Predicate Construction in Higher-order Logic

Predicate construction is a guided search process: a space of predicates must be enumerated in some systematic way in order to find, according to some criterion, a suitable predicate for some purpose. Often the search space is large and heuristics are used to guide the search. Typically, predicate construction is studied and implemented in the context of first-order logic. In this paper, I outline the foundations of predicate construction in higher-order logic. The main contribution is a method of incremental construction of predicates on higher-order terms that represent individuals. Applications of the approach to machine learning are indicated