IBut is it abhorrent or is that just the way you currently look at things from a fairly privileged position? — Apokrisis

You tell me. Is the protection of the poor based on a reasoned analysis of the comparative value of individual lives?

I am baffled by your bafflement. The discussion was about the ethics of treating humans better than animals. You came back with a reason for treating humans better than animals that had nothing to do with ethics.

The discussion was about the ethics of treating humans better than animals. — andrewk

I think that's only part of it. The part that I was discussing was darthbarracuda's claim that it's inconsistent to argue against homophobia, sexism, and racism, but not "speciesism". But as I said earlier, you can't go from "all humans ought be treated equally" to "all things which can suffer ought be treated equally". It may very well be that non-human animals ought be treated as equal to humans, but you can't get to this simply by arguing that blacks, whites, men, women, heterosexuals, and homosexuals ought be treated equally.

Also, what you say above seems a little misleading. It's not quite as simple as arguing that humans deserve better treatment than animals; it starts simply as the claim that humans deserve this kind of ethical treatment, for whatever reason that is (e.g. we're intelligent). Such a claim doesn't prima facie say that non-human animals don't deserve this kind of ethical treatment. It's just that the reason we have for giving humans this kind of ethical treatment doesn't apply in the case of non-human animals. That's not to say that there isn't some other reason to give them this, of course. Intelligence, in this case, is a sufficient reason but not necessarily a necessary one.

So we might all accept that our level of intelligence is a sufficient reason to consider us deserving of special ethical treatment. But if one wants to argue that there are other sufficient reasons – i.e. ones that apply to non-human animals – then such an argument needs to be given. Absent any such argument, there is no reason to accept that non-human animals deserve the same kind of ethical treatment as us. We can't assume that they do and demand that others prove a negative. That would be to shift the burden of proof.

You came back with a reason for treating humans better than animals that had nothing to do with ethics. — andrewk

What kind of reason would count as an ethical reason? Is darthbarracuda's claim that animals can suffer an ethical reason? What makes a capacity to suffer (or whatever) an ethical reason but not a biological and cultural likeness to oneself?

I think that you ought not casually and opportunistically use other free agents just because you can, because that's not what heroes do, that's what villains do. Not just here, not just there, but everywhere.

I think that you ought not casually and opportunistically use other free agents just because you can, because that's not what heroes do, that's what villains do. — Wosret

What makes a hero a hero (or more pertinently, a villain a villain)? If you say that villains are villains because they "casually and opportunistically use other free agents just because [they] can" and heroes don't then your reasoning is circular.

I wasn't defining what a hero nor villain is. Point one out.

I wasn't defining what a hero nor villain is. — Wosret

I know, which is why I asked you what makes a hero a hero and a villain a villain. I was then just pre-empting a possible response.

You serious don't know? You can't tell the difference? At a convenient time like this, and probably others I'm sure the difference seems vague, but you know that it isn't.

Having anti-heroes, troubled heroes, heroes with vices, or that are "just human" just show that all fall short of the goal, but that doesn't mean that there isn't one. Don't pretend that there's no such thing as better or worse, good and evil.

You serious don't know? You can't tell the difference? At a convenient time like this, and probably others I'm sure the difference seems vague, but you know that it isn't. — Wosret

I want you to explain the difference so that I can examine your claim that "you ought not casually and opportunistically use other free agents just because you can, because that's not what heroes do, that's what villains do."

As I already pointed out, one such explanation is that villains are villains because they "casually and opportunistically use other free agents just because [they] can" and heroes are heroes because they don't, but then your claim is circular.

But if villains are villains for some other unrelated reason then your claim is the claim that one ought not casually and opportunistically use other free agents just because you can because people who do terrible thing X [the thing that makes a person a villain] are the only people who casually and opportunistically use other free agents just because they can, but then your claim is a non sequitur. That only terrible people do X does not necessarily entail that X is terrible.

Having anti-heroes, strubbled heroes, heroes with vices, or that are "just human" just show that all fall short of the goal, but that doesn't mean that there isn't one. Don't pretend that there's not such thing as better or worse, good and evil. — Wosret

I don't know where this has come from.

I talk about how things actually are. You talk about what you wish them to be. — apokrisis

Well this thread was about the latter. You seem to persistently be trying to use the former to argue against it.

