This feels too strong IMO.

Just focusing on the outputs we can observe, LLMs clearly seem to be able to "think" correctly on some small problems that feel generalized from examples its been trained on (as opposed to pure regurgitation).

Objecting to this on some kind of philosophical grounds of "being able to generalize from existing patterns isn't the same as thinking" feels like a distinction without a difference. If LLMs were better at solving complex problems I would absolutely describe what they're doing as "thinking". They just aren't, in practice.