Entailment Calculus as a Logical Tool for

Reasoning Rule Generation and Verification

Jingde Cheng
Department of Computer Science and Communication Engineering
Kyushu University
6-10-1 Hakozaki, Fukuoka 812, Japan

Reprinted from
Jay Liebowitz (ed.)

Moving Toward Expert Systems Globally in the 21st Century

Proceedings of the Second World Congress on Expert Systems
Lisbon, Portugal, January 10-14, 1994
Cognizant Communication

Entailment Calculus as a Logical Tool for Reasoning Rule

Generation and Verification
Jingde Cheng
Department of Computer Science and Communication Engineering
Kyushu University
6-10-1 Hakozaki, Fukuoka 812, Japan
Abstract
A common inadequacy of current knowledge-based systems is that they cannot reason about those situations and/or
problems that have not been considered by their developers. A major cause of this inadequacy is that the system cannot
automatically generate new and valid reasoning rules from those existing rules and facts that are programmed or inputted in
the systems by their developers or users. On the other hand, the lack of formal and rigorous verification technique is a
major reason of that many experimental knowledge-based systems cannot be reliably used in practices for solving business
and industrial problems. Both reasoning rule generation and reasoning rule verification require a domain-independent
fundamental theory to underlie justifications. This paper investigates the issues of reasoning rule generation and
verification in knowledge-based systems from a logical viewpoint. The paper points out that various existent logic
systems fail to serve as the fundamental theory underlying reasoning rule generation and verification because their logical
theorems include a lot of implicational, conjunction-implicational, and disjunction-implicational paradoxes. As a solution
for the problem, the paper suggests that we should use an entailment calculus based on a paradox-free relevant logic as a
logical tool for reasoning rule generation and verification in knowledge-based systems.

1. Introduction
Knowledge Engineering (KE) is a discipline concerned with constructing and maintaining knowledge bases to store
knowledge about various domains in the real world and using the knowledge to solve problems in the domains that
ordinarily require human logical reasoning. Therefore, two key issues in KE are how to efficiently construct and maintain
knowledge bases and how to effectively reasoning new knowledge from known knowledge. In recent years, a lot of
knowledge-based systems have been developed and some of them have been used for solving problems in the real world.
However, the current knowledge-based systems have a common inadequacy, i.e., they cannot reason about those situations
and/or problems that have not been considered by their developers. A major cause of this inadequacy is that the system
cannot automatically generate new and valid reasoning rules from those existing rules and facts that are programmed or
inputted in the systems by their developers or users [9,10]. On the other hand, the lack of formal and rigorous verification
technique is a major reason of that many experimental knowledge-based systems cannot be reliably used in practices for
solving business and industrial problems [8].
How can a knowledge-based system generate new and valid reasoning rules automatically from the existing rules and facts
in the system? This is an inevitable problem for making current knowledge-based systems more powerful and flexible. To
solve the problem, it is indispensable to establish a domain-independent fundamental theory that underlies the automatic
generation of reasoning rules. On the other hand, for a given knowledge and/or rule base, verifying whether or not a
reasoning rule acquired from a domain expert is valid and consistent with the knowledge and/or rule base also requires
justifications based on a domain-independent fundamental theory.
This paper proposes a conceptual foundation in order to investigate the issues of reasoning rule generation and verification
from a logical viewpoint. The paper points out that various existent logic systems (including classical mathematical logic
and its various extensions and almost all relevant logics) fail to serve as the fundamental theory underlying reasoning rule
generation and verification because their logical theorems include a lot of implicational, conjunction-implicational, and
disjunction-implicational paradoxes. As a solution for the problem, the paper suggests that we should use an entailment
calculus based on a paradox-free relevant logic as a logical tool for reasoning rule generation and verification in knowledgebased systems.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 discusses why the issues of reasoning rule generation and
verification should be investigated within a logical framework and which kind of logic system can server as the domainindependent fundamental theory to underlie reasoning rule generation and verification. Section 3 gives a brief introduction
to two paradox-free relevant logics proposed by the present author recently. Section 4 shows that using a paradox-free
relevant logic as a domain-independent fundamental theory, new and valid reasoning rules can be automatically generated
from existing reasoning rules and facts by a deductive entailment reasoning based on the logic and a reasoning rule acquired
from a domain expert can be verified based on the logic. Some concluding remarks are given in Section 5.

