FreeEnCal: A Forward Reasoning Engine with General-Purpose

Abstract

A forward reasoning engine is an indispensable component in many advanced knowledge-based systems with purposes of creation, discovery, or prediction. This paper presents a forward reasoning engine with general-purpose, named which can interpret and perform inference rules defined and given by its users, draw fragments of various classical and/or non-classical logic systems formalized as different formal systems, draw empirical theorems of various formal theories constructed based on various logic systems, and perform deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning automatically. FreeEnCal can be used as a ready-made forward reasoning engine serving as a core and fundamental component in various advanced knowledge-based systems as well as an alone forward reasoning engine with general-purpose. The paper presents our basic ideas to design and implement FreeEnCal, facilities provided by FreeEnCal, and some applications of FreeEnCal.