Modeling Endogenous Logic: Causal Neuro-Symbolic Reasoning Model for Explainable Multi-Behavior Recommendation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Chen, Yuzhe, Cao, Jie, Wang, Youquan, Tao, Haicheng, Vukovic, Darko B., Wu, Jia
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Chen, Yuzhe
Cao, Jie
Wang, Youquan
Tao, Haicheng
Vukovic, Darko B.
Wu, Jia
author_facet Chen, Yuzhe
Cao, Jie
Wang, Youquan
Tao, Haicheng
Vukovic, Darko B.
Wu, Jia
contents Existing multi-behavior recommendations tend to prioritize performance at the expense of explainability, while current explainable methods suffer from limited generalizability due to their reliance on external information. Neuro-Symbolic integration offers a promising avenue for explainability by combining neural networks with symbolic logic rule reasoning. Concurrently, we posit that user behavior chains inherently embody an endogenous logic suitable for explicit reasoning. However, these observational multiple behaviors are plagued by confounders, causing models to learn spurious correlations. By incorporating causal inference into this Neuro-Symbolic framework, we propose a novel Causal Neuro-Symbolic Reasoning model for Explainable Multi-Behavior Recommendation (CNRE). CNRE operationalizes the endogenous logic by simulating a human-like decision-making process. Specifically, CNRE first employs hierarchical preference propagation to capture heterogeneous cross-behavior dependencies. Subsequently, it models the endogenous logic rule implicit in the user's behavior chain based on preference strength, and adaptively dispatches to the corresponding neural-logic reasoning path (e.g., conjunction, disjunction). This process generates an explainable causal mediator that approximates an ideal state isolated from confounding effects. Extensive experiments on three large-scale datasets demonstrate CNRE's significant superiority over state-of-the-art baselines, offering multi-level explainability from model design and decision process to recommendation results.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_21335
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Modeling Endogenous Logic: Causal Neuro-Symbolic Reasoning Model for Explainable Multi-Behavior Recommendation
Chen, Yuzhe
Cao, Jie
Wang, Youquan
Tao, Haicheng
Vukovic, Darko B.
Wu, Jia
Artificial Intelligence
Existing multi-behavior recommendations tend to prioritize performance at the expense of explainability, while current explainable methods suffer from limited generalizability due to their reliance on external information. Neuro-Symbolic integration offers a promising avenue for explainability by combining neural networks with symbolic logic rule reasoning. Concurrently, we posit that user behavior chains inherently embody an endogenous logic suitable for explicit reasoning. However, these observational multiple behaviors are plagued by confounders, causing models to learn spurious correlations. By incorporating causal inference into this Neuro-Symbolic framework, we propose a novel Causal Neuro-Symbolic Reasoning model for Explainable Multi-Behavior Recommendation (CNRE). CNRE operationalizes the endogenous logic by simulating a human-like decision-making process. Specifically, CNRE first employs hierarchical preference propagation to capture heterogeneous cross-behavior dependencies. Subsequently, it models the endogenous logic rule implicit in the user's behavior chain based on preference strength, and adaptively dispatches to the corresponding neural-logic reasoning path (e.g., conjunction, disjunction). This process generates an explainable causal mediator that approximates an ideal state isolated from confounding effects. Extensive experiments on three large-scale datasets demonstrate CNRE's significant superiority over state-of-the-art baselines, offering multi-level explainability from model design and decision process to recommendation results.
title Modeling Endogenous Logic: Causal Neuro-Symbolic Reasoning Model for Explainable Multi-Behavior Recommendation
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.21335