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from genuinely problematic areas of experience, and in putting em–
phasis on procedures which not only can not deal successfully with these
problems but even actively interfere with those which can.
The difference between the actual effects and
logical
consequences of
anti-naturalism deserves more attention and emphasis than it has been
given in this whole discussion. It is perfectly possible, as a matter of
psychological and social fact, to support democracy on the basis of
religious or metaphysical conviction. The point is that these convictions
are themselves in error regardless of the political position which they
are used to bolster; and that this bolstering, whether of democracy or
fascism, is equally without justification. It is not always made perfectly
clear and sufficiently emphatic that the proper objection to non-natural–
ism is not that from non-naturalistic premises reactionary conclusions
are usually drawn. The objection is rather that the premises are false
and that the conclusions in any case do not follow from them.
Clarity on this point is itself politically important. It leads to a
recognition of the political futility of much ideological debate: the de–
monstration or refutation of a logical connection between a philosophical
premise and a political conclusion is far less important than the natural–
istic analysis of how and why the two positions are
in fact
used to sup–
port one another. (The social and psychological import of the presence
or aC., ence of logical connection must itself be analysed). And even more
serious, to confuse in any way social effect with logical consequence is
to court the dangers of attacking non-political doctrines when they are
given objectionable political implementation, rather than attacking this
implementation itself. Naturalism is not to be accepted because fascists
have not found it congenial; nor non-naturalism rejected because they
have.
The other essays in the first group differentiate, though not very
precisely, between naturalism and materialism, and emphasize the natur–
alists' opposition to the reductionism which analyses various elements of
experience as "nothing but" something else, usually of lesser value or
lacking altogether in human import. In several places such reductionism
is ascribed, by implication, to logical positivism-but without much
justification: Carnap's technical concept of 'reduction,' for instance, was
developed precisely to avoid the "nothing but" equivalences.
The essential characteristic of naturalism, as several of the papers
make clear, is its principle of "continuity of analysis"-that all ranges
of experience are susceptible to the same type of inquiry. (This is loosely
referred to in several of the papers as the "experimental method," a
designation which ignores the fact that in many sciences, for example
astronomy, experiment plays a very II'.inor role.) The naturalist rejects
dualism not so much in an existential as in a cognitive sense: there are
no special ways of "knowing" appropriate to special domains of experi–
ence. The second set of essays (though not grouped as such in the
