Reuse of Proofs by Meta-methods

This paper describes a declarative approach for encoding the plan operators in proof planning, the so-called methods. The notion of method evolves from the much studied concept of a tactic and was rst used by A. Bundy. Signiic-ant deductive power has been achieved with the planning approach towards automated deduction ; however, the procedural character of the tactic part of methods hinders mechanical modiication. Although the strength of a proof planning system largely depends on powerful general procedures which solve a large class of problems, mechanical or even automated modi-cation of methods is necessary, since methods designed for a speciic type of problems will never be general enough. After introducing the general framework, we exemplify the mechanical modiication of methods via a particular meta-method which modiies methods by transforming connectives to quantiiers.