Claim · 2023-01-16 · publication · Stated in source · Supported

Mahowald, Ivanova, Blank, Kanwisher, Tenenbaum and Fedorenko's paper of January 2023 states that LLMs are close to mastering formal linguistic competence but still fail at functional competence, understanding and using language in the world, and are good models of language but incomplete models of human thought.

One recorded claim. The claim panel gives its qualification, the source passages with their place in each source, and how it was checked.

What it connects

Dissociating language and thought in large language models: a cognitive perspective → bears on → Language models lack agency or understanding

Where it appears

Arguments about catastrophic risk from advanced AI →

Claim and evidence

Dissociating language and thought in large language models: a cognitive perspectivebears on ↓Language models lack agency or understanding

Machine-checked, not reviewed by an editorStated in sourceSupported

Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source

Date: 2023-01-16 · publication Records dated 2023 →
Role: Context
Register (kind of text): Nonfiction
Missing element: The paper states that current LLMs fail at functional-competence tasks; it does not hold that language models lack understanding or goals as such.

Scope and limitsThe paper reviews evidence on current models and does not argue that such systems cannot acquire functional competence.

The evidence 02

primary sourceSupports the claim

Dissociating language and thought in large language models: a cognitive perspective

arXiv preprint 2301.06627 · 2023-01-16

Cite the original source

Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.

Source excerpt

“Although LLMs are close to mastering formal competence, they still fail at functional competence tasks, which often require drawing on non-linguistic capacities.”

Location in source Short abstract, PDF p. 1

How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher

Machine-checked · 2026-10-31

Source details and check notes

Authors: Kyle Mahowald; Anna A. Ivanova; Idan A. Blank; Nancy Kanwisher; Joshua B. Tenenbaum; Evelina Fedorenko
Version: Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29 (SHA-256 052db13bee274a6334b7057eeb5c5844a32af5218189aace4280f7e15b32c337). arXiv v1 of 16 January 2023 (dated 18 January 2023 on the title page). The cross-family check retrieved it again on 2026-10-31, with the same bytes.
Canonical address: Open the canonical source ↗
Accessed: 2026-10-29
Language: English (en)
Attribution: Kyle Mahowald, Anna A. Ivanova, Idan A. Blank, Nancy Kanwisher, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Evelina Fedorenko, “Dissociating language and thought in large language models: a cognitive perspective”, 2023-01-16.
Reuse: No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution.
Check notes: Candidate pack passage, arguments about catastrophic risk from advanced AI (research/risk-debate). The quotation (22 words) matched the text retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29. Matching ignored differences of whitespace, case, quotation marks, dashes and Unicode compatibility forms, so the source’s typography can differ. No human editorial review.

primary sourceSupports the claim

Dissociating language and thought in large language models: a cognitive perspective

arXiv preprint 2301.06627 · 2023-01-16

Cite the original source

Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.

Source excerpt

“LLMs are good models of language but incomplete models of human thought”

Location in source Short abstract, PDF p. 1

How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher

Machine-checked · 2026-10-31

Source details and check notes

Authors: Kyle Mahowald; Anna A. Ivanova; Idan A. Blank; Nancy Kanwisher; Joshua B. Tenenbaum; Evelina Fedorenko
Version: Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29 (SHA-256 052db13bee274a6334b7057eeb5c5844a32af5218189aace4280f7e15b32c337). arXiv v1 of 16 January 2023 (dated 18 January 2023 on the title page). The cross-family check retrieved it again on 2026-10-31, with the same bytes.
Canonical address: Open the canonical source ↗
Accessed: 2026-10-29
Language: English (en)
Attribution: Kyle Mahowald, Anna A. Ivanova, Idan A. Blank, Nancy Kanwisher, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Evelina Fedorenko, “Dissociating language and thought in large language models: a cognitive perspective”, 2023-01-16.
Reuse: No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution.
Check notes: Candidate pack passage, arguments about catastrophic risk from advanced AI (research/risk-debate). The quotation (12 words) matched the text retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29. Matching ignored differences of whitespace, case, quotation marks, dashes and Unicode compatibility forms, so the source’s typography can differ. No human editorial review.

Status and meaning

Editorial status. Not reviewed by an editor. An exploratory record that no editor has accepted. This status does not say whether a person has read any linked passage. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.

Relation. A passage of the document bears on the proposition without meeting its criterion; the record names the missing element. It is not an articulation and implies no influence.

Date. Date of the arXiv v1 submission.

Record ID rd-r14-mahowald-2023-dissociating-language-thought