Methodological Naturalism, Analyzed.

I present and evaluate three interpretations of methodological naturalism (MN), the principle that scientific explanations may only appeal to natural phenomena: as an essential feature of science, as a provisional guideline grounded in the historical failure of supernatural hypotheses, and as a synt...

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Published in:Erkenntnis Vol. 90; no. 5; pp. 1981 - 2003
Main Author: Donahue, Miles K.
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Jun2025
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Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: Methodological Naturalism, Analyzed.
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        au: Donahue, Miles K.
        affil: https://ror.org/052gg0110 St. Cross College, University of Oxford, 61 St. Giles' Street, OX1 3LZ, Oxford, UK
      su:
        Scholarly method
        Naturalism
        Hypothesis
        Explanation
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          Scholarly method
          Naturalism
          Hypothesis
          Explanation
      ab: I present and evaluate three interpretations of methodological naturalism (MN), the principle that scientific explanations may only appeal to natural phenomena: as an essential feature of science, as a provisional guideline grounded in the historical failure of supernatural hypotheses, and as a synthesis of these two approaches. In doing so, I provide both a synoptic overview of current scholarship on MN, as well a contribution to that discussion by arguing in favor of a restricted version of MN, placing it on a firmer theoretical foundation than that supplied by previous studies, and replying to recent objections.
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    language: English
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