Pith. sign in

REVIEW 6 cited by

ProofWriter: Generating Implications, Proofs, and Abductive Statements over Natural Language

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2012.13048 v2 pith:URI4PAGD submitted 2020-12-24 cs.CL cs.AI

classification cs.CLcs.AI
keywords languagenaturalimplicationsproofsmethodsproofproofwritertheory
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
0 comments
read the original abstract

Transformers have been shown to emulate logical deduction over natural language theories (logical rules expressed in natural language), reliably assigning true/false labels to candidate implications. However, their ability to generate implications of a theory has not yet been demonstrated, and methods for reconstructing proofs of answers are imperfect. In this work we show that a generative model, called ProofWriter, can reliably generate both implications of a theory and the natural language proof(s) that support them. In particular, iterating a 1-step implication generator results in proofs that are highly reliable, and represent actual model decisions (rather than post-hoc rationalizations). On the RuleTaker dataset, the accuracy of ProofWriter's proofs exceed previous methods by +9% absolute, and in a way that generalizes to proof depths unseen in training and on out-of-domain problems. We also show that generative techniques can perform a type of abduction with high precision: Given a theory and an unprovable conclusion, identify a missing fact that allows the conclusion to be proved, along with a proof. These results significantly improve the viability of neural methods for systematically reasoning over natural language.

Discussion (0). Sign in to comment.

Forward citations

Cited by 6 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Chain-of-Verification Reduces Hallucination in Large Language Models

    cs.CL 2023-09 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    Chain-of-Verification reduces hallucinations in large language models by drafting responses, planning independent verification questions, answering them separately, and generating a final verified output.

  2. Reasoning with Language Model is Planning with World Model

    cs.CL 2023-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    RAP turns LLMs into dual world-model and planning agents via MCTS to generate better reasoning paths, outperforming CoT baselines and achieving 33% relative gains over GPT-4 CoT using LLaMA-33B on plan generation.

  3. Solving math word problems with process- and outcome-based feedback

    cs.LG 2022-11 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    On GSM8K, outcome-based supervision achieves similar final-answer error rates to process-based with less labeling, but process-based or learned reward models are needed to reach 3.4% reasoning error among correct solutions.

  4. Semantic-Aware Logical Reasoning via a Semiotic Framework

    cs.AI 2025-09 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    LogicAgent uses a semiotic-square-guided approach to enhance logical reasoning in LLMs on the new RepublicQA benchmark and others, reporting average gains of 6.25% and 7.05% respectively.

  5. Reasoning is about giving reasons

    cs.CL 2025-08 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    A transformer can convert reasoning sentences into a task-specific logical form with 95-99% exact match, after which a symbolic solver answers deductive queries.

  6. Is Large Language Model Performance on Reasoning Tasks Impacted by Different Ways Questions Are Asked?

    cs.CL 2025-07 unverdicted novelty 4.0 of 10

    LLM accuracy on reasoning tasks differs significantly by question type, with step-by-step reasoning accuracy often uncorrelated to final answer selection.

Pith tools