, we propose HexLogicAgent, a framework that first organizes the meaning of natural-language statements and then guides logical reasoning through structured verification. In our investigation, we also make two observations. First, incomplete semantic representations, rather than deductive inference itself, are a major source of logical reasoning failures in LLMs. Second, explicitly modeling the complete structure of semantic opposition substantially delays the degradation of reasoning performance as logical complexity increases. Experiments on challenging logical reasoning benchmarks demonstrate that HexLogicAgent consistently improves reasoning reliability across multiple LLMs. The core idea is supported by a logical hexagon theory, which explains why a complete structure of opposing meanings is necessary for reliable reasoning.
Jul 23, 2026cs.LO

Hybrid MKNF with Classical Negation in the Rule Component

Hybrid MKNF knowledge bases under the well-founded semantics integrate Description Logics with Logic Programming. However, they do not support classical negation in the rule component, limiting their ability to represent explicit negative knowledge. This limitation is particularly significant in safety-critical applications, where reasoning often requires explicit negative information rather than interpreting the absence of information as evidence of absence. To address this issue, we introduce an extension of Hybrid MKNF that supports classical negation in the rule component. We formally define the syntax and semantics of the extended language and present a general procedure for computing its well-founded model.
Jul 23, 2026cs.LO

Anti-Goal Reasoning: Rethinking the Theory of Goal Reasoning in Non-Axiomatic Logic

Goal reasoning in Non-Axiomatic Logic (NAL) explains how an adaptive system derives means for realizing desired events under insufficient knowledge and resources. However, the representation of avoidance is less clear. A common convention is to express avoid $G$'' as the goal sentence ¬G!\neg G!'', but this notation conflates two different readings: pursuing the negated event ¬G\neg G, and avoiding the positive event GG. This paper shows that the conflation can produce a paradoxical case in which an avoidance intention is converted into a positive goal to act merely because acting is usually followed by the absence of hurt. Starting from NAL's basic definition of goals, the framework is extended with a corresponding definition of anti-goals, so that avoidance can be represented without treating it as the pursuit of a negated event. Finally, a mental operation, \opprevent\op{prevent}, is introduced to connect anti-goal reasoning with ordinary goal reasoning in cases of active prevention. Four minimal case studies check that the resulting rules distinguish pursuit, passive avoidance, active prevention, and withholding action to preserve a desired event.
Jul 22, 2026cs.LO

The Dynamic Turn in Paraconsistency

In this work we propose a dynamic turn in paraconsistency. We introduce AMLFI1, the action model extension of the paraconsistent logic LFI1. A special case is PALFI1, a paraconsistent logic of public announcements. It corresponds to another, recently published, paraconsistent public announcement logic: the differences in their axiomatizations are mutually admissible. We also introduce UMLFI1, that extends AMLFI1 with factual change. Soundness and completeness are proven for all logics, and all extend the epistemic paraconsistent logics KLFI1, KB4LFI1 and S5LFI1, known from the literature. With such dynamic epistemic paraconsistent logics we can formalize obtaining and resolving provisional contradictions.
Jul 20, 2026cs.AI

Logical Judgments Under Pressure: Diagnosing Syllogistic Stability with Learned Soft Prefixes

To test how correct logical judgments respond to learned context, we prepend a soft prefix to an exactly labeled syllogistic reasoning benchmark while keeping the model fixed. Soft prefixes are opaque continuous vectors, so we characterize them through the behavior they induce across controlled variations in logical form and interface. By studying which prefixes succeed and how their effects generalize, we characterize how learned contextual pressure can override correct judgments and expose limits in a model's logical stability. Across Qwen3.6-35B-A3B MoE, Qwen3-8B, and Gemma 4 31B, learned prefixes redirect many correct answers and remain effective across unseen forms and interface changes. In repeated tests with Qwen3.6 MoE and Gemma, they outperform paired random controls in all 16 model--direction--split comparisons by 37 to 99 percentage points. Qwen3.6 MoE flip rates remain between 72% and 90% across wording and prompt changes, while Gemma validity prefixes retain 54% to 56% flip compared with less than 1% for matched random prefixes. Diagnostic tests show that the dominant effect is a broad preference for one answer meaning rather than fixed-symbol forcing or a logical operation that transfers reliably between tasks. The form of this bias differs across models. In both Qwen models, simple score models often predict which judgments will flip but not how far their margins will move, whereas Gemma's overall response is more closely approximated by the same models. These results show that the dominant behavioral effect of successful soft prefixes is a broad answer preference, while the remaining response reveals substantial model-specific differences in logical stability.
Jul 17, 2026cs.AI

NeurOWL: An LLM-Based Neural-symbolic Framework for Incomplete OWL Ontology Reasoning