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2. Fundamental Logic Underlying Reasoning Rule Generation and Verification

What is logic? Logic deals with what entails what, in other words, what follows from what. It is the systematic study of
fundamental principles that underlie valid, necessary, and sufficient reasoning that are used to get new and valid conclusions
from some known or assumed premises. As a fundamental theory underlying various types of reasoning, logic must
abstract the forms of the reasoning from their contents. From the viewpoint of logic, the validity of a reasoning depends
neither on what the reasoning is about nor on whether the premises and conclusion of the reasoning are true or not. Indeed,
the most essential idea of logic is to consider a reasoning form to be valid if and only if: (1) there is no reasoning of that
form such that its premises are true and its conclusion is false, and (2) the fact (1) does not depend on the contents of the
premises and conclusion. In human logical reasoning, the notion of entailment, which is often informally said as "...
entails ..." or "if ... then ..." and usually called "conditional relation," plays the most essential role because any reasoning
must invoke the entailment. It is historically always the most important subject studied in logic and is regarded as the
heart of logic [1]. In general, an entailment, for instance, "A entails B" or "if A then B," concerns two propositions which
are called the antecedent and consequent of the entailment, respectively. The truth of an entailment depends not only on the
truth of its antecedent and consequent but also more essentially on a causal and/or necessarily relevant relation between its
antecedent and consequent. From the viewpoint of logic, almost all, if not all, IF-THEN reasoning rules used in various
knowledge-based systems are nothing but instances of some entailments. Therefore, it is natural to investigate the issues
of reasoning rule generation and verification within a logical framework.
Not all kinds of logic systems can serve well as the domain-independent fundamental theory underlying reasoning rule
generation and verification. There is an essential requirement for the logic system to be used as the fundamental theory
underlying reasoning rule generation, i.e., for any set of facts and reasoning rules given as premises to be considered as true
and/or valid, any reasoning rule that is obtained as the conclusion of a deduction based on the logic from the premises must
be valid in the sense of entailment and must be new to the premises. A similar essential requirement for the logic system
to be used as the fundamental theory underlying reasoning rule verification is that for any set of facts and reasoning rules, if
it is consistent in the sense of the logic, i.e., there is no proposition such that both itself and its negation can be deducted
based on the logic from the set of facts and reasoning rules, then any reasoning rule in the set of facts and reasoning rules
must be valid in the sense of entailment. Unfortunately, as we will see, in fact, no existent logic system can completely
satisfies the above essential requirements.
An obvious candidate for the fundamental theory is classical mathematical logic (CML for short) where the entailment is
represented by the extensional notion of material implication, denoted by "" in this paper. However, the logic cannot be
used as the fundamental theory for solving our problems because of the well-known "implicational paradox problem."
According to the extensional and truth-functional semantics of the material implication, the truth of the formula "AB"
depends only on the truths of A and B, though there could exist no necessarily relevant relation between A and B. As a
result, for example, formulas "snow is white 1+1=2," "snow is black 1+1=2," and "snow is black 1+1=3" are all
true in the logic. However, if we read "" as "if ... then ...," then "if snow is white then 1+1=2," "if snow is black then
1+1=2," and "if snow is black then 1+1=3" are all false in human logical thinking because there is no necessarily relevant
relation between the if-part and the then-part. Obviously, in semantics the entailment "if ... then ..." used in human logical
thinking is intrinsically different from the material implication in CML. Using the material implication as the entailment
is problematical in pragmatics. The "implicational paradox problem" is that if one regards the material implication as the
entailment and every logical theorem of CML as a valid reasoning form in human logical thinking, then some logical
axioms or theorems of the logic, such as "A(BA)," "B(AA)," "A(AB)," "(AA)B,"
"(AB)(AB)," "(AB)(AB)," "(AB)(BA)," "((AB)C)((AC)(C))," and so on, have to be
regarded as "implicational paradoxes" [1,2,11-14]. For example, in terms of CML, formulas "A(BA)" and
"B(AA)" mean "a true proposition is implied by anything," formulas "A(AB)" and "(AA)B" mean "a false
proposition implies anything," and formula "(AB)(BA)" means "for any two propositions A and B, A implies B or B
implies A." However, it is obvious that we cannot say "if B then A" for a true proposition A and an arbitrary proposition
B, "if A then B" for a false proposition A and an arbitrary proposition B, and "if A then B or if B then A" for any two
irrelevant propositions A and B.
Since the implicational paradox problem, for a conclusion of a deduction based on CML, we cannot directly accept it as a
valid conclusion in the sense of entailment, even if each of given premises is valid. In order to evaluate whether the
conclusion is valid or not, we have to investigate the content of the conclusion. For example, from any given premise "A"
and a logical axiom "A(BA)" of CML, we can infer "BA" by using Modus Ponens for material implication.
However, from the viewpoint of human logical thinking, this reasoning is not necessarily regarded as valid in the sense of
entailment because there may be no necessarily relevant relation between B and A and therefore we cannot say "if B then A"
if we do not investigate the content of "BA." Obviously, if a knowledge-based system generates new reasoning rules
from existing rules and facts by a deduction based on CML, then those new reasoning rules are not necessarily valid in the
sense of entailment and therefore cannot be reliably used at all. On the other hand, if we use a deduction based on CML to
verify whether or not a reasoning rule acquired from a domain expert is consistent with a given knowledge and/or rule base,
then we cannot directly accept the rule as a valid conclusion in the sense of entailment, even if the deduction itself is valid
in terms of CML. This is because CML gives no guarantee for the existence of a necessarily relevant relation between

