Logical Machinery of Heuristics (Preliminary Report)

ABSTRACT. This paper is a preliminary report on a new declarative means which allows programmers to specify heuristics (problem-specific inference methods) about the problem that is being solved. The heuristics that are defined in our framework control and/or change the behavior of the underlying solver. In this way, we are able to attain problem-specific solvers that benefit from both the state-of-the-art general inference methods available in general-purpose solvers, and the problem-specific reasoning methods that are applicable only to this particular problem.