Your continuing objection to darthbarracuda's claim that "speciesism is wrong" seems to basically be "no, because the definition of morality is what a group considers right/wrong and currently most people don't consider speciesism wrong so you're wrong by definition".

Thanks for your post. It contains a number of substantive points and I'll try to address them as best I can.

Do I think it's inconsistent to argue against racism etc but not against speciesism? Not necessarily. It depends on the reason given. Usually the reasons given are inconsistent. If somebody argues against racism because we should treat all humans equally then the question arises 'what about non-humans?' The answer to that can range from Descartes' answer that they merit no consideration whatsoever, to Gary Francione's 'animal abolitionist' answer that it is never acceptable to use animals any way, even when they don't seem to mind being used. Francione is so far along the spectrum that he seems to regard Peter Singer as pretty close to a battery poultry farm operator.

Some religions proclaim that humans merit special consideration, in fact so much so that a single-cell fertilised human ovum is accorded greater consideration than a chimpanzee or other advanced non-human mammal that clearly has personality, preferences and an sophisticated ability to communicate. The justification given is 'God says so'. I find nothing inconsistent in that. It's just that I don't believe God (if there is one) does say so, so I respectfully disagree with the holders of such beliefs.

Bernard Williams' ethical perspective, elucidated in a thought experiment involving super-advanced aliens taking over the Earth, is that it is ethically defensible for humans to favour members of the human species because it isour species. Such an approach may or may not be inconsistent depending on the approach taken. It depends on the response to the question 'Why is it OK to favour animals of the same species as you over other species, but not OK to favour animals that have the same species and ancestral homeland over animals that have the same species but a different ancestral homeland?' An answer which avoids inconsistency, at the cost of embracing arbitrariness, is 'Because in my ethical framework, species is all that matters in determining the circle of concern'. Bernard Williams was happy to (in fact often seemed to relish) taking on defiantly arbitrary-seeming positions like that, and his position is unassailable. But most people are not comfortable withthat position. I think most people would instead try to argue that the level of concern 'owed' to others drops off gradually with distance, rather than dropping from everything to nothing at the border of a species. That's fine, but it does have the uncomfortable consequence that, since people of African ancestry and people of Northern European ancestry are less closely related to those in the other group than to those in their own group, it ethically justifies a small, but perhaps measurable, discrimination by a member of one of those groups against members of the other. Most people are not comfortable with that. I know I'm not.

Another possible argument is that what matters is things like awareness, ability to communicate or being able to think about other people's thoughts. That would be fine if people really believed it, but my impression is that they don't. A newborn baby scores much lower on those considerations than do most mature members of the higher mammal species, yet most humans would accord greater consideration to a baby than to an adult chimpanzee.

It seems to me that, to avoid inconsistency, an argument for giving all humans greater consideration than all animals either has to just declare as axiom that species is what matters (or some other arbitrary factor, like 'potential personhood', which is an issue sometimes raised by religious people that feel embarrassed to explain their human-preference just by 'God said so'), whether for religious reasons or out of feisty Williamsesque defiance, or accept that the approach implies lesser consideration for humans with whom we share fewer ancestors. But that may just be my lack of imagination about the types of arguments that can be offered. I'd certainly be interested to hear of possible alternatives.

You also asked 'what counts as an ethical reason? Well that's a huge question, and I think many different types of answers would be offered by different people. I suspect that 'ethics' may be one of those concepts that can only be characterised by Wittgenstein's 'family resemblance', eluding attempts to agree a generally accepted definition. But one thing that I think most people would agree on is that ethical decisions form only a small part of all the decisions we make. So any attempt to characterise ethical considerations that includes considerations that would drive a majority of decisions would fail to meet most people's idea of what ethics is.

I think that Πετροκότσυφας's suggestion of 'a practical organising of our relations' would fail on that score. Such a phrase encompasses making allocations in a Christmas Kringle, making introductions at a cocktail party, writing emails, letters and forum posts, applying for jobs... In fact nearly all the things we do seem to fall under that heading, leaving aside only those items that involve only one person - playing patience or working on a maths problem perhaps.

Of course there's never any point in arguing over definitions. If somebody wants to adopt a definition of ethics that includes deciding who to get to run the anchor leg in the 4 x 100m relay, I wish them joy of it. But their idea of ethics will be so far removed from mine (and I believe also from that of most other people) that it would be pointless to attempt to discuss any purportedly ethical issue with them.

