How LLMs Might Think

Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence [Submitted on 2 Apr 2026] How LLMs Might Think Joseph Gottlieb, Ethan Kemp, Matthew Trager Do large language models (LLMs) think? Daniel Stoljar and Zhihe Vincent Zhang have recently developed an argument from rationality for the claim that LLMs do not think. We contend, however, that the argument from rationality not only falters, but leaves open an intriguing possibility: that LLMs engage only in arational, associative forms of thinking, and have purely associative minds. Our positive claim is that if LLMs think at all, they likely think precisely in this manner. Subjects: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Computation and Language (cs.CL) Cite as: arXiv:2604.09674 [cs.AI]   (or arXiv:2604.09674v1 [cs.AI] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.09674 Focus to learn more Journal reference: Mind & Language (2026) Submission history From: Joseph Gottlieb [view email] [v1] Thu, 2 Apr 2026 17:16:41 UTC (296 KB) Access Paper: view license Current browse context: cs.AI < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 Change to browse by: cs cs.CL References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)