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the if-part and then-part of the rule. Therefore, CML does not satisfy the essential requirements for the logic system to be
used as the fundamental theory underlying reasoning rule generation and verification.
All logic systems (including modal logic systems [3,11], intuitionistic logic [16], and those logic systems developed in
recent years for nonmonotonic reasoning [7,15]) where the entailment is directly or indirectly represented by the material
implication have the similar implicational paradox problem as that in CML. Therefore, in order to solve our problems,
we have to investigate some "implicational-paradox-free" logic systems and discuss the validity of reasoning based on them
in the sense of the entailment.
An obvious strategy for solving the implicational paradox problem in CML is to formalize the notion of entailment as a
relation stronger than the material implication such that all implicational paradoxes are unprovable in an axiom system
constructed according to the formalization. Based on this idea, a number of "implicational-paradox-free" logic systems have
been proposed in the 1950s ~ 80s. The first proposal of such logics is Ackermann's logic system ' which provably
avoids the implicational paradoxes [1,2,6,14]. Ackermann introduced a new primitive logical connective, called "rigorous
implication," which is more natural and stronger than the material implication, and constructed a calculus ' of the
rigorous implication. Anderson and Belnap modified and reconstructed ' into an equivalent logic system, called "system
E of entailment" [1,2,6]. Belnap proposed an implicational relation, called "relevant implication," which is stronger than
the material implication but weaker than the rigorous implication, and constructed a calculus called "system R of relevant
implication" [1,2,6]. E has something like the modality structure of a classical modal logic S 4 , and therefore, E differs
primarily from R in that E is a system of strict and relevant implication but R is a system of only relevant implication
[1,2,6]. There are some neighboring logic systems of E and R. All of these logic systems are usually called "entailment
logics," "relevance logics," or "relevant logics" [1,2,6,14]. In this paper, we will call these logics "relevant logics." A
major feature of the relevant logics is that they have a primitive intensional connective to represent the entailment and their
logical theorems include no implicational paradoxes.
Are these relevant logics hopeful candidates for the logic system to be used as the fundamental theory underlying reasoning
rule generation and verification in knowledge-based systems? Unfortunately, the answer is "No" because although the
relevant logics have rejected those implicational paradoxes, in the logics there still exist some logical axioms or theorems
which are not natural in the sense of entailment. Such logical axioms or theorems, for instance, are "(AB)A,"
"(AB)B," "(AB)((AC)B)," "A(AB)," "B(AB)," "(AB)(A(BC))" and so on, where "" is the
primitive intensional connective in the logics to represent the notion of entailment. The present author named these logical
axioms or theorems "conjunction-implicational paradoxes" and "disjunction-implicational paradoxes" [4,5].
Why the conjunction-implicational paradoxes and disjunction-implicational paradoxes are not natural? Let us see an
example of simple conjunction-implicational paradox. A simple conjunction-implicational paradox is an implicational or
entailment formula satisfying the following two conditions: (1) its antecedent is a conjunctional formula, and (2) its
consequent is a proper subformula of the antecedent as a conjunct. For example, simple conjunction-implicational paradox
"(AB)A" is a logical axiom of almost all relevant logics and therefore is valid in the logics even if B may be irrelevant
to A or B may be the negation of A. However, propositions in this form such as "if snow is white and 1+1=2, then snow
is white," "if snow is white and 1+1=3, then snow is white," and "if snow is white and snow is not white, then snow is
white" cannot be considered as valid in human logical thinking. "(AB)((AC)B)" is a more complex conjunctionimplicational paradox. It is a logical theorem of almost all relevant logics and is valid in the logics. Therefore, from any
given entailment "AB" and the logical theorem, we can infer "(AC)B" by using Modus Ponens for entailment.
However, from the viewpoint of human logical thinking, this reasoning is not necessarily considered as valid in the sense
of entailment because there may be no necessarily relevant relation between C and B and therefore we cannot say "if A and
C, then B." A simple disjunction-implicational paradox is an implicational or entailment formula satisfying the following
two conditions: (1) its consequent is a disjunctional formula, and (2) its antecedent is a proper subformula of the consequent
as a disjunct. Similar to the above discussion on simple conjunction-implicational paradoxes, we can know simple
disjunction-implicational paradoxes are also not natural in the sense of entailment.
Therefore, the existent relevant logics also do not satisfy the essential requirements for the logic system to be used as the
fundamental theory underlying reasoning rule generation and verification in knowledge-based systems. The problem
concerned with conjunction-implicational and disjunction-implicational paradoxes, as well as the problem concerned with
implicational paradoxes, is serious and crucial to the issue of reasoning rule generation and verification in knowledge-based
systems. In order to solve our problems, we have to investigate a logic system that is not only free of implicational
paradoxes but also free of conjunction-implicational and disjunction-implicational paradoxes.

