Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

Author's Introduction

• The success of large language models (LLMs) across many domains of AI research has generated intense debate.
• Some attribute their impressive performance on complex tasks to human-like linguistic and cognitive capacities, whereas others ascribe it to shallow pattern matching.
• These disputes stem from deep‐seated philosophical disagreements about the nature of language and cognition.
• We provide an opinionated survey of these disagreements across core topics in the philosophy of mind and language, including syntactic competence, compositionality, linguistic meaning, representation, attitudes, reasoning, agency, and consciousness.
• We contend that progress on these issues requires not only clarity about background philosophical commitments but also, in many cases, close engagement with emerging empirical evidence.