LLMs as ASP Programmers: Self-Correction Enables Task-Agnostic Nonmonotonic Reasoning

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ishay, Adam, Lee, Joohyung
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866915970978676736
author Ishay, Adam
Lee, Joohyung
author_facet Ishay, Adam
Lee, Joohyung
contents Recent large language models (LLMs) have achieved impressive reasoning milestones but continue to struggle with high computational costs, logical inconsistencies, and sharp performance degradation on high-complexity problems. While neuro-symbolic methods attempt to mitigate these issues by coupling LLMs with symbolic reasoners, existing approaches typically rely on monotonic logics (e.g., SMT) that cannot represent defeasible reasoning -- essential components of human cognition. We present "LLM+ASP," a framework that translates natural language into Answer Set Programming (ASP), a nonmonotonic formalism based on stable model semantics. Unlike prior "LLM+ASP" approaches that require manually authored knowledge modules, domain-specific prompts, or evaluation restricted to single problem classes, our framework operates without any per-task engineering and applies uniformly across diverse reasoning tasks. Our system utilizes an automated self-correction loop where structured feedback from the ASP solver enables iterative refinement. Evaluating across six diverse benchmarks, we demonstrate that: (1) stable model semantics allow LLMs to naturally express default rules and exceptions, outperforming SMT-based alternatives by significant margins on nonmonotonic tasks; (2) iterative self-correction is the primary driver of performance, effectively replacing the need for handcrafted domain knowledge; (3) compact in-context reference guides substantially outperform verbose documentation, revealing a "context rot" phenomenon where excessive context hinders constraint adherence.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_27960
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle LLMs as ASP Programmers: Self-Correction Enables Task-Agnostic Nonmonotonic Reasoning
Ishay, Adam
Lee, Joohyung
Artificial Intelligence
Recent large language models (LLMs) have achieved impressive reasoning milestones but continue to struggle with high computational costs, logical inconsistencies, and sharp performance degradation on high-complexity problems. While neuro-symbolic methods attempt to mitigate these issues by coupling LLMs with symbolic reasoners, existing approaches typically rely on monotonic logics (e.g., SMT) that cannot represent defeasible reasoning -- essential components of human cognition. We present "LLM+ASP," a framework that translates natural language into Answer Set Programming (ASP), a nonmonotonic formalism based on stable model semantics. Unlike prior "LLM+ASP" approaches that require manually authored knowledge modules, domain-specific prompts, or evaluation restricted to single problem classes, our framework operates without any per-task engineering and applies uniformly across diverse reasoning tasks. Our system utilizes an automated self-correction loop where structured feedback from the ASP solver enables iterative refinement. Evaluating across six diverse benchmarks, we demonstrate that: (1) stable model semantics allow LLMs to naturally express default rules and exceptions, outperforming SMT-based alternatives by significant margins on nonmonotonic tasks; (2) iterative self-correction is the primary driver of performance, effectively replacing the need for handcrafted domain knowledge; (3) compact in-context reference guides substantially outperform verbose documentation, revealing a "context rot" phenomenon where excessive context hinders constraint adherence.
title LLMs as ASP Programmers: Self-Correction Enables Task-Agnostic Nonmonotonic Reasoning
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.27960