The Lives of Animals

“I agree. It works. Still, isn’t there a position outside from which our doing our thinking and then sending out a Mars probe looks a lot like a squirrel doing its thinking and then dashing out and snatching a nut? Isn’t that perhaps what she meant?” “But there isn’t any such position! I know it sounds old-fashioned, but I have to say it. There is no position outside of reason where you can stand and lecture about reason and pass judgment on reason.” “Except the position of someone who has withdrawn from reason.” “That’s just French irrationalism, the sort of thing a person would say who has never set foot inside a mental institution and seen what people look like who have really withdrawn from reason.” “Then except for God.” “Not if God is a God of reason. A God of reason cannot stand outside reason.”