As in political debate, the commentaries in this issue mostly tend towards the two ends of a similar spectrum: ‘one true path’ versus ‘anything goes’. We hope to persuade swing voters of a more moderate position: ‘diversity without chaos’. Spivey and Anderson (this issue) provide an excellent illustration of our claim that a belief in ontologically privileged descriptions leads to both epiphenomenalism and to thinly disguised contempt. In a contemporary variation on ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’ (Orwell 1946), they state: