Automated reasoning

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Automated reasoning is an area of computer science dedicated to understanding different aspects of reasoning in a way that allows the creation of software which allows computers to reason completely or nearly completely automatically. As such, it is usually considered a subfield of artificial intelligence, but it also has strong connections to theoretical computer science and even philosophy.

The most developed subareas of automated reasoning probably are automated theorem proving (and the less automated but more pragmatic subfield of interactive theorem proving) and automated proof checking (viewed as guaranteed correct reasoning under fixed assumptions), but extensive work has also been done in reasoning by analogy, induction and abduction. Other important topics are reasoning under uncertainty and non-monotonic reasoning. An important part of the uncertainty field is that of argumentation, where further constraints of minimality and consistency are applied on top of the more standard automated deduction. John Pollock's Oscar system is an example of an automated argumentation system that is more specific than being just an automated theorem prover. Formal argumentation is subfield of artificial intelligence.

Tools and techniques include the classical logics and calculi from automated theorem proving, but also fuzzy logic, Bayesian inference, reasoning with maximal entropy and a large number of less formal ad-hoc techniques.


Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.