We do not yet have all the instruments needed to judge the fantastic collection of doxastic values and disvalues spawned by moralists and ethical pluralists. Moreover, to develop a new normative doctrine (albeit a denominational one in our case), starting from this collection and removing what one does not like is not the right procedure, because traditional ethics may not only have some disvalues in store, it may be that there are one or more perfective, ultimate values it even does not have in store at all. We could never ascertain the existence of such values by removing a number of traditional values, by subsuming them under more general ones, or by reinterpreting them. Nonetheless, it is worthwhile as an exercise of the mind to sift the traditional values in the ethical profile so as to find out which ones cannot go thru in any case, either because they are not values or because they are not perfective and ultimate ones.

After having considered a few attempts at finding some unity in motivational values, we will now take up our sieve again to remove the coarsest values of the A-horizon. Besides love and justice, which we have discussed already, it is particularly naturalness which cannot be taken seriously as a nondoxastic value, and knowledge and intelligence which cannot be taken seriously as perfective values, let alone ultimate ones.

Naturalness very much behaves like love and has always been an equally useful notion, especially in orthodox ideology. The directions for usage are simple: (1) is something natural and you like it, call it "natural" and profit from its traditional, positive connotation; (2) is something natural but you don't like it, don't mention its naturalness; (3) is something not natural and you like it, call it "cultural" (or "civilized") and profit from this term's traditional, positive connotation; and (4) is something not natural and you do not like it, call it "unnatural" and exploit that term's negative connotation to the utmost. But what is 'natural'? Or: what is that mysterious 'nature' of human beings, of girls and women, of boys and men? There are many definitions of natural; as always this multiplicity of meaning is precisely what furnishes it with its ideological utility. With one of those definitions it may be more or less clear how to act naturally, but then there is no reason why one should do so. It is natural, say, to walk about stark naked on a warm day and --cynical or not-- to casually make love like a dog; it is unnatural or cultural to wear clothes on such a day and to go to temple in order to share in the communal love of a god. But is this a reason why it is wrong to love a god in public, to erect temples, or to wear a habit on warm days? Of course, this is unadulterated hot air.

An alternative way to go about naturalness as a perfective value is to give a serious, appealing account of nature so that people are all convinced that they ought to be natural. However --as has been thoroughly demonstrated by a feminist philosopher-- the problem is then not 'why one should act in accordance with nature', but how to do what is according to nature, and therefore good. The philosopher concerned treats this predicament of the use of natural as tho it were a problem typical of natural, but the question applies in principle almost to any term. One can either anchor a term in the factual sphere by means of its descriptive or conceptual meaning or anchor it in the normative sphere by means of its evaluative meaning, for to do both at once would be begging the question. Anchoring it in the factual sphere requires a special normative justification, something which has never been given for naturalness as a value. This would not yet in itself be a matter for great blame if it were not for the fact that most, or all, of those who appeal to naturalness as a value never decide to quit smoking, drinking alcohol and using medical or nonmedical drugs, to stop driving a car, to take off all their clothes (if necessary after having remigrated to a warm climate), to have sex only on those occasions that it is needed for procreation (or for showing male dominance), and --this is the virtual climax-- to wholly abstain from all forms of supernaturalism.