For me, and this may be just me, the domain of ethics seems to be delineated by the simple consideration that it is about making decisions that I expect to have an impact on the feelings of other beings that I believe to be sentient.

Your continuing objection to darthbarracuda's claim that "speciesism is wrong" seems to basically be "no, because the definition of morality is what a group considers right/wrong and currently most people don't consider speciesism wrong so you're wrong by definition". — zookeeper

In fact I said DC was wrong in claiming that human suffering and animal suffering ought to be presumed to be equal as we have good reason to believe that animals don't suffer from existential dread, for instance.

And then morality in general has no transcendent or Platonic basis. It is simply the wisdom by which human societies live. So it could only be a group thing.

And being naturalistic in that fashion, it would be no surprise if morality evolves in step with lifestyle evolution. So what we do currently, or previously, can be examined in terms of why it worked - and by definition it has worked because here we are. However we are free to make a new kind of sense of the world, as encoded by our new moral codes.

But then, the anthropological examination of what has worked does throw up general and obvious "rules" - such as the ones that establish trade-offs between competitive and cooperative behaviours in any social group.

It seems to me that, to avoid inconsistency, an argument for giving all humans greater consideration than all animals either has to just declare as axiom that species is what matters (or some other arbitrary factor, like 'potential personhood', which is an issue sometimes raised by religious people that feel embarrassed to explain their human-preference just by 'God said so'), whether for religious reasons or out of feisty Williamsesque defiance, or accept that the approach implies lesser consideration for humans with whom we share fewer ancestors. But that may just be my lack of imagination about the types of arguments that can be offered. I'd certainly be interested to hear of possible alternatives. — andrewk

Again, I don't think it's as simple as "humans deserve greater consideration than all animals". I think it's more a case of "humans deserve special consideration because of X", where X is something that non-human animals don't have. It doesn't follow from this that non-human animals don't deserve special consideration (as that would be to deny the antecedent), but neither can we assume that non-human animals do deserve special consideration. So, with only this in mind, there's nothing inconsistent in giving humans special consideration but not non-human animals.

Compare with "I deserve a cake because I did my homework". It doesn't follow from this that my brother doesn't deserve a cake because he didn't do his homework, but neither can we assume that he does deserve a cake. So, with only this in mind, there's nothing inconsistent in giving me a cake but not my brother.

It might be that instead my brother did his chores, and so does deserve a cake. And so it might be that non-human animals have something else (e.g. a capacity to suffer), and so deserve special treatment. But then these are additional claims that need to be supported, and are not entailed by the original claims regarding humans deserving special consideration and me deserving a cake.

So when we say "all humans ought be treated equally" we don't need to say anything about non-human animals. The question about non-humans might arise as a matter of interest, but that's all. It's not inconsistent to say that all humans ought be treated as equal but that we have no reason to believe that non-human animals ought be treated as equal to humans (unless the reason all humans ought be treated equally also applies to non-human animals).

You tell me. Is the protection of the poor based on a reasoned analysis of the comparative value of individual lives? — Wayfarer

You switched your example for some reason. But I'm not seeing a problem with coming up with rational arguments for why human societies ought to protect their poor.

Why can't the good be unattainable? Why must we be able to attain the good? Why must the good be constrained to be compatible with our own limitations? — darthbarracuda

What is this "good" that you keep harking on about? I'm sure you must have a clear definition of it as you talk about it so much. But what is it in terms of the real world?

For me, and this may be just me, the domain of ethics seems to be delineated by the simple consideration that it is about making decisions that I expect to have an impact on the feelings of other beings that I believe to be sentient. — andrewk

And so if there are degrees of sentience, then there can be degrees of impact?

I'm not seeing a problem with coming up with rational arguments for why human societies ought to protect their poor. — Apokrisis

I don't think there is a natural warrant for it. It seems natural to us, but it is a cultural standard, ultimately grounded in Christian ethical theory.

we have good reason to believe that animals don't suffer from existential dread, for instance.

And then morality in general has no transcendent or Platonic basis. It is simply the wisdom by which human societies live. So it could only be a group thing.

And being naturalistic in that fashion, it would be no surprise if morality evolves in step with lifestyle evolution. — Apokrisis

Right - there's the rub. Humans are differentiated by 'existential dread' - which is precisely a consequence of self-awareness and the sense of separateness from nature that humans have but that animals do not. Much of what goes under the name 'philosophy' comes from the contemplation of the source of that dread - 'who am I? What is the meaning of it all?' But then, you say, that it is something that can by understood in evolutionist terms. See the sleight of hand there?

Philosophers and humanists are interested in what has been called, in 20th-century continental philosophy, the human condition, that is, a sense of uneasiness that human beings may feel about their own existence and the reality that confronts them (as in the case of modernity with all its changes in the proximate environment of humans and corresponding changes in their modes of existence). Scientists are more interested in human nature. If they discover that human nature doesn’t exist and human beings are, like cells, merely parts of a bigger aggregate, to whose survival they contribute, and all they feel and think is just a matter of illusion (a sort of Matrix scenario), then, as far as science is concerned, that’s it, and science should go on investigating humans by considering this new fact about their nature.

Gloria Origgi, The Humanities are not your Enemy! A reply to Steven Pinker

What I'm saying is that your pragmatic naturalism is very good - as far as it goes. But it doesn't serve as the basis for a moral code. Given a moral code, a pragmatic approach may well be best, but that code can't necessarily be derived from or justified on the basis of naturalism.

Yes, that's an important part of my position.

What is this "good" that you keep harking on about? I'm sure you must have a clear definition of it as you talk about it so much. But what is it in terms of the real world? — apokrisis

The good is sentient welfare, as viewed through the eyes of sentients themselves.

Why do you care about the feelings of others though? — Πετροκότσυφας

It's hard to know how to answer questions like that. 'Why' questions are so hard to pin down and determine exactly what would constitute a satisfactory response. Why does one care about anything? Caring is an emotion and in my view emotions are fundamental - the starting point for all mental activity. I reject most 'ism' and 'ist' labels but meta-ethically I'm pretty comfortable about accepting the label 'Emotivist'.

If I move on to ask 'How did I come to have such emotions?' I think I'd conclude it's a combination of genes and upbringing - probably more the former than the latter. Some people make evolutionary-based arguments about why a strong sense of empathy can be a genetic advantage for a species, and they sound plausible to me. But I wouldn't be fazed if they were supplanted by some other more-plausible explanation that I have not encountered before.

In fact I said DC was wrong in claiming that human suffering and animal suffering ought to be presumed to be equal as we have good reason to believe that animals don't suffer from existential dread, for instance. — apokrisis

That doesn't make the claim wrong. Obviously when someone says that "human suffering and animal suffering are equal" they're not claiming that the forms of suffering that animals can experience are the exact same ones as the ones humans can (or vice versa), but that one unit of suffering is intrinsically just as bad regardless of what kind of being experiences it.

Are you seriously claiming that you thought that DC's claim that "human and animal suffering ought to be presumed to be equal" was meant in such a way that "animals don't suffer from existential dread so no they're not equal" is a valid logical counterargument?

And then morality in general has no transcendent or Platonic basis. It is simply the wisdom by which human societies live. So it could only be a group thing.

And being naturalistic in that fashion, it would be no surprise if morality evolves in step with lifestyle evolution. So what we do currently, or previously, can be examined in terms of why it worked - and by definition it has worked because here we are. However we are free to make a new kind of sense of the world, as encoded by our new moral codes.

But then, the anthropological examination of what has worked does throw up general and obvious "rules" - such as the ones that establish trade-offs between competitive and cooperative behaviours in any social group. — apokrisis

I don't know why you're writing a description of morality to me. I just pointed out that you're trying to argue against a prescriptive ethical claim by using descriptive claims about definitions of morality.

My best guess would have to be that you think prescriptive claims are inherently nonsensical, useless or something along those lines, and that's why you insist on treating them as descriptive claims. Is that right at all, or even close?

when we say "all humans ought be treated equally" we don't need to say anything about non-human animals. — Michael

Agreed, it doesn't necessarily have any implications for non-human animals. It depends on what reason is given for why humans should be treated equally to one another.

If the reason is an axiomatic declaration that humans must be treated as superior to all other life forms but equal to one another, then there is no discussion to have. One either accepts the axiom or one doesn't. I don't.

Often this is sidestepped by instead making the axiom 'All beings that have property X deserve greater consideration than beings that lack it, and equal consideration to each other'. That then leads to an inquiry as to 'why property X? What's so special about that?' If the primacy of property X is eventually just asserted as axiom, the discussion can make no further progress. This strategy also faces the difficulty of explaining whether humans that lack property X deserve equal consideration, and if so why.

