Controlling Deduction with Proof Condensation and Heuristics

This paper presents a proof condensation (or redundancy elimination) procedure and heuristic rules that are used to enhance the tableau-based theorem prover HARP. The proof condensation procedure makes proofs easier to construct and more readable by excising redundancies from proof trees. Since the entire language of first-order logic is used without preprocessing, heuristics can be formulated to capture efficient and human-like deduction strategies. We also present evidence that the combination of these two techniques enable HARP to solve challenging problems such as Schubert's Steamroller.