mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

MuSLR: Multimodal Symbolic Logical Reasoning

arXiv 2509.25851 ↗First posted 30 Sep 2025cs.CVcited by 7

On the map: LLM reasoning → Multimodal reasoning

Abstract (arXiv)

Multimodal symbolic logical reasoning, which aims to deduce new facts from multimodal input via formal logic, is critical in high-stakes applications such as autonomous driving and medical diagnosis, as its rigorous, deterministic reasoning helps prevent serious consequences. To evaluate such capabilities of current state-of-the-art vision language models (VLMs), we introduce the first benchmark MuSLR for multimodal symbolic logical reasoning grounded in formal logical rules. MuSLR comprises 1,093 instances across 7 domains, including 35 atomic symbolic logic and 976 logical combinations, with reasoning depths ranging from 2 to 9. We evaluate 7 state-of-the-art VLMs on MuSLR and find that they all struggle with multimodal symbolic reasoning, with the best model, GPT-4.1, achieving only 46.8%. Thus, we propose LogiCAM, a modular framework that applies formal logical rules to multimodal inputs, boosting GPT-4.1's Chain-of-Thought performance by 14.13%, and delivering even larger gains on complex logics such as first-order logic. We also conduct a comprehensive error analysis, showing that around 70% of failures stem from logical misalignment between modalities, offering key insights to guide future improvements. All data and code are publicly available at https://llm-symbol.github.io/MuSLR.

Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Multimodal reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 38 of its 42 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 30 Sep 2025.

Builds on

38 of 42 references.

Closest ancestors · 6

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025VisuLogic: A Benchmark for Evaluating Visual Reasoning in Multi-modal Large Language Models21 Apr
  2. 2025Multimodal Chain-of-Thought Reasoning: A Comprehensive Survey16 Mar
  3. 2024LogicVista: Multimodal LLM Logical Reasoning Benchmark in Visual Contexts6 Jul
  4. 2023Symbol-LLM: Leverage Language Models for Symbolic System in Visual Human Activity Reasoning29 Nov
  5. 2023MathVista: Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning of Foundation Models in Visual Contexts3 Oct
  6. 2022Learn to Explain: Multimodal Reasoning via Thought Chains for Science Question Answering20 Sep

Other references · 32

  1. 2014Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Contextcited by 17,608
  2. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,459
  3. 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,587
  4. 2019BERTScore: Evaluating Text Generation with BERTcited by 5,512
  5. 2024GPT-4o System Cardcited by 4,588
  6. 2023Improved Baselines with Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 4,418
  7. 2023InstructBLIP: Towards General-purpose Vision-Language Models with Instruction Tuningcited by 2,876
  8. 2023MMMU: A Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding and Reasoning Benchmark for Expert AGIcited by 2,080
  9. 2025InternVL3: Exploring Advanced Training and Test-Time Recipes for Open-Source Multimodal Modelscited by 1,834
  10. 2015Flickr30k Entities: Collecting Region-to-Phrase Correspondences for Richer Image-to-Sentence Modelscited by 1,362
  11. 2023NExT-GPT: Any-to-Any Multimodal LLMcited by 615
  12. 2022Towards Reasoning in Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 596
20 more
  1. 2018nocaps: novel object captioning at scalecited by 444
  2. 2023Logic-LM: Empowering Large Language Models with Symbolic Solvers for Faithful Logical Reasoningcited by 391
  3. 2022Language Models Are Greedy Reasoners: A Systematic Formal Analysis of Chain-of-Thoughtcited by 337
  4. 2020ProofWriter: Generating Implications, Proofs, and Abductive Statements over Natural Languagecited by 324
  5. 2022FOLIO: Natural Language Reasoning with First-Order Logiccited by 235
  6. 2015Evaluation of Deep Convolutional Nets for Document Image Classification and Retrievalcited by 213
  7. 2022ROSCOE: A Suite of Metrics for Scoring Step-by-Step Reasoningcited by 177
  8. 2023LINC: A Neurosymbolic Approach for Logical Reasoning by Combining Language Models with First-Order Logic Proverscited by 168
  9. 2023MathCoder: Seamless Code Integration in LLMs for Enhanced Mathematical Reasoningcited by 156
  10. 2024Faithful Logical Reasoning via Symbolic Chain-of-Thoughtcited by 100
  11. 2024LogicBench: Towards Systematic Evaluation of Logical Reasoning Ability of Large Language Modelscited by 68
  12. 2023Vera: A General-Purpose Plausibility Estimation Model for Commonsense Statementscited by 44
  13. 2024Multi-LogiEval: Towards Evaluating Multi-Step Logical Reasoning Ability of Large Language Modelscited by 39
  14. 2024CANDLE: Iterative Conceptualization and Instantiation Distillation from Large Language Models for Commonsense Reasoningcited by 28
  15. 2024Divide and Translate: Compositional First-Order Logic Translation and Verification for Complex Logical Reasoningcited by 27
  16. 2024RuleArena: A Benchmark for Rule-Guided Reasoning with LLMs in Real-World Scenarioscited by 27
  17. 2025On Path to Multimodal Generalist: General-Level and General-Benchcited by 19
  18. 2024Aristotle: Mastering Logical Reasoning with A Logic-Complete Decompose-Search-Resolve Frameworkcited by 15
  19. 2024LOGIC-LM++: Multi-Step Refinement for Symbolic Formulationscited by 14
  20. 2024LASP: Surveying the State-of-the-Art in Large Language Model-Assisted AI Planningcited by 9

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 7.

7 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025Code-Vision: Evaluating Multimodal LLMs Logic Understanding and Code Generation Capabilities
  2. 2025ChainV: Atomic Visual Hints Make Multimodal Reasoning Shorter and Better
  3. 2025GThinker: Towards General Multimodal Reasoning via Cue-Guided Rethinking
  4. 2026Phi-4-reasoning-vision-15B Technical Report
  5. 2025Logic Unseen: Revealing the Logical Blindspots of Vision-Language Models
  6. 2025Why Reasoning Matters? A Survey of Advancements in Multimodal Reasoning (v1)
  7. 2025Beyond Perception: Evaluating Abstract Visual Reasoning through Multi-Stage Task
  8. 2024OpenEMMA: Open-Source Multimodal Model for End-to-End Autonomous Driving