Theory-specific automated reasoning

In designing a large-scale computerized proof system, one is often confronted with issues of two kinds: issues regarding an underlying logical calculus, and issues that refer to theories, either specified axiomatically or characterized by indication of either a privileged model or a family of intended models. Proof services related to the theories most often take the form of satisfiability decision or semi-decision procedures (in a sense, polyadic inference rules), while some of the services offered by the calculus (e.g., the Davis-Putnam propositional satisfiability checker) provide low-level mechanisms for integrating services of the former kind. Integration among services can ensure speed-up (i.e., lower number of steps) in the proofs, but it must always be legitimatized by a conservativeness result. Interoperability among proof checkers and autonomous theorem provers is another key point of integration. In discussing these and related issues, this paper refers to Set Theory as the unifying background, and to a specific proof-checker based ona slightly unorthodox formalization of it as an arena for experimentation.