The reason that I see most commonly though is of the 'If you prick us, do we not bleed' variety - the argument from sentience. If one is going to argue for equality on the grounds of sentience, one either needs to take Descartes' approach of denying sentience in non-human animals, or else deal with the question of what that concern for sentient beings implies for the treatment of non-human animals.

Yes, that's an important part of my position. — andrewk

Great. Then we agree and it is the qualification that DC [Darthbarracuda] has been denying.

Sorry, I've only dipped in and out of this thread, which is now nine pages long on my computer, so no doubt I've missed many of the posts and the contributors. Who is DC?

I don't think there is a natural warrant for it. It seems natural to us, but it is a cultural standard, ultimately grounded in Christian ethical theory. — Wayfarer

It is natural behaviour in the sense that the group benefits from all its members having equal opportunity. That maximises the group's degrees of freedom. All individuals start on the same level when it comes to being able to pursue the group's goals and so the role of historical contingencies - such as a family history of poverty or wealth - is minimised.

In other words, social democracy and its call for level playing fields makes obvious good sense even in an economic growth situation. It maximises the group potential for creativity and adaptivity.

So the rationale for Christian social behaviour is quite naturalistic - the reason it endures. It is only the claimed ontological basis that appeals to supernatural forces. And who believes in God anymore? (Not Anglicans.)

However the trick that organised religion pulled was to convince enough people that there were beliefs and powers that transcended their existing social structure. There was one God who ruled over all kings and tyrants. So getting people to act in the name of rational abstractions required religion as a stepping stone.

So yes. You can say Christian moral philosophy identified the smart way to organise human societies once they started building cities and building up trading networks. But that came out of an identification of rational social principles, not because of what God had to say about "Christian feelings".

Right - there's the rub. Humans are differentiated by 'existential dread' - which is precisely a consequence of self-awareness and the sense of separateness from nature that humans have but that animals do not. Much of what goes under the name 'philosophy' comes from the contemplation of the source of that dread - 'who am I? What is the meaning of it all?' But then, you say, that it is something that can by understood in evolutionist terms. See the sleight of hand there? — Wayfarer

Well first let's dispose of the OP. And accepting that sentience has these sharp discontinuties as well as its underlying continuities is the start of beginning a sensible conversation on "specieism".

If you now want to discuss something else - morality as the wise habits of social organisation - then what I would say about existential dread is that sensible folk accept life for what it is and get on with making the most of it in rational fashion.

If you find yourself stuck in a loop asking "who am I?", you are not listening to the natural philosophy that says you are primarily an actor within a community. There isn't really "a you" that is distinct from the pattern of relations that is your social engagements. So "you" have the best hope of finding "yourself" by looking outwards to the world you are helping to co-create rather than inwards in search of some mysterious essence - a soul or will or anything else so disconnected from reality.

What I'm saying is that your pragmatic naturalism is very good - as far as it goes. But it doesn't serve as the basis for a moral code. Given a moral code, a pragmatic approach may well be best, but that code can't necessarily be derived from or justified on the basis of naturalism. — Wayfarer

Again, as I always have to keep saying, my naturalism is constraints-based. So it already says that we will only find broad limits shaping our personal actions. Thus morality is about constructing a hierarchy of constraint that runs from the broad and inescapable necessities (we need food, shelter, etc) to the very personal (I must get rich, get smart, get contented, etc).

So the point is to be able to fix the biological constraints at the correct distance from the other constraints, such as the cultural or the personal. I have never said biology ought to dictate anything. I only say it sets the scene in a basic way. And we need to understand what "it" wants of us if we are going to be able to fix those constraints at the right distance in terms of living our lives.

This hierarchically organised approach is in sharp contrast of course to regular moral thinking which wants to tie our actions to overly concrete abstractions. Things are good and bad in a black and white fashion. But a constraints-based approach is naturalistic because it only ever talks about fostering propensities to "do the right thing" and so tolerates exceptions, either accidental or deliberate, to a reasonable degree.

This is an evolutionary logic - and one that places positive value on individual competitiveness or local degrees of freedom. So I can choose to be vegan, or a Nazi, as my personal moral choice. On a small scale, as a local experiment, it is not particular immoral in terms of even cultural norms, let alone the much more distant naturalism of our biological history. It is only as veganism or Nazism becomes an organising idea - a constraint - at a larger social or biological scale that it starts to be judged by the forces of natural selection.

