Can humans think and reason? A divinely inspired response to the problem of animal rationality

This chapter focuses on the lingualist argument against animal rationality, championed by both Donald Davidson and Wilfrid Sellars. The argument claims that animals can neither think nor reason because they don’t have language, a necessary requirement for these capacities. It is countered that the argument is vitiated by an anthropocentric conception of rationality: paradigmatic thought and reason is presumed to be human thought and reason. The problematic nature of this anthropocentrism is made vivid by way of a “parity of reason” counter, one which invokes a theocentric conception of rationality. Just suppose the anthropocentric lingualist argument against animal rationality is a good argument. By parity of reason, an “equivalent” theocentric argument against human thought and reason should be equally good. But no such argument could possibly be a good argument: it is obvious that humans can and do think and reason. Thus (by modus tollens) the anthropocentric argument against animal rationality is not a good argument. Viewed alongside the diverse and seemingly disparate insights of David Hume, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Donald Davidson, and Wojciech P. Grygiel, it's reasonable to suppose that animals can indeed think and reason, no less so than humans; they just think and reason differently than humans do.