3. Paradox-Free Relevant Logics

Here, we give a brief introduction to two paradox-free relevant logics, named Ec and Rc, which were proposed by the
present author recently [5]. As a modification of E, Ec rejects all conjunction-implicational and disjunction-implicational
paradoxes in E. As a modification of R , Rc rejects all conjunction-implicational and disjunction-implicational paradoxes
in R. Therefore, Ec and Rc are free of implicational, conjunction-implicational, and disjunction-implicational paradoxes.
The logical connectives, axiom schemata, and inference rules of our systems are as follows:

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Primitive logical connectives :

: entailment
: negation
: extensional conjunction
Defined logical connectives :
: intensional conjunction, AB =df (AB)
: intensional disjunction, AB =df AB
: intensional equivalence, AB =df (AB)(BA)
: extensional disjunction, AB =df (AB)
: material implication, AB =df (AB) or AB
: extensional equivalence, AB =df (AB)(BA)
Axiom schemata :
A1
A2
A2'
A3
A3'
A4
A4'
A5
A5'
A6
A7
A8
A9
A10
A11
A12
A13
A14

AA
(AB)((BC)(AC))
(AB)((CA)(CB))
(A(AB))(AB)
(A(BC))((AB)(AC))
(A((BC)D))((BC)(AD))
(AB)(((AB)C)C)
A((AB)B)
(A(BC))(B(AC))
(LALB)L(AB), where LA =df (AA)A
(A(A))(A)
(A(B))(B(A))
((A))A
(AB)(BA)
((AB)(AC))(A(BC))
((AB)(CD))((AC)(BD))
(A(AB))B
(A(AB))B

Inference rules :
E : "from A and AB to infer B" (Modus Ponens)
I : "from A and B to infer AB" (Adjunction)
Thus, the systems may now defined as follows, where we use "A|B" to denote any choice of one from two axiom schemata
A and B.
E = {A1, A2|A2', A3|A3', A4|A4'} + E
R = {A1, A2|A2', A3|A3', A5|A5'} + E
E, = E + {A7, A8, A9}
R, = R + {A8, A9}
Ec = E, + {A6, A10, A11, A12, A13, A14} + I
Rc = R, + {A10, A11, A12, A13, A14} + I
Here, E and R are the purely implicational fragments of E and R , respectively, and the relationship between them is
known as R = E + ALA [1,2,6]; E, and R, are the implication-negation fragments of E and R,
respectively. E and R can be obtained by simply adding the following axiom schemata into E, + {A11} + I and
R, + {A6, A11} + I, respectively: (AB)A, (AB)B, A(AB), B(AB), ((AC)(BC))((AB)C),
and (A(BC))((AB)C).
E, and R, are, of course, free of conjunction-implicational and disjunction-implicational paradoxes. The key
point is which axiom schemata concerning conjunction or disjunction should be add the implication-negation fragments of
E and R for obtaining a satisfactory calculus of entailment. The above systems Ec and Rc show the present author's
selection.
Informal meanings of the primitive logical connectives of Ec are as follows. "A" means "A is not true." "AB" means
"both A and B are true." "AB" is a formal representation for the entailment in human logical thinking and means "(1)
there is no case such that A is true and B is not true, and (2) fact (1) can be decided without investigating either the truth of
A or the truth of B." Note that the notion of entailment "" satisfies two conditions in semantics. The conditions
correspond to the well-known Wright-Geach-Smiley criterion for entailment: "A entails B, if and only if, by means of

