mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Logical Reasoning in Large Language Models: A Survey

arXiv 2502.09100 ↗First posted 13 Feb 2025cs.AI cs.CLcited by 52

On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation

Abstract (arXiv)

With the emergence of advanced reasoning models like OpenAI o3 and DeepSeek-R1, large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable reasoning capabilities. However, their ability to perform rigorous logical reasoning remains an open question. This survey synthesizes recent advancements in logical reasoning within LLMs, a critical area of AI research. It outlines the scope of logical reasoning in LLMs, its theoretical foundations, and the benchmarks used to evaluate reasoning proficiency. We analyze existing capabilities across different reasoning paradigms - deductive, inductive, abductive, and analogical - and assess strategies to enhance reasoning performance, including data-centric tuning, reinforcement learning, decoding strategies, and neuro-symbolic approaches. The review concludes with future directions, emphasizing the need for further exploration to strengthen logical reasoning in AI systems.

Key facts. Cited by 52 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 18 of its 87 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 13 Feb 2025.

Builds on

18 of 87 references.

Closest ancestors · 8

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Assessing the Sensitivity and Alignment of FOL Closeness Metrics15 Jan
  2. 2024Aristotle: Mastering Logical Reasoning with A Logic-Complete Decompose-Search-Resolve Framework22 Dec
  3. 2024Divide and Translate: Compositional First-Order Logic Translation and Verification for Complex Logical Reasoning10 Oct
  4. 2024Thought-Path Contrastive Learning via Premise-Oriented Data Augmentation for Logical Reading Comprehension22 Sep
  5. 2024LogicPro: Improving Complex Logical Reasoning via Program-Guided Learning19 Sep
  6. 2024Multi-Step Reasoning with Large Language Models, a Survey16 Jul
  7. 2024LINGOLY: A Benchmark of Olympiad-Level Linguistic Reasoning Puzzles in Low-Resource and Extinct Languages10 Jun
  8. 2023A Survey of Reasoning with Foundation Models17 Dec

Other references · 10

  1. 2021Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problemscited by 9,743
  2. 2022Beyond the Imitation Game: Quantifying and extrapolating the capabilities of language modelscited by 1,970
  3. 2025s1: Simple test-time scalingcited by 1,311
  4. 2024Marco-o1: Towards Open Reasoning Models for Open-Ended Solutionscited by 142
  5. 2024o1-Coder: an o1 Replication for Codingcited by 77
  6. 2024Beyond Chain-of-Thought: A Survey of Chain-of-X Paradigms for LLMscited by 48
  7. 2023Boosting Logical Reasoning in Large Language Models through a New Framework: The Graph of Thoughtcited by 41
  8. 2024Formal-LLM: Integrating Formal Language and Natural Language for Controllable LLM-based Agentscited by 39
  9. 2024Aligning with Logic: Measuring, Evaluating and Improving Logical Preference Consistency in Large Language Modelscited by 12
  10. 2024Inductive Learning of Logical Theories with LLMs: An Expressivity-Graded Analysiscited by 6

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 30; 2026: 22.

