Binary Resolution in Surface Reasoning

Intuition suggests the hypothesis that everyday human reasoning is conducted in the written or spoken natural language, rather than in some disparate representation into which the surface language is translated. An examination of human reasoning reveals patterns of inference that parallel binary resolution. But any standard implementation of resolution requires Skolemization. Skolemization would seem an unlikely component of human reasoning. This appears to contradict the hypothesis that human reasoning takes place at the surface. To reconcile these observations, this paper develops a new rule of inference, which operates on surface expressions directly. This rule is shown to produce results which exactly parallel those produced by Skolemization and resolution. It extends the notion of \u27surface reasoning\u27 that was defined in previous papers. Several examples are given to illustrate its use in surface reasoning