symbolic inference

symbolic inference

The derivation of new facts from known facts and inference rules. This is one of the fundamental operations ofartificial intelligence and logic programming languageslike Prolog.

Inference is a basic part of human reasoning. For examplegiven that all men are mortal and that Socrates is a man, itis a trivial step to infer that Socrates is mortal. We mightexpress these symbolically:

man(X) => mortal(X).man(socrates).

("if X is a man then X is mortal" and "Socrates is a man").Here, "man", "mortal" and "socrates" are just arbitrarysymbols which the computer manipulates without reference to orknowledge of their external meaning. A forward chainingsystem (a production system) could use these to infer thenew fact

mortal(socrates).

simply by matching the left-hand-side of the implicationagainst the fact and substituting socrates for the variable X.