[Revised entry by Frederic Portoraro on February 10, 2024.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Reasoning is the ability to make inferences, and automated reasoning is concerned with the building of computing systems that automate this process. Although the overall goal is to mechanize different forms of reasoning, the term has largely been identified with valid deductive reasoning as practiced in mathematics and formal logic. In this respect, automated reasoning is akin to mechanical theorem proving. Building an automated reasoning program means providing an algorithmic description to a formal calculus so that it can be implemented on a…

Originally appeared on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Read More