Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning: A Survey and Interpretation

TL;DR

This survey reviews neural-symbolic learning and reasoning, discussing theoretical foundations, system implementations, applications, challenges, and future research directions in integrating neural networks with symbolic reasoning.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of neural-symbolic systems, combining insights from multiple disciplines, and highlights recent developments, challenges, and future research avenues.

Findings

Neural-symbolic systems integrate neural networks with symbolic reasoning.

Applications span biology, fault diagnosis, training, and software verification.

The field faces challenges in scalability and interpretability.

Abstract

The study and understanding of human behaviour is relevant to computer science, artificial intelligence, neural computation, cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, and several other areas. Presupposing cognition as basis of behaviour, among the most prominent tools in the modelling of behaviour are computational-logic systems, connectionist models of cognition, and models of uncertainty. Recent studies in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and psychology have produced a number of cognitive models of reasoning, learning, and language that are underpinned by computation. In addition, efforts in computer science research have led to the development of cognitive computational systems integrating machine learning and automated reasoning. Such systems have shown promise in a range of applications, including computational biology, fault diagnosis, training and assessment in simulators, and software verification. This joint survey reviews the personal ideas and views of several researchers on neural-symbolic learning and reasoning. The article is organised in three parts: Firstly, we frame the scope and goals of neural-symbolic computation and have a look at the theoretical foundations. We then proceed to describe the realisations of neural-symbolic computation, systems, and applications. Finally we present the challenges facing the area and avenues for further research.