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logic, it is possible to come to know the truth of AB without coming to know the falsehood of A or the truth of B" [1].
Lin named the second condition the "first independence" [12,13]. The most intrinsic semantical difference between the
entailment and the material implication is that the former satisfies the first independence, which is a requirement for a
necessarily relevant relation between two propositions, but the latter does not have such a requirement. As a primitive
intensional connective, the entailment cannot be defined by other connectives. On the other hand, in Ec, the material
implication can be defined as a extensional connective as the same as in CML, i.e., AB =df (A(B)) or AB =df
AB. However, the material implication in Ec can never be used in inference rules as a logical connective for deductive
reasoning.
A formula of the form AB is called an entailment formula where A is called its antecedent and B is called its consequent.
If entailment formula "AB" is a logical theorem of Ec and/or Rc, then A and B must share at least one variable. This
proposition shows a syntactically necessary condition for valid entailment formulas of Ec and/or Rc. This necessary
condition is easy to understand. If the antecedent and consequent of an entailment formula share no variable, then there
cannot exist a necessarily relevant relation between the antecedent and consequent, and therefore the entailment formula
cannot be valid in the sense of entailment. However, this condition is a necessary but not sufficient condition for valid
entailment formulas of Ec and/or Rc. For example, formula "(AB)A" satisfies the condition but it should not be a
valid entailment formula of Ec and/or Rc because it is a conjunction-implicational paradox. The relationship between the
characterization of variable-sharing and valid entailment formulas of Ec and/or Rc is similar to the relationship between the
truth-functional semantics of material implication and valid relevant implicational formulas of relevant logics: "there is no
case such that A is true and B is not true" is a necessary but not sufficient condition for valid rigorous and/or relevant
implication formulas of relevant logics.

4. Reasoning Rule Generation and Verification Based on Entailment Calculus

One of our primary problems is how to automatically generate new and valid reasoning rules from those existing rules and
facts in knowledge-based systems. Within the framework of paradox-free relevant logic Ec, an IF-THEN reasoning rule
used in a knowledge-based system can be represented by an entailment formula. Thus, a deduction of an entailment formula
AB from a given set P of formulas, i.e., P |-Ec AB, can be regarded as a generation procedure of a reasoning rule
AB from a given set P of facts and existing reasoning rules. Now, the problem is whether or not the reasoning rule
AB is both "valid" in the sense of entailment and "new" to those existing reasoning rules in P.
As we mentioned, Ec is free of implicational, conjunction-implicational, and disjunction-implicational paradoxes.
Therefore, an entailment formula obtained as the conclusion of a deduction based on Ec must be valid in the sense of
entailment if all the premises of the deduction are regarded as true and/or valid. For example, since "(AB)((AC)B)"
is not a logical theorem of Ec, in the framework of Ec, for a true entailment formula "AB," a formula C which is
irrelevant to B cannot be introduced as a conjunct in the antecedent of the entailment formula.
Now, is the conclusion of a deduction based on Ec a "new" reasoning rule to those existing reasoning rules given as the
premises of the deduction? Below we discuss this question based on the notion of second independence proposed by Lin
[12,13].
It is obvious that to apply inference rule of Adjunction "from A and B to infer AB" to any two formulas "A" and "B" can
never reason new knowledge because the conclusion "AB" is merely an extensional conjunction of the premises "A" and
"B." On the other hand, to apply the inference rule of Modus Ponens for entailment "from A and AB to infer B" to any
two formulas "A" and "AB" may or may not reason new knowledge. For example, the conclusion "AC" of applying
Modus Ponens to two formulas "(AB)(BC)" and "((AB)(BC))(AC)" is new to the premises in the sense
that the truth of the conclusion is decided in the reasoning process and is not known in advance. Similarly, the conclusion
"BC" of applying Modus Ponens to two formulas "(AB)(AC)" and "((AB)(AC))(BC)" is new to
the premises in the same sense as above. However, the conclusion "(CD)(AB)" of applying Modus Ponens to two
formulas "(AB)(CD)" and "((AB)(CD))((CD)(AB))" is not new to the premises in the sense that the
truth of every conjunct in the conclusion has been known before the reasoning process. Therefore, whether the conclusion
of a deduction is new to the premises of the deduction or not depends on which formulas are used in the applications of the
inference rule of Modus Ponens for entailment.
We can classify all entailment formulas into two types. For an entailment formula of the first type, which is called a
deductive formula, whether the antecedent of the formula is true or not can be decided without investigating whether the
consequent of the formula is true or not (Lin named this property the "second independence"). But for an entailment
formula of another type, which is called a derivative formula, whether the antecedent of the formula is true or not cannot be
decided if we do not investigate whether the consequent of the formula is true or not. Similarly, A logical theorem of Ec is
called a deductive theorem if it is a deductive formula; a logical theorem of Ec is called a derivative theorem if it is a
derivative formula. For example, both (A(AB))B and (AB)(BA) are logical theorems of Ec but the former is a
deductive theorem and the latter is a derivative theorem. In the case of (A(AB))B, the truth of A(AB) can be
decided without investigating the truth of B because according to the first independence, we can decide the truth of AB
without investigating the truth value of B. We can see from this example that the second independence is achieved by the

