HOLMES: Evaluating Higher-Order Logical Reasoning in LLMs C

AI benchmark · Reasoning

Publisher
Paper Arxiv
Domains
Reasoning
Tier
C why
Snapshot

What is HOLMES: Evaluating Higher-Order Logical Reasoning in LLMs?

Logical reasoning is essential for reliable AI, yet existing benchmarks are largely first-order-logic-centric, focusing on object-level deduction over fixed predicates. This misses many realistic scenarios where models must reason over rules, predicates, functions, constraints, and decision procedures themselves. We introduce HOLMES (Higher-Order Logic Meets real-world Explainable Symbolic reasoning), the first real-world benchmark for higher-order symbolic reasoning in LLMs, containing 1379 instances. Built on higher-order logic, HOLMES pairs natural-language problems with HOL formalizations, ground-truth answers, verifiable reasoning traces, and fine-grained controllable reasoning factors across law and finance. Experiments show that current LLMs still struggle on HOLMES, with an average accuracy of only 50.64% and the best model reaching 59.54%. Our analyses further reveal that high final-answer accuracy can mask shortcut reasoning in conflict-resolution settings, while performance drops sharply under scope-conditioned and compositional reasoning. These findings identify higher-order symbolic reasoning as a key bottleneck for building reliable and verifiable LLMs. The project code and dataset are publicly available at https://github.com/wuyucheng2002/HOLMES.

Tier C

C

Niche: a handful of models scored, or built by an RL vendor.

How much stands behind a tier: usage, who backs it, a confirmed line from its own site or paper, and a clear read on X. High with three of the four, medium with two, low otherwise.

  • 11 models scored
  • in curated RL directories (1 pt)
How we got to tier C
  1. Adoption: 11 models scored. Tier C.
  2. Not yet read on X.
  3. In curated RL directories: 1 point, a floor of none.
  4. Not yet confirmed by a line from its own site or paper.

A clear view on X moves a tier one step up or down; most entries don't move. How tiers work.

Not on the map yet: no line from its own site or paper places it in a domain.

Next: browse all benchmarks. Entry from the RL Research daily scrape of public sources, 2026-10-11 snapshot.