Socratic sequent systems

This paper describes a general theoretical framework for constructing intelligent knowledge bases. The framework arises from the desire to construct powerful and efficient systems. Powerful in the sense that they drawn "deep" conclusions from the knowledge base, and efficient in that they give quick responses. Local inference relation are proposed as a way of constructing a variety of powerful yet efficient inference systems. Local Socratic sequent systems are proposed as a formal model of interactive knowledge bases based on local inference relations.