So if you are going to go the natural philosophy route, it is much more Pragmatic in this fashion. It is all about constructing an appropriately organised landscape across which our behaviour adapts. Like an onion, we have to be able to place biology at its best distance from our moment to moment decision making.

Darthbarracuda. So yes, I should have said DB. :)

Obviously when someone says that "human suffering and animal suffering are equal" they're not claiming that the forms of suffering that animals can experience are the exact same ones as the ones humans can (or vice versa), but that one unit of suffering is intrinsically just as bad regardless of what kind of being experiences it. — zookeeper

But it is this notion of "one unit of suffering" that is in question. It relies on the creaking philosophical apparatus of mind/body dualism.

Are you seriously claiming that you thought that DC's claim that "human and animal suffering ought to be presumed to be equal" was meant in such a way that "animals don't suffer from existential dread so no they're not equal" is a valid logical counterargument? — zookeeper

As I say, what I "seriously claim" is that DB's position relies on dualism and the treatment of suffering as quantifiable qualia. So I attack his position at its ontological roots.

But that is more about how he has argued in other threads. In this thread on specieism, it is the inability of his dualism to deal with obvious psychological discontinuities between speechless animals and language using humans that has been the particular focus.

My best guess would have to be that you think prescriptive claims are inherently nonsensical, useless or something along those lines, and that's why you insist on treating them as descriptive claims. Is that right at all, or even close? — zookeeper

Has it been a secret that of course I take prescriptive claims (based on transcendent ontologies) to lack any good basis?

But at the same time - as I don't want to be misunderstood now as just a moral relativist - I have argued that naturalism supplies its own natural prescriptions. For systems to exist (for any length of time), they must be capable of persisting - dynamically reconstructing the conditions of their own being. And to do that means being ruled by some dynamical optimisation principle - like the social systems imperative of balancing local competition and global co-operation.

So naturalism is going to talk prescriptively about what has to be the case when it comes to anything even being the case. And that starts with the impossibility of even talking about morality in the absence of a social system that works well enough to last long enough for its moral organisation to be a topic worthy of mention.

So naturalism is going to talk prescriptively about what has to be the case when it comes to anything even being the case. And that starts with the impossibility of even talking about morality in the absence of a social system that works well enough to last long enough for its moral organisation to be a topic worthy of mention. — apokrisis

In order for there to be survival, there does not just have to be conservation of what has worked, but outliers that lead to a better survival equilibrium and thus become the new survival equilibrium for the group.

Thanks for repeating what I said.

It is fundamental to organicism that history only acts as a (historical) constraint and so spontaneity or degrees of freedom are required to allow actual adaptation to the future.

It is a familiar problem with Darwinism that natural selection - as understood mechanistically - can only remove variety. This is the problem that a constraints-based view of systems overcomes as it says natural variety can in fact only be constrained, not eliminated. So now the production of variety becomes a non-problem as ontically it is always going to be generated. Natural selection is always going to have variety to work on.

And it is this organic principle that I have elevated to the level of morality or models of fruitful social organisation.

Freewill, for example, is our ability to produce various arguments and various action choices due to the focusing constraints of our socialisation. Society gives us a social framework of ideas that can impinge on our rather unpredictable individual journeys through life.

We always know just where we are in regard to social norms and so can negotiate what looks to be the most fruitful personal responses in terms of that dynamical balance we have to strike between the good of the self and the good of the group (in whatever extended sense the notion of group-hood happens to be in play in our culture at a particular place and time).

So yes. In arguing for naturalism - natural philosophy, the systems perspective - I am arguing for organicism against mechanicalism, as well as for immanence against transcendence. We thus agree that history is not prescriptive - a desire to eliminate variety - but serves simply as a constraint on the continuing production of variety.

But my point refutes what you seem to be saying in regards to the idea that new ideas of morals cannot work if it is not something in the repertoire of what worked before. Perhaps it is an idea so new that it has not been tested to see if it works out for the group. Or perhaps it is not so much a new idea as much as a variation of an old idea that has not really been looked at. This has happened with ideas in the past.. They were forgotten until they became useful.. So you seem to only give credit to something AFTER it has become the dominant theme, but refute it when it is just starting out, thus making it a circular argument because even current trends started out somewhere.