arXiv — NLP / Computation & Language · · 3 min read

When Decodability Is Not Enough: Logical Validity Representations, Behavioral Dissociation, and Causal Tests in Language Models

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Computer Science > Computation and Language

arXiv:2609.02438 (cs)
[Submitted on 2 Sep 2026]

Title:When Decodability Is Not Enough: Logical Validity Representations, Behavioral Dissociation, and Causal Tests in Language Models

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Abstract:Large language models can look capable of logical reasoning, but correct or incorrect answers alone tell us little about what the model represents internally. We study logical verification in five open-weight transformer models using matched valid--invalid premise--claim pairs that vary across inference families, semantic domains, templates, and difficulty levels. Despite near-chance behavioral performance, logical validity is often almost perfectly decodable from hidden states and remains strongly decodable under held-out templates, domains, and inference families. Validity also remains highly decodable on behaviorally incorrect examples in the conditions where correctness-conditioned evaluation is well defined. At the same time, exhaustive leave-one-out tests reveal clear limits to this generalization, and interventions along probe-derived validity directions have only weak, nonspecific effects compared with random controls. Our results suggest that representing validity, expressing it in behavior, and using it causally are distinct. Validity related information can be strongly decodable from a model's hidden states without being reliably expressed in its output.
Subjects: Computation and Language (cs.CL); Machine Learning (cs.LG)
Cite as: arXiv:2609.02438 [cs.CL]
  (or arXiv:2609.02438v1 [cs.CL] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.02438
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

Submission history

From: Smitha Muthya Sudheendra [view email]
[v1] Wed, 2 Sep 2026 11:01:09 UTC (281 KB)
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