Equality-based binary resolution

Abstract

A major event in automated reasoning was the introduction by Robinson of resolution as an inference principle that is complete for the first-order predicate calculus. Here the theory of binary resolution, based strictly on unification, is recast to incorporate the axioms of equality. Equality-based binary resolution is complete without making use of paramodulation and leads to refutations that are less than half as long as standard refutations with the equality axioms. A detailed discussion is given of the first major use of a theorem prover based on this new method.