Higher-order Prover Research Articles

Extending a brainiac prover to lambda-free higher-order logic

Decades of work have gone into developing efficient proof calculi, data structures, algorithms, and heuristics for first-order automatic theorem proving. Higher-order provers lag behind in terms of efficiency. Instead of developing a new higher-order prover from the ground up, we propose to start with the state-of-the-art superposition prover E and gradually enrich it with higher-order features. We explain how to extend the prover’s data structures, algorithms, and heuristics to lambda -free higher-order logic, a formalism that supports partial application and applied variables. Our extension outperforms the traditional encoding and appears promising as a stepping stone toward full higher-order logic.

Higher-order theorem proving and its applications

Abstract Automated theorem proving systems validate or refute whether a conjecture is a logical consequence of a given set of assumptions. Higher-order provers have been successfully applied in academic and industrial applications, such as planning, software and hardware verification, or knowledge-based systems. Recent studies moreover suggest that automation of higher-order logic, in particular, yields effective means for reasoning within expressive non-classical logics, enabling a whole new range of applications, including computer-assisted formal analysis of arguments in metaphysics. My work focuses on the theoretical foundations, effective implementation and practical application of higher-order theorem proving systems. This article briefly introduces higher-order reasoning in general and presents an overview of the design and implementation of the higher-order theorem prover Leo-III. In the second part, some example applications of Leo-III are discussed.