symbolic

Definition

Symbolic approaches represent knowledge as discrete tokens manipulated by explicit rules — logic formulas, programs, knowledge graphs — rather than as continuous vectors. The trade is legibility against brittleness: a symbolic derivation can be audited step by step, but it breaks on noisy or unanticipated input where a learned representation degrades gracefully. Neuro-symbolic work tries to keep both properties by pairing a network front end with a symbolic engine.