@inproceedings{wang-etal-2026-ssr,
title = "{SSR}: Symbolic-Neural Soft Reasoning for Robust and Verifiable Thinking Chains",
author = "Wang, Rui and
Wei, Zeming and
Zhang, Yihao and
Luan, Xiaokun",
editor = "Lee, Hung-Yi and
Dev, Sunipa and
Li, Jessy and
Elliott, Desmond",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing",
month = oct,
year = "2026",
address = "Budapest, Hungary",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-main.1241/",
pages = "28289--28308",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-459-0",
abstract = "Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive progress in complex reasoning tasks, largely driven by the Chain-of-Thought (CoT) paradigm, which decomposes difficult problems into intermediate steps. However, CoT reasoning remains fundamentally constrained by the probabilistic nature of neural generation, leading to unfaithful reasoning chains that undermine reliability. Neuro-symbolic approaches attempt to address these issues by combining LLMs with symbolic solvers, yet they face persistent challenges, including hallucinated translations, the mismatch between natural language and formal logic, and the limited enhancement of the LLM{'}s intrinsic reasoning ability. To overcome these limitations, we propose Symbolic-Neural Soft Reasoning (SSR), a unified framework that integrates LLMs with symbolic reasoning and improves robustness by relaxing strict logical determinism while preserving verifiability. Our approach improves reasoning performance, automatically generates verifiable and human-readable logical thinking chains for training and fine-tuning, and facilitates cross-disciplinary applications such as AI for mathematics. Experiments across multiple models and benchmarks demonstrate that SSR consistently outperforms existing reasoning frameworks, highlighting its effectiveness in enhancing both the robustness and interpretability of LLM reasoning. Our code is available at https://github.com/1240148048/SSR."
}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="wang-etal-2026-ssr">
<titleInfo>
<title>SSR: Symbolic-Neural Soft Reasoning for Robust and Verifiable Thinking Chains</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Rui</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Wang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Zeming</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Wei</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yihao</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Xiaokun</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Luan</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2026-10</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Hung-Yi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Lee</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Sunipa</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Dev</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jessy</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Li</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Desmond</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Elliott</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>Association for Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">Budapest, Hungary</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
<identifier type="isbn">979-8-89176-459-0</identifier>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive progress in complex reasoning tasks, largely driven by the Chain-of-Thought (CoT) paradigm, which decomposes difficult problems into intermediate steps. However, CoT reasoning remains fundamentally constrained by the probabilistic nature of neural generation, leading to unfaithful reasoning chains that undermine reliability. Neuro-symbolic approaches attempt to address these issues by combining LLMs with symbolic solvers, yet they face persistent challenges, including hallucinated translations, the mismatch between natural language and formal logic, and the limited enhancement of the LLM’s intrinsic reasoning ability. To overcome these limitations, we propose Symbolic-Neural Soft Reasoning (SSR), a unified framework that integrates LLMs with symbolic reasoning and improves robustness by relaxing strict logical determinism while preserving verifiability. Our approach improves reasoning performance, automatically generates verifiable and human-readable logical thinking chains for training and fine-tuning, and facilitates cross-disciplinary applications such as AI for mathematics. Experiments across multiple models and benchmarks demonstrate that SSR consistently outperforms existing reasoning frameworks, highlighting its effectiveness in enhancing both the robustness and interpretability of LLM reasoning. Our code is available at https://github.com/1240148048/SSR.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">wang-etal-2026-ssr</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-main.1241/</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2026-10</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>28289</start>
<end>28308</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T SSR: Symbolic-Neural Soft Reasoning for Robust and Verifiable Thinking Chains
%A Wang, Rui
%A Wei, Zeming
%A Zhang, Yihao
%A Luan, Xiaokun
%Y Lee, Hung-Yi
%Y Dev, Sunipa
%Y Li, Jessy
%Y Elliott, Desmond
%S Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
%D 2026
%8 October
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Budapest, Hungary
%@ 979-8-89176-459-0
%F wang-etal-2026-ssr
%X Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive progress in complex reasoning tasks, largely driven by the Chain-of-Thought (CoT) paradigm, which decomposes difficult problems into intermediate steps. However, CoT reasoning remains fundamentally constrained by the probabilistic nature of neural generation, leading to unfaithful reasoning chains that undermine reliability. Neuro-symbolic approaches attempt to address these issues by combining LLMs with symbolic solvers, yet they face persistent challenges, including hallucinated translations, the mismatch between natural language and formal logic, and the limited enhancement of the LLM’s intrinsic reasoning ability. To overcome these limitations, we propose Symbolic-Neural Soft Reasoning (SSR), a unified framework that integrates LLMs with symbolic reasoning and improves robustness by relaxing strict logical determinism while preserving verifiability. Our approach improves reasoning performance, automatically generates verifiable and human-readable logical thinking chains for training and fine-tuning, and facilitates cross-disciplinary applications such as AI for mathematics. Experiments across multiple models and benchmarks demonstrate that SSR consistently outperforms existing reasoning frameworks, highlighting its effectiveness in enhancing both the robustness and interpretability of LLM reasoning. Our code is available at https://github.com/1240148048/SSR.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-main.1241/
%P 28289-28308
Markdown (Informal)
[SSR: Symbolic-Neural Soft Reasoning for Robust and Verifiable Thinking Chains](https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-main.1241/) (Wang et al., EMNLP 2026)
ACL