 The emphasis of Anderson’s realism is upon independence, directed particularly at the notion of constitutive relations (which he takes to be the central error of idealism), but also employed in qualifying reductivist and instrumentalist forms of scientific explanation. His position is that although whatever exists has relations and is conditioned, it is nonetheless a specific existing thing with qualities of its own. It is the aim of critical inquiry in any given field to identify relevant qualities and characteristics and to state the issue in the form of objective and communicable truth. Whatever our interests draw our attention to, the truth of the matter is independent of our consideration. Whatever innovative and imaginative uses we make of particular things, those uses are available to us because of existing properties in the things themselves. For Anderson, two aspects of philosophical speculation have been linked throughout the history of the subject, and his own thought can be considered as a single system with these complementary aspects: the logical and the ethical.