cs.AIMar 23, 2026

The Presupposition Problem in Representation Genesis

Authors: Yiling Wu

Organizations: BridgeM, Inc. · Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts Amherst

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Abstract

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.

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