What Do Large Language Models Know? Tacit Knowledge as a Potential Causal-Explanatory Structure

Céline Budding

doi:10.1017/psa.2025.19

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arXiv · 2504.12187

What Do Large Language Models Know? Tacit Knowledge as a Potential Causal-Explanatory Structure

Céline Budding

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Abstract

It is sometimes assumed that Large Language Models (LLMs) know language, or for example that they know that Paris is the capital of France. But what -- if anything -- do LLMs actually know? In this paper, I argue that LLMs can acquire tacit knowledge as defined by Martin Davies (1990). Whereas Davies himself denies that neural networks can acquire tacit knowledge, I demonstrate that certain architectural features of LLMs satisfy the constraints of semantic description, syntactic structure, and causal systematicity. Thus, tacit knowledge may serve as a conceptual framework for describing, explaining, and intervening on LLMs and their behavior.

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Céline Budding. 2025-04-16. What Do Large Language Models Know? Tacit Knowledge as a Potential Causal-Explanatory Structure. https://doi.org/10.1017/psa.2025.19

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