Are Large Language Models Really Good Logical Reasoners? A Comprehensive Evaluation and Beyond

Abstract

Logical reasoning consistently plays a fundamental and significant role in the domains of knowledge engineering and artificial intelligence. Recently, Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as a noteworthy innovation in natural language processing (NLP). However, the question of whether LLMs can effectively address the task of logical reasoning, which requires gradual cognitive inference similar to human intelligence, remains unanswered. To this end, we aim to bridge this gap and provide comprehensive evaluations in this paper. First, to offer systematic evaluations, we select fifteen typical logical reasoning datasets and organize them into deductive, inductive, abductive and mixed-form reasoning settings. Considering the comprehensiveness of evaluations, we include 3 early-era representative LLMs and 4 trending LLMs. Second, different from previous evaluations relying only on simple metrics (e.g., accuracy), we propose fine-level evaluations in objective and subjective manners, covering both answers and explanations, including answer correctness, explain correctness, explain completeness and explain redundancy. Additionally, to uncover the logical flaws of LLMs, problematic cases will be attributed to five error types from two dimensions, i.e., evidence selection process and reasoning process. Third, to avoid the influences of knowledge bias and concentrate purely on benchmarking the logical reasoning capability of LLMs, we propose a new dataset with neutral content. Based on the in-depth evaluations, this paper finally forms a general evaluation scheme of logical reasoning capability from six dimensions (i.e., Correct, Rigorous, Self-aware, Active, Oriented and No hallucination). It reflects the pros and cons of LLMs and gives guiding directions for future works.