  How does language inform our downstream thinking? In particular, how do
humans make meaning from language--and how can we leverage a theory of
linguistic meaning to build machines that think in more human-like ways? In
this paper, we propose rational meaning construction, a computational framework
for language-informed thinking that combines neural language models with
probabilistic models for rational inference. We frame linguistic meaning as a
context-sensitive mapping from natural language into a probabilistic language
of thought (PLoT)--a general-purpose symbolic substrate for generative world
modeling. Our architecture integrates two computational tools that have not
previously come together: we model thinking with probabilistic programs, an
expressive representation for commonsense reasoning; and we model meaning
construction with large language models (LLMs), which support broad-coverage
translation from natural language utterances to code expressions in a
probabilistic programming language. We illustrate our framework through
examples covering four core domains from cognitive science: probabilistic
reasoning, logical and relational reasoning, visual and physical reasoning, and
social reasoning. In each, we show that LLMs can generate context-sensitive
translations that capture pragmatically-appropriate linguistic meanings, while
Bayesian inference with the generated programs supports coherent and robust
commonsense reasoning. We extend our framework to integrate
cognitively-motivated symbolic modules (physics simulators, graphics engines,
and planning algorithms) to provide a unified commonsense thinking interface
from language. Finally, we explore how language can drive the construction of
world models themselves. We hope this work will provide a roadmap towards
cognitive models and AI systems that synthesize the insights of both modern and
classical computational perspectives.
