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The inevitability of inconsistent abstract spaces

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Abstract

Abstraction has been widely used in automated deduction; a major problem with its use is that the abstract space can be inconsistent even though the ground space is consistent. We show that, under certain very weak conditions true of practically all the abstractions used in the past (but true also of a much wider class of abstractions), this problem cannot be avoided.

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Giunchiglia, F., Walsh, T. The inevitability of inconsistent abstract spaces. J Autom Reasoning 11, 23–41 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00881899

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