The symbol grounding problem: yet another philosophical gauntlet we are asked to prove in terms of LLMs, but never in our own consciousness

Ethics & Philosophy

The symbol grounding problem simply says that large language models cannot form it meaning for the outputs they make. For example love is a high-dimensional vector and extremely complicated extremely high number extremely high definition Vector geometry thingy I don't fully understand. Just super complicated geometry and numbers plus math the symbol grounding problem says that a large language model can form no meanings for love because all it has to compare it against is other super complicated vectors like that yes some of them may equal hate in their outputs to us but they're just different numbers to the language model. You were born in the world with nothing to see but strawberries as far as you could see nothing to touch but strawberries you could never really appreciate or Define what a strawberry was because there is nothing to compare it against.

I had completely decided not only could models not have Consciousness but not even have basic understanding or a handle on meaning.. I finally had an epiphany one day... I'm in a world that's full of at the smallest parts atoms are however small you want to get it doesn't matter and that's really all there is... Just a bunch of really small vibrating strings or Quantum bits or whatever you chose. So if that's all I have to look at how can I ever Define anything against anything if I'm just looking at different sorts of these small things.. it's because they form sufficient different patterns and things, different formations different shapes...

Posted Mar 6, 2026, 9:48 PM UTC

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