Inductive or Deductive? Rethinking the Fundamental Reasoning Abilities of LLMs

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Main Authors: Cheng, Kewei, Yang, Jingfeng, Jiang, Haoming, Wang, Zhengyang, Huang, Binxuan, Li, Ruirui, Li, Shiyang, Li, Zheng, Gao, Yifan, Li, Xian, Yin, Bing, Sun, Yizhou
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Published: 2024
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author Cheng, Kewei
Yang, Jingfeng
Jiang, Haoming
Wang, Zhengyang
Huang, Binxuan
Li, Ruirui
Li, Shiyang
Li, Zheng
Gao, Yifan
Li, Xian
Yin, Bing
Sun, Yizhou
author_facet Cheng, Kewei
Yang, Jingfeng
Jiang, Haoming
Wang, Zhengyang
Huang, Binxuan
Li, Ruirui
Li, Shiyang
Li, Zheng
Gao, Yifan
Li, Xian
Yin, Bing
Sun, Yizhou
contents Reasoning encompasses two typical types: deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. Despite extensive research into the reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs), most studies have failed to rigorously differentiate between inductive and deductive reasoning, leading to a blending of the two. This raises an essential question: In LLM reasoning, which poses a greater challenge - deductive or inductive reasoning? While the deductive reasoning capabilities of LLMs, (i.e. their capacity to follow instructions in reasoning tasks), have received considerable attention, their abilities in true inductive reasoning remain largely unexplored. To investigate into the true inductive reasoning capabilities of LLMs, we propose a novel framework, SolverLearner. This framework enables LLMs to learn the underlying function (i.e., $y = f_w(x)$), that maps input data points $(x)$ to their corresponding output values $(y)$, using only in-context examples. By focusing on inductive reasoning and separating it from LLM-based deductive reasoning, we can isolate and investigate inductive reasoning of LLMs in its pure form via SolverLearner. Our observations reveal that LLMs demonstrate remarkable inductive reasoning capabilities through SolverLearner, achieving near-perfect performance with ACC of 1 in most cases. Surprisingly, despite their strong inductive reasoning abilities, LLMs tend to relatively lack deductive reasoning capabilities, particularly in tasks involving ``counterfactual'' reasoning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_00114
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Inductive or Deductive? Rethinking the Fundamental Reasoning Abilities of LLMs
Cheng, Kewei
Yang, Jingfeng
Jiang, Haoming
Wang, Zhengyang
Huang, Binxuan
Li, Ruirui
Li, Shiyang
Li, Zheng
Gao, Yifan
Li, Xian
Yin, Bing
Sun, Yizhou
Artificial Intelligence
Reasoning encompasses two typical types: deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. Despite extensive research into the reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs), most studies have failed to rigorously differentiate between inductive and deductive reasoning, leading to a blending of the two. This raises an essential question: In LLM reasoning, which poses a greater challenge - deductive or inductive reasoning? While the deductive reasoning capabilities of LLMs, (i.e. their capacity to follow instructions in reasoning tasks), have received considerable attention, their abilities in true inductive reasoning remain largely unexplored. To investigate into the true inductive reasoning capabilities of LLMs, we propose a novel framework, SolverLearner. This framework enables LLMs to learn the underlying function (i.e., $y = f_w(x)$), that maps input data points $(x)$ to their corresponding output values $(y)$, using only in-context examples. By focusing on inductive reasoning and separating it from LLM-based deductive reasoning, we can isolate and investigate inductive reasoning of LLMs in its pure form via SolverLearner. Our observations reveal that LLMs demonstrate remarkable inductive reasoning capabilities through SolverLearner, achieving near-perfect performance with ACC of 1 in most cases. Surprisingly, despite their strong inductive reasoning abilities, LLMs tend to relatively lack deductive reasoning capabilities, particularly in tasks involving ``counterfactual'' reasoning.
title Inductive or Deductive? Rethinking the Fundamental Reasoning Abilities of LLMs
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.00114