Deductive reasoning Deductive reasoning Deductive reasoning, also deductive logic, logical deduction is the process of reasoning from one or more statements (premises) to reach a logically certain conclusion. Deductive reasoning goes in the same direction as that of the conditionals, and links premises with conclusions. If all premises are true, the terms are clear, and the rules of deductive logic are followed, then the conclusion reached is necessarily true. Deductive reasoning (""top-down logic"") contrasts with inductive reasoning (""bottom-up logic"") in the following way; in deductive reasoning, a conclusion is reached reductively by applying general rules which hold over the entirety of a
Logic in computer science been a strong influence from mathematical logic on the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). From the beginning of the field it was realized that technology to automate logical inferences could have great potential to solve problems and draw conclusions from facts. Ron Brachman has described first-order logic (FOL) as the metric by which all AI knowledge representation formalisms should be evaluated. There is no more general or powerful known method for describing and analyzing information than FOL. The reason FOL itself is simply not used as a computer language is that it is actually too expressive, in the sense that