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Faithful Explanations for Graph Classification Using Logic

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Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases. Research Track (ECML PKDD 2025)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 16016))

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Abstract

Most post-hoc explainability methods for graph classification analyze the model’s internal representations rather than explicitly capturing its reasoning process. These approaches typically rely on perturbations, gradients, or optimization techniques to infer important features but do not approximate the decision-making function itself. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that directly models the GNN’s decision function using a Transparent Explainable Logic Layer (TELL). This logic-based approximation enables both instance-level and global-level explanations, offering insights into how node embeddings contribute to predictions. Unlike conventional methods, our approach derives explanations that are structurally aligned with the model’s decision process rather than being externally imposed. Through experiments on synthetic and real-world graph classification tasks, we show that our method produces faithful, sparse, and stable explanations, outperforming existing techniques.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Public GitHub repository: https://github.com/spideralessio/logix.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by French state aid managed by the National Research Agency under the France 2030 program, with the references “WAIT4 ANR-22-PEAE-0008” and “PANDORA ANR-24-CE23-0950”.

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Correspondence to Alessio Ragno.

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Ragno, A., Plantevit, M., Robardet, C. (2026). Faithful Explanations for Graph Classification Using Logic. In: Ribeiro, R.P., et al. Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases. Research Track. ECML PKDD 2025. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 16016. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-06078-5_7

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  1. Alessio Ragno
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