OrLog: Resolving Complex Queries with LLMs and Probabilistic Reasoning

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Hoveyda, Mohanna, Piepenbrock, Jelle, de Vries, Arjen P, de Rijke, Maarten, Hasibi, Faegheh
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866908800604176384
author Hoveyda, Mohanna
Piepenbrock, Jelle
de Vries, Arjen P
de Rijke, Maarten
Hasibi, Faegheh
author_facet Hoveyda, Mohanna
Piepenbrock, Jelle
de Vries, Arjen P
de Rijke, Maarten
Hasibi, Faegheh
contents Resolving complex information needs that come with multiple constraints should consider enforcing the logical operators encoded in the query (i.e., conjunction, disjunction, negation) on the candidate answer set. Current retrieval systems either ignore these constraints in neural embeddings or approximate them in a generative reasoning process that can be inconsistent and unreliable. Although well-suited to structured reasoning, existing neuro-symbolic approaches remain confined to formal logic or mathematics problems as they often assume unambiguous queries and access to complete evidence, conditions rarely met in information retrieval. To bridge this gap, we introduce OrLog, a neuro-symbolic retrieval framework that decouples predicate-level plausibility estimation from logical reasoning: a large language model (LLM) provides plausibility scores for atomic predicates in one decoding-free forward pass, from which a probabilistic reasoning engine derives the posterior probability of query satisfaction. We evaluate OrLog across multiple backbone LLMs, varying levels of access to external knowledge, and a range of logical constraints, and compare it against base retrievers and LLM-as-reasoner methods. Provided with entity descriptions, OrLog can significantly boost top-rank precision compared to LLM reasoning with larger gains on disjunctive queries. OrLog is also more efficient, cutting mean tokens by $\sim$90\% per query-entity pair. These results demonstrate that generation-free predicate plausibility estimation combined with probabilistic reasoning enables constraint-aware retrieval that outperforms monolithic reasoning while using far fewer tokens.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_23085
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle OrLog: Resolving Complex Queries with LLMs and Probabilistic Reasoning
Hoveyda, Mohanna
Piepenbrock, Jelle
de Vries, Arjen P
de Rijke, Maarten
Hasibi, Faegheh
Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
Resolving complex information needs that come with multiple constraints should consider enforcing the logical operators encoded in the query (i.e., conjunction, disjunction, negation) on the candidate answer set. Current retrieval systems either ignore these constraints in neural embeddings or approximate them in a generative reasoning process that can be inconsistent and unreliable. Although well-suited to structured reasoning, existing neuro-symbolic approaches remain confined to formal logic or mathematics problems as they often assume unambiguous queries and access to complete evidence, conditions rarely met in information retrieval. To bridge this gap, we introduce OrLog, a neuro-symbolic retrieval framework that decouples predicate-level plausibility estimation from logical reasoning: a large language model (LLM) provides plausibility scores for atomic predicates in one decoding-free forward pass, from which a probabilistic reasoning engine derives the posterior probability of query satisfaction. We evaluate OrLog across multiple backbone LLMs, varying levels of access to external knowledge, and a range of logical constraints, and compare it against base retrievers and LLM-as-reasoner methods. Provided with entity descriptions, OrLog can significantly boost top-rank precision compared to LLM reasoning with larger gains on disjunctive queries. OrLog is also more efficient, cutting mean tokens by $\sim$90\% per query-entity pair. These results demonstrate that generation-free predicate plausibility estimation combined with probabilistic reasoning enables constraint-aware retrieval that outperforms monolithic reasoning while using far fewer tokens.
title OrLog: Resolving Complex Queries with LLMs and Probabilistic Reasoning
topic Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.23085