mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Certifiable Boolean Reasoning Is Universal

arXiv 2602.05120 ↗First posted 4 Feb 2026cs.CC cs.LGcited by 1

On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation

Abstract (arXiv)

The proliferation of agentic systems has thrust the reasoning capabilities of AI into the forefront of contemporary machine learning. While it is known that there exist neural networks which can reason through any Boolean task f:0,1B→0,1, in the sense that they emulate Boolean circuits with fan-in 2 and fan-out 1 gates, trained models have been repeatedly demonstrated to fall short of these theoretical ideals. This raises the question: textitCan one exhibit a deep learning model which certifiably always reasons and can universally reason through any Boolean task? Moreover, such a model should ideally require few parameters to solve simple Boolean tasks. We answer this question affirmatively by exhibiting a deep learning architecture which parameterizes distributions over Boolean circuits with the guarantee that, for every parameter configuration, a sample is almost surely a valid Boolean circuit (and hence admits an intrinsic circuit-level certificate). We then prove a universality theorem: for any Boolean f:0,1B→0,1, there exists a parameter configuration under which the sampled circuit computes f with arbitrarily high probability. When f is an O(log B)-junta, the required number of parameters scales linearly with the input dimension B. Empirically, on a controlled truth-table completion benchmark aligned with our setting, the proposed architecture trains reliably and achieves high exact-match accuracy while preserving the predicted structure: every internal unit is Boolean-valued on 0,1B. Matched MLP baselines reach comparable accuracy, but only about 10% of hidden units admit a Boolean representation; i.e. are two-valued over the Boolean cube.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 37 of its 66 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 4 Feb 2026.

Builds on

37 of 66 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023Reasoning or Reciting? Exploring the Capabilities and Limitations of Language Models Through Counterfactual Tasks5 Jul
  2. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models6 Oct

Other references · 35

  1. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
  2. 2021Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problemscited by 9,743
  3. 2022Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 5,601
  4. 2021Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Datasetcited by 5,203
  5. 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Toolscited by 4,072
  6. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,064
  7. 2023Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedbackcited by 3,317
  8. 2023Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Modelscited by 3,155
  9. 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,081
  10. 2016Understanding intermediate layers using linear classifier probescited by 1,279
  11. 2023HuggingGPT: Solving AI Tasks with ChatGPT and its Friends in Hugging Facecited by 1,173
  12. 2021Knowledge Neurons in Pretrained Transformerscited by 590
23 more
  1. 2016Error bounds for approximations with deep ReLU networkscited by 567
  2. 2023The Reversal Curse: LLMs trained on "A is B" fail to learn "B is A"cited by 399
  3. 2019Neural Probabilistic Logic Programming in DeepProbLogcited by 389
  4. 2023Formalizing and Benchmarking Prompt Injection Attacks and Defensescited by 328
  5. 2025The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexitycited by 298
  6. 2019Measuring Compositional Generalization: A Comprehensive Method on Realistic Datacited by 280
  7. 2024PoisonedRAG: Knowledge Corruption Attacks to Retrieval-Augmented Generation of Large Language Modelscited by 251
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  9. 2020Logic Tensor Networkscited by 197
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  12. 2020Deep Network Approximation for Smooth Functionscited by 163
  13. 2018Adaptivity of deep ReLU network for learning in Besov and mixed smooth Besov spaces: optimal rate and curse of dimensionalitycited by 160
  14. 2021Saturated Transformers are Constant-Depth Threshold Circuitscited by 137
  15. 2019On the Turing Completeness of Modern Neural Network Architecturescited by 129
  16. 2022Optimal Approximation Rates for Deep ReLU Neural Networks on Sobolev and Besov Spacescited by 50
  17. 2024MAgICoRe: Multi-Agent, Iterative, Coarse-to-Fine Refinement for Reasoningcited by 40
  18. 2024Transformers in Uniform TC0cited by 25
  19. 2025Cats Confuse Reasoning LLM: Query Agnostic Adversarial Triggers for Reasoning Modelscited by 23
  20. 2019The Neural State Pushdown Automatacited by 9
  21. 2025Thinking Isn't an Illusion: Overcoming the Limitations of Reasoning Models via Tool Augmentationscited by 9
  22. 2013Polynomial-time Solvable #CSP Problems via Algebraic Models and Pfaffian Circuitscited by 2
  23. 2025Quantifying The Limits of AI Reasoning: Systematic Neural Network Representations of Algorithmscited by 2

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Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

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  1. 2025Categorical Construction of Logically Verifiable Neural Architectures
  2. 2025Neural Probabilistic Circuits: Enabling Compositional and Interpretable Predictions through Logical Reasoning
  3. 2023Assessing Logical Reasoning Capabilities of Encoder-Only Transformer Models
  4. 2023Empower Nested Boolean Logic via Self-Supervised Curriculum Learning
  5. 2025Provable Failure of Language Models in Learning Majority Boolean Logic via Gradient Descent
  6. 2024Can Transformers Reason Logically? A Study in SAT Solving
  7. 2025Beyond Statistical Learning: Exact Learning Is Essential for General Intelligence
  8. 2025Minimalist Softmax Attention Provably Learns Constrained Boolean Functions