Backward Chaining
Updated 2026-09-11
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
Backward chaining starts from the goal or conclusion to be established and works in reverse, asking which conditions would suffice to establish it, then what would establish those, recursing until it meets known facts. Its proposition is that goal-directed search is far cheaper than undirected exploration, because it fetches only the premises that bear on the target. The key condition is that the chain must finally touch ground in facts or axioms.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Fix the target: state exactly what must be shown before you search for it. - Ask what it needs: derive the full set of immediate preconditions for that conclusion. - Recurse to ground: keep descending until the chain meets something already known.
Anchor fast decisions
Each conclusion carries only a small set of sufficient conditions, so starting from it generates just the subgoals that matter. Blind forward search, by contrast, expands everything reachable and spends effort on links that never serve the goal.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_chainingverified
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