Note 49

Naturalism is the reductionism of moral categories to natural categories. This is absurd, categories are not reducible to another, for if it were, it is not a category. Categories are the terms which define the frames in which they are understood, which cannot be re-framed into another, because they cannot be said.

Gardner argues that the analytic philosophy is naturalistic, and that it denies the reality of moral and spiritual categories, hence is fundamentally irreconcilable with Hegel. This is incorrect. There is no reality of categories. This conflates reality with meaningfulness. Verificationists deny the meaningfulness of these categories because they cannot be parsed in terms of empirically verifiable statements. But that is not to say that they are not real. In fact the naturalistic philosophy would have to deny abstract reality, as it is meaningless in that sense.