 Underlying both logical and ethical aspects of Anderson’s thought is the identification of systematic confusions and errors in philosophical thought. One persistent confusion is the misidentification of relations as qualities. Most commonly, being in some relation is thought to constitute the “nature” of some special status entity. But whereas a term together with a quality is a complete unit just as it stands, a term and a relation is simply incomplete without a second term. Anderson applied this thesis widely: there are no such things whose nature it is to be known or perceived (“ideas”); there is no such thing whose nature it is to know (“consciousness”); there are no such things whose nature it is to be pursued or whose nature it is to direct action (“values” conceived as standing over and above the goods and values of this life). Relations are often more evident to us than the underlying qualities of the things related and so relational explanations suggest themselves to us quite naturally. On the other hand, significant intellectual effort is required in any given field to understand the illusory nature of such explanations and the manner in which they obstruct the identification and assertion of real issues.