arXiv:2603.21745cs.AIcs.CL2026-03被引 1

大模型无须表征生成,却仍具认知能力,引发表征起源的理论危机。

The Presupposition Problem in Representation Genesis

  • 指出现有心智哲学框架均预设了已有表征,无法解释表征如何诞生。
  • 揭示表征回归问题:解释表征时反而依赖表征本身,形成逻辑循环。
  • 为未来理论提供两个必要条件,推动突破表征起源难题。

大语言模型在未明确经历表征生成(representation genesis)的情况下即展现出高阶认知能力——表征生成是物理系统从无表征状态转变为能以内容敏感方式指导行为的关键跃迁。以往认知系统在被研究前已完成此跃迁,哲学则将生成视为背景条件而非解释目标。大语言模型打破了这一传统,使生成问题变得紧迫:若表征生成未发生,哪些认知能力受影响?为何?当前缺乏概念工具回答此问。本文认为,根本原因在于结构缺陷:主流心智哲学框架(思想语言假说、功能主义语义学、预测加工、具身主义、发生现象学)在解释生成时,皆在某一步骤预设了系统已是表征者,这种‘表征预设’结构导致解释的系统性拖延。试图用现有范畴解释表征首次获得,实质引入了生成阶段自身的资源,形成‘表征回归’。本文不提出新理论,而是进行概念诊断,阐明问题结构,并推导出任何避免该模式的理论必须满足的两项最低充分条件。大语言模型使这一理论缺失变得现实重要,而不再只是思辨课题。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Large language models are the first systems to achieve high cognitive performance without clearly undergoing representation genesis: the transition from a non-representing physical system to one whose states guide behavior in a content-sensitive way. Prior cognitive systems had already made this transition before we could examine it, and philosophy of mind treated genesis as a background condition rather than an explanatory target. LLMs provide a case that does not clearly involve this transition, making the genesis question newly urgent: if genesis did not occur, which cognitive capacities are affected, and why? We currently lack the conceptual resources to answer this. The reason, this paper argues, is structural. Major frameworks in philosophy of mind, including the Language of Thought hypothesis, teleosemantics, predictive processing, enactivism, and genetic phenomenology, share a common feature when applied to the genesis question: at some explanatory step, each deploys concepts whose explanatory purchase depends on the system already being organized as a representer. This pattern, which we call the Representation Presupposition structure, generates systematic explanatory deferral. Attempts to explain the first acquisition of content-manipulable representation within the existing categorical vocabulary import resources from the representational side of the transition itself. We call this the Representation Regress. The paper offers a conceptual diagnosis rather than a new theory, establishing the structure of the problem and deriving two minimum adequacy conditions for any account that avoids this pattern. LLMs make the absence of such a theory consequential rather than merely theoretical.

认知科学表征生成哲学心智大模型

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