# Knowledge-based Analogical Reasoning in Neuro-symbolic Latent Spaces

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.08750 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.08750/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 8 of its 9 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Sep 2022.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/lr/reasoning-benchmarks-and-evaluation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12092/) (2021)
- [Plug and Play Language Models: A Simple Approach to Controlled Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.02164/) (2019)
- [RAVEN: A Dataset for Relational and Analogical Visual rEasoNing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.02741/) (2019)
- [Neural Algorithmic Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.02761/) (2021)
- [Learning Perceptual Inference by Contrasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.00086/) (2019)
- [The Scattering Compositional Learner: Discovering Objects, Attributes, Relationships in Analogical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.04212/) (2020)
- [Effective Abstract Reasoning with Dual-Contrast Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13720/) (2022)
- [Solving Visual Analogies Using Neural Algorithmic Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.10361/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Probabilistic Abduction for Visual Abstract Reasoning via Learning Rules in Vector-symbolic Architectures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.16024/) (2024)
- [Towards Learning Abductive Reasoning using VSA Distributed Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19121/) (2024)
- [Can Large Reasoning Models do Analogical Reasoning under Perceptual Uncertainty?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11207/) (2025)
- [NSFlow: An End-to-End FPGA Framework with Scalable Dataflow Architecture for Neuro-Symbolic AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19323/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Analogical Reasoning problems challenge both connectionist and symbolic AI systems as these entail a combination of background knowledge, reasoning and pattern recognition. While symbolic systems ingest explicit domain knowledge and perform deductive reasoning, they are sensitive to noise and require inputs be mapped to preset symbolic features. Connectionist systems on the other hand can directly ingest rich input spaces such as images, text or speech and recognize pattern even with noisy inputs. However, connectionist models struggle to include explicit domain knowledge for deductive reasoning. In this paper, we propose a framework that combines the pattern recognition abilities of neural networks with symbolic reasoning and background knowledge for solving a class of Analogical Reasoning problems where the set of attributes and possible relations across them are known apriori. We take inspiration from the 'neural algorithmic reasoning' approach [DeepMind 2020] and use problem-specific background knowledge by (i) learning a distributed representation based on a symbolic model of the problem (ii) training neural-network transformations reflective of the relations involved in the problem and finally (iii) training a neural network encoder from images to the distributed representation in (i). These three elements enable us to perform search-based reasoning using neural networks as elementary functions manipulating distributed representations. We test this on visual analogy problems in RAVENs Progressive Matrices, and achieve accuracy competitive with human performance and, in certain cases, superior to initial end-to-end neural-network based approaches. While recent neural models trained at scale yield SOTA, our novel neuro-symbolic reasoning approach is a promising direction for this problem, and is arguably more general, especially for problems where domain knowledge is available.