>Words mean what we do with them -- you need to be here in the world with us, to understand what we mean
This is like saying "humans can't fly because flight requires flapping wings under your own power". Sure, its true given the definition this statement is employing, but so what? Nothing of substance is learned by definition. We certainly are not learning about any fundamental limitations of humans from such a definition. Similarly, defining understanding language as "the association of symbols with things/behaviors in the world" demonstrates nothing of substance about the limits of language models.
But beyond that, its clear to me the definition itself is highly questionable. There are many fields where the vast majority of uses of language do not directly correspond with things or behaviors in the world. Pure math is an obvious example. The understanding of pure math is a purely abstract enterprise, one constituted by relationships between other abstractions, bottoming out at arbitrary placeholders (e.g. the number one is an arbitrary placeholder situated in a larger arithmetical structure). By your definition, a language model without any contact with the world can understand purely abstract systems as well as any human. But this just implies there's something to understanding beyond merely associations of symbols with things/behaviors in the physical world.
This is like saying "humans can't fly because flight requires flapping wings under your own power". Sure, its true given the definition this statement is employing, but so what? Nothing of substance is learned by definition. We certainly are not learning about any fundamental limitations of humans from such a definition. Similarly, defining understanding language as "the association of symbols with things/behaviors in the world" demonstrates nothing of substance about the limits of language models.
But beyond that, its clear to me the definition itself is highly questionable. There are many fields where the vast majority of uses of language do not directly correspond with things or behaviors in the world. Pure math is an obvious example. The understanding of pure math is a purely abstract enterprise, one constituted by relationships between other abstractions, bottoming out at arbitrary placeholders (e.g. the number one is an arbitrary placeholder situated in a larger arithmetical structure). By your definition, a language model without any contact with the world can understand purely abstract systems as well as any human. But this just implies there's something to understanding beyond merely associations of symbols with things/behaviors in the physical world.