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Main Authors: Walker, Peter B., Davidson, Hannah, Foster, Aiden, Lienert, Matthew, Pardue, Thomas, Russell, Dale
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.04228
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author Walker, Peter B.
Davidson, Hannah
Foster, Aiden
Lienert, Matthew
Pardue, Thomas
Russell, Dale
author_facet Walker, Peter B.
Davidson, Hannah
Foster, Aiden
Lienert, Matthew
Pardue, Thomas
Russell, Dale
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) have transformed natural language processing and hold growing promise for advancing science, healthcare, and decision-making. Yet their training paradigms remain dominated by affirmation-based inference, akin to \textit{modus ponens}, where accepted premises yield predicted consequents. While effective for generative fluency, this one-directional approach leaves models vulnerable to logical fallacies, adversarial manipulation, and failures in causal reasoning. This paper makes two contributions. First, it demonstrates how existing LLMs from major platforms exhibit systematic weaknesses when reasoning in scientific domains with negation, counterexamples, or faulty premises \footnote{Code to recreate these experiments are at https://github.com/hannahdavidsoncollege-maker/ScientificReasoningForEnvironment-MedicineWithLLMs. Second, it introduces a dual-reasoning training framework that integrates affirmative generation with structured counterfactual denial. Grounded in formal logic, cognitive science, and adversarial training, this training paradigm formalizes a computational analogue of ``denying the antecedent'' as a mechanism for disconfirmation and robustness. By coupling generative synthesis with explicit negation-aware objectives, the framework enables models that not only affirm valid inferences but also reject invalid ones, yielding systems that are more resilient, interpretable, and aligned with human reasoning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_04228
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Addressing Logical Fallacies In Scientific Reasoning From Large Language Models: Towards a Dual-Inference Training Framework
Walker, Peter B.
Davidson, Hannah
Foster, Aiden
Lienert, Matthew
Pardue, Thomas
Russell, Dale
Artificial Intelligence
Large Language Models (LLMs) have transformed natural language processing and hold growing promise for advancing science, healthcare, and decision-making. Yet their training paradigms remain dominated by affirmation-based inference, akin to \textit{modus ponens}, where accepted premises yield predicted consequents. While effective for generative fluency, this one-directional approach leaves models vulnerable to logical fallacies, adversarial manipulation, and failures in causal reasoning. This paper makes two contributions. First, it demonstrates how existing LLMs from major platforms exhibit systematic weaknesses when reasoning in scientific domains with negation, counterexamples, or faulty premises \footnote{Code to recreate these experiments are at https://github.com/hannahdavidsoncollege-maker/ScientificReasoningForEnvironment-MedicineWithLLMs. Second, it introduces a dual-reasoning training framework that integrates affirmative generation with structured counterfactual denial. Grounded in formal logic, cognitive science, and adversarial training, this training paradigm formalizes a computational analogue of ``denying the antecedent'' as a mechanism for disconfirmation and robustness. By coupling generative synthesis with explicit negation-aware objectives, the framework enables models that not only affirm valid inferences but also reject invalid ones, yielding systems that are more resilient, interpretable, and aligned with human reasoning.
title Addressing Logical Fallacies In Scientific Reasoning From Large Language Models: Towards a Dual-Inference Training Framework
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.04228