52 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2025Towards Reasoning Era: A Survey of Long Chain-of-Thought for Reasoning Large Language Modelscited by 381
  2. 2025Reasoning Models Know When They're Right: Probing Hidden States for Self-Verificationcited by 154
  3. 2025A Survey of Frontiers in LLM Reasoning: Inference Scaling, Learning to Reason, and Agentic Systemscited by 108
  4. 2025Pruning the Unsurprising: Efficient LLM Reasoning via First-Token Surprisalcited by 32
  5. 2025MME-Reasoning: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Logical Reasoning in MLLMscited by 31
  6. 2025Toward Generalizable Evaluation in the LLM Era: A Survey Beyond Benchmarkscited by 26
  7. 2025ReasonMed: A 370K Multi-Agent Generated Dataset for Advancing Medical Reasoningcited by 26
  8. 2025The Geometry of Reasoning: Flowing Logics in Representation Spacecited by 21
  9. 2026Large Language Model Reasoning Failurescited by 20
  10. 2025Mathematical Proof as a Litmus Test: Revealing Failure Modes of Advanced Large Reasoning Modelscited by 18
  11. 2025ARGUS: Hallucination and Omission Evaluation in Video-LLMscited by 16
  12. 2025A Comment On "The Illusion of Thinking": Reframing the Reasoning Cliff as an Agentic Gapcited by 8
38 more
  1. 2025Evaluating the Logical Reasoning Abilities of Large Reasoning Modelscited by 7
  2. 2025DeepSeek-R1 Outperforms Gemini 2.0 Pro, OpenAI o1, and o3-mini in Bilingual Complex Ophthalmology Reasoningcited by 6
  3. 2025GEAR: A General Evaluation Framework for Abductive Reasoningcited by 6
  4. 2025LogicReward: Incentivizing LLM Reasoning via Step-Wise Logical Supervisioncited by 6
  5. 2025From Reasoning to Learning: A Survey on Hypothesis Discovery and Rule Learning with Large Language Modelscited by 5
  6. 2026DARC: Decoupled Asymmetric Reasoning Curriculum for LLM Evolutioncited by 5
  7. 2025AdvChain: Adversarial Chain-of-Thought Tuning for Robust Safety Alignment of Large Reasoning Modelscited by 4
  8. 2026Agentic Design Patterns: A System-Theoretic Frameworkcited by 4
  9. 2025Injecting External Knowledge into the Reasoning Process Enhances Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 3
  10. 2026Large Language Model for OWL Proofscited by 3
  11. 2025Are Large Language Models Capable of Deep Relational Reasoning? Insights from DeepSeek-R1 and Benchmark Comparisonscited by 2
  12. 2025Investigating Language Model Capabilities to Represent and Process Formal Knowledge: A Preliminary Study to Assist Ontology Engineeringcited by 2
  13. 2025Large Language Models Imitate Logical Reasoning, but at what Cost?cited by 2
  14. 2025Socio-technical aspects of Agentic AIcited by 2
  15. 2026Improving Symbolic Translation of Language Models for Logical Reasoningcited by 2
  16. 2026AILS-NTUA at SemEval-2026 Task 12: Graph-Based Retrieval and Reflective Prompting for Abductive Event Reasoningcited by 2
  17. 2026Adaptive Robust Estimator for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 2
  18. 2025Can LLMs Solve ASP Problems? Insights from a Benchmarking Study (Extended Version)cited by 1
  19. 2025Deductive Logic in Language Models: Horizontal vs Vertical Reasoningcited by 1
  20. 2025DecompSR: A dataset for decomposed analyses of compositional multihop spatial reasoningcited by 1
  21. 2026Do Language Models Reason Across Languages?cited by 1
  22. 2026Scaling the Scaling Logic: Agentic Meta-Synthesis of Logic Reasoningcited by 1
  23. 2026Reasoning Primitives in Hybrid and Non-Hybrid LLMs: Do Architectural Differences Yield Advantages in State-Tracking and Recall?cited by 1
  24. 2026Compliance vs. Sensibility: On the Reasoning Controllability in Large Language Modelscited by 1
  25. 2026MedCalc-R1: Knowledge-Guided Reward Framework for Medical Mathematical Reasoningcited by 1
  26. 2025SWI: Speaking with Intent in Large Language Modelscited by 0
  27. 2025Balanced Actor Initialization: Stable RLHF Training of Distillation-Based Reasoning Modelscited by 0
  28. 2025Position: On the Methodological Pitfalls of Evaluating Base LLMs for Reasoningcited by 0
  29. 2025DETAIL Matters: Measuring the Impact of Prompt Specificity on Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 0
  30. 2025Causal Reasoning Favors Encoders: On The Limits of Decoder-Only Modelscited by 0
  31. 2026Logic-Parametric Neuro-Symbolic NLI: Controlling Logical Formalisms for Verifiable LLM Reasoningcited by 0
  32. 2026Reasoning Capabilities of Large Language Models. Lessons Learned from General Game Playingcited by 0
  33. 2026Frozen LLMs as Map-Aware Spatio-Temporal Reasoners for Vehicle Trajectory Predictioncited by 0
  34. 2026SRTJ: Self-Evolving Rule-Driven Training-Free LLM Jailbreakingcited by 0
  35. 2026A Neuro-Symbolic Approach to Strategy Synthesis for Strategic Logicscited by 0
  36. 2026HOLMES: Evaluating Higher-Order Logical Reasoning in LLMscited by 0
  37. 2026TRACE: An Operational Reasoning Schema for Auditable Agentic Commitmentscited by 0
  38. 2026Policy-as-logic for robust reasoning over rulescited by 0

50 most cited of 52 All 52 (JSON)

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025Advancing Reasoning in Large Language Models: Promising Methods and Approaches
  2. 2023Are Large Language Models Really Good Logical Reasoners? A Comprehensive Evaluation and Beyond
  3. 2025Stop Overthinking: A Survey on Efficient Reasoning for Large Language Models
  4. 2025Do Large Language Models Excel in Complex Logical Reasoning with Formal Language?
  5. 2023Towards LogiGLUE: A Brief Survey and A Benchmark for Analyzing Logical Reasoning Capabilities of Language Models
  6. 2022Towards Reasoning in Large Language Models: A Survey
  7. 2025Human-Level Reasoning: A Comparative Study of Large Language Models on Logical and Abstract Reasoning
  8. 2023Assessing and Enhancing the Robustness of Large Language Models with Task Structure Variations for Logical Reasoning