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first independence in the antecedent of an entailment formula. In the case of (AB)(BA), however, it is obvious that the
truth of AB can be decided only after both the truth of A and the truth of B has been investigated.
A deduction based on Ec is called a deductive entailment reasoning if and only if it satisfies the following condition: in any
application of the inference rule of Modus Ponens for entailment "from A and AB to infer B," "AB" is a deductive
formula of Ec.
The conclusion of a deductive entailment reasoning is not a tautological consequence but a new conclusion for given
premises of the reasoning in the sense of that the truth of the conclusion is decided in the reasoning process and is not
known in advance.
Consequently, if a knowledge-based system used the paradox-free relevant logic Ec as its fundamental theory, then new and
valid reasoning rules can be automatically generated from given valid facts and reasoning rules by a deductive entailment
reasoning based on Ec.
Another of our primary problems is how to verify whether or not a reasoning rule acquired from a domain expert is valid in
the sense of entailment and consistent with a given knowledge and/or rule base. Within the framework of paradox-free
relevant logic Ec, having an entailment formula AB as the representation of the reasoning rule to be verified and having
a set P of formulas as the representation of a given knowledge and/or rule base, if P |-Ec AB holds but P |-Ec (AB)
does not hold, then we can say that AB is valid in the sense of entailment and consistent with the given knowledge
and/or rule base because Ec is paradox-free; if both P |-Ec AB and P |-Ec (AB) do not hold, then we can say that
AB is not logically relevant to the given knowledge and/or rule base and therefore it can be added to the rule base as a
new reasoning rule without inconsistency; if both P |-Ec AB and P |-Ec (AB) hold, then we can say that AB is
inconsistent with the given knowledge and/or rule base.

5. Concluding Remarks
In order to investigate the issues of reasoning rule generation and verification in knowledge-based systems, we have
discussed which kind of logic system should be used as the domain-independent fundamental theory to solve the issues,
shown that new and valid reasoning rules can be automatically generated from given valid facts and reasoning rules by a
deductive entailment reasoning based on paradox-free relevant logic Ec, and shown that whether or not a reasoning rule
acquired from a domain expert is valid in the sense of entailment and is consistent with a given knowledge and/or rule base
also can be verified based on Ec.
It is obvious that for some entailments and atomic propositions given as the premises, different deductive entailment
reasoning can reason out different entailments. The number of entailments which can be reasoned from the same premises
may be very large when the premise set itself is large. Therefore, after having a fundamental logic calculus of entailment
underlying the automatic generation of entailments, the next challenging issue is to find a mechanism to control the
process and direction of a deductive entailment reasoning. At present, our approach to this issue is to restrict the degree of
entailments, i.e., we let a deductive entailment reasoning only reason out at the most third degree entailments and/or
formulas, where the deepest nest of entailment is 3. This restriction is reasonable because almost all human expert usually
use at the most second degree IF-THEN rules to do reasoning. We are developing a rule generator based on this idea.
In order to use Ec in reasoning rule verification, an efficient decision procedure for deduction based on Ec is indispensable.
There are a lot of work have to do for finding such a decision procedure.
Some other further work on this topic are: (1) to investigate the general characterization of conjunction-implicational and
disjunction-implicational paradoxes, (2) to find a formal semantics for Ec, and (3) to investigate the syntactical and
semantical sufficient conditions for deductive formulas and/or theorems of Ec.

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