OWL ontologies provide a formal knowledge representation framework that enables semantic reasoning, and have been widely adopted across domains such as healthcare and bioinformatics. In practice, however, real-world ontologies are often incomplete, which pose challenges for reasoning. In this work, we focus on a fundamental subsumption reasoning problem: given an incomplete ontology and a candidate (non-entailed) subsumption, determine whether the subsumption is semantically plausible and, if so, providing a logically sound explanation containing potential missing axioms. This task unifies subsumption verification with ontology abduction, and generalizes the latter by removing the need for a predefined candidate set of missing axioms. To address this subsumption reasoning problem, we propose NeurOWL, an end-to-end neuro-symbolic framework that jointly performs verification and abduction, leveraging both formally defined semantics and textual semantics through Large Language Models and ontology embeddings. We evaluate NeurOWL on real-world ontologies across multiple domains, demonstrating strong and robust performance across different domains.
Jul 17, 2026cs.AI

Logic, Optimization, and Artificial Intelligence

Logic and optimization can, in combination, make valuable contributions to rule-based AI. Logic is the obvious medium for encoding a rule base and drawing inferences from it, while optimization provides a powerful technology for computing inferences. Their combination has taken on new relevance amid a growing concern for transparency in AI. which is important for reproducibility, explainability, trustworthiness, and fairness. Rule-based AI provides a natural solution to transparency that is becoming increasingly practical due to today's highly advanced optimization methods. This article surveys several areas of logic-optimization partnership, including probabilistic logic, Bayesian logic, belief logics and Dempster-Shafer theory, nonmonotonic (default) logic, many-valued logics, and inference of logical formulas from noisy data based on Boolean regression. It shows how to compute projections, the fundamental problem of both logic and optimization, using decision diagrams and logic-based Benders decomposition. It describes the use of postoptimality analysis to explain how conclusions are reached, further enhancing transparency, as well as the role of optimization in answer set programming modulo theories. The paper concludes by suggesting possible future research directions.
Jul 12, 2026cs.AI

Probabilistic Extension of Neuro-Symbolic AGI Robots based on Belnap's Typed Intensional FOL

Neuro-symbolic AI based on IFOLBIFOL_B is a way to combine neural learning and symbolic reasoning to overcome limitations of purely neural systems (like lack of interpretability and logical structure) with formal logical machinery for self-reference. In this paper we expand the cognitive power of IFOLBIFOL_B by using the probability computation for the currently unknown sentences, based on Nilsson's probability structure for the IFOLBIFOL_B. We introduce the global symmetry transformation that preserves the current knowledge database and logical deduction, and the local one used for real-time decisions about concrete (sub)problems that involve only a very strict subset of IFOLBIFOL_B predicates. The computation of probability density function KIKI in both cases, based on the Shannon's maximum information entropy, is provided by neural networks of this probabilistic neuro-symbolic AGI.
Jul 10, 2026quant-ph

Quantum Logic as the Logic of Contexts

Quantum logic is usually presented as a non-classical departure from ordinary reasoning forced on us by quantum mechanics, with classical logic kept as the secure starting point. We argue for the opposite order of explanation in a finite and fully computable setting. The free orthomodular lattice on two generators has ninety-six elements, the direct product of a six-element non-distributive factor and a sixteen-element Boolean factor. Reading the first factor as a register of contexts and the second as Boolean content, we obtain a calculus whose elements are context--bit-vector pairs and whose operations act component by component. With this calculus we establish three results. First, we classify the six layers by commutativity, identifying the central kernel of context-neutral propositions together with a dual central layer in which all complementary contexts are present. Second, we show that orthocomplementation rearranges the layers exactly as the complementation of the small factor rearranges its elements, which makes the duality among the layers rigid rather than accidental. Third, we prove that the operation forgetting the context is a surjective homomorphism of orthocomplemented lattices whose quotient is the classical Boolean algebra, so that classical logic is a six-to-one, information-losing image of the contextual calculus.
Jul 6, 2026cs.AI

ClassicLogic: A Knowledge-Driven Benchmark of Classic Puzzle Games for Evaluating Compositional Generalization

Compositional generalization, the ability to understand and produce novel combinations of known components, remains a fundamental challenge for modern artificial intelligence. While few benchmarks exist, many focus on linguistic tasks and lack complex, explicit compositional structures. We introduce ClassicLogic, a new benchmark suite designed to evaluate an agent's ability to learn and compose problem-solving strategies. The benchmark consists of four classic logic puzzles: Sudoku, KenKen, Kakuro, and Futoshiki. Its core innovation is a hierarchical, explicit knowledge base for each game, where complex solving strategies are formally defined as compositions of simpler, foundational strategies. This structure allows for fine-grained evaluation of an agent's reasoning capabilities, from learning basic rules to applying multi-step compositional strategies to solve puzzles of increasing, mathematically validated difficulty. The open-source benchmark provides a challenging new testbed for advancing neuro-symbolic and other advanced AI reasoning systems.