A classically valid inference rule by which one may infer a particular clause—a finite disjunction of literals—from two clauses in which an atom appears in one and its negation appears in the other. Formally, this is represented by the rule:
where each formula is a literal. When is the material conditional, hypothetical syllogism can be seen as a special case of resolution, i.e.:
Resolution is important in the field of automated theorem proving, in which formulae are uniformly placed into conjunctive normal form, i.e., finite conjunctions of clauses, because it is the only inference required to show that an unsatisfiable formula cannot be satisfied.