2025/06/03 by Shao, Jintian, Cheng, Yiming · 2 citations
#Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) #Computation and Language (cs.CL) #FOS: Computer and information sciences
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2506.02878
Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting has demonstrably enhanced the performance of Large Language Models on tasks requiring multi-step inference. This success has led to widespread claims of emergent reasoning capabilities in these models. In this paper, we present a theoretical counter-perspective: Chain-of-Thought (CoT) does not elicit genuine, abstract reasoning. Instead, we argue that Chain-of-Thought functions as a powerful structural constraint that guides Large Language Models to imitate the form of reasoning. By forcing the generation of intermediate steps, Chain-of-Thought leverages the model immense capacity for sequence prediction and pattern matching, effectively constraining its output to sequences that resemble coherent thought processes. Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting has demonstrably enhanced the performance of Large Language Models on tasks requiring multi-step inference. This success has led to widespread claims of emergent reasoning capabilities in these models. In this paper, we present a theoretical counter-perspective: Chain-of-Thought (CoT) does not elicit genuine, abstract reasoning. Instead, we argue that Chain-of-Thought functions as a powerful structural constraint that guides Large Language Models to imitate the form of reasoning. By forcing the generation of intermediate steps, Chain-of-Thought leverages the model immense capacity for sequence prediction and pattern matching, effectively constraining its output to sequences that resemble coherent thought processes.