The existing methods for evaluating the inference abilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) have been predominantly results-centric, making it challenging to assess the inference process comprehensively. We introduce a novel approach using the Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus (ARC) benchmark to evaluate the inference and contextual understanding abilities of LLMs in a process-centric manner, focusing on three key components from the Language of Thought Hypothesis (LoTH): Logical Coherence, Compositionality, and Productivity. Our carefully designed experiments reveal that while LLMs demonstrate some inference capabilities, they still significantly lag behind human-level reasoning in these three aspects. The main contribution of this article lies in introducing the LoTH perspective, which provides a method for evaluating the reasoning process that conventional results-oriented approaches fail to capture, thereby offering new insights into the development of human-level reasoning in artificial intelligence systems.

The task of assigning internationally accepted commodity codes (aka HS codes) to traded goods is a critical function of customs offices. Like court decisions made by judges, this task follows the doctrine of precedent and can be nontrivial even for experienced officers. Together with the Korea Customs Service (KCS), we propose a first-ever explainable decision supporting model that suggests the most likely subheadings (i.e., the first six digits) of the HS code. The model also provides reasoning for its suggestion in the form of a document that is interpretable by customs officers. We evaluated the model using 5,000 cases that recently received a classification request. The results showed that the top-3 suggestions made by our model had an accuracy of 93.9% when classifying 925 challenging subheadings. A user study with 32 customs experts further confirmed that our algorithmic suggestions accompanied by explainable reasonings, can substantially reduce the time and effort taken by customs officers for classification reviews.