Analyze the cognitive scientist's argument below. To make the conclusion logically valid, you must supply the missing conditional premise. Fill in the blanks using the exact terminology from the argument to construct the precise sufficient assumption.
Answer:Cognitive Scientist: A computational system possesses genuine semantic understanding only if it can ground its internal symbols in sensorimotor interactions with a physical environment. Because large language models are trained purely by mapping statistical relationships between text tokens, they completely lack sensorimotor engagement with the physical world. Therefore, it is clear that any system incapable of causal reasoning cannot possess genuine semantic understanding.
Missing Premise: A computational system is able to ground its internal 【symbols】 in sensorimotor interactions only if it is capable of 【causal】 【reasoning】.
Missing Premise: A computational system is able to ground its internal 【symbols】 in sensorimotor interactions only if it is capable of 【causal】 【reasoning】.
Answer
symbols, causal, reasoning
The correct answer successfully bridges the strict logical gap between the first premise and the conclusion while avoiding the decoy premise about large language models. The argument's core premise is GSU -> G (Genuine Semantic Understanding requires Grounding symbols). The conclusion asserts ~CR -> ~GSU (Lack of Causal Reasoning guarantees lack of Genuine Semantic Understanding). To validate this conclusion, we must establish that ~CR guarantees ~G. The contrapositive of this required assumption is G -> CR (Grounding symbols requires Causal Reasoning). The fill-in-the-blank sentence is structured as 'G only if CR', exactly mirroring this required sufficient assumption. Using the exact text terms yields 'symbols', 'causal', and 'reasoning'.
Step-by-Step Solution
Key Concept
Formal deduction involving contrapositives and the circumvention of decoy premises in conditional logic chains.
Estimated Time:2m 30s