1

Naturalism, Science and the Supernatural

October 2008

Abstract

There is overwhelming agreement amongst naturalists that a naturalistic ontology should not

allow for the possibility of supernatural entities. I argue, against this prevailing consensus,

that naturalists have no proper basis to oppose the existence of supernatural entities.

Naturalism is characterised, following Leiter and Rea, as a position which involves a primary

commitment to scientific methodology and it is argued that any naturalistic ontological

commitments must be compatible with this primary commitment. It is further argued that

properly applied scientific method has warranted acceptance of the existence of supernatural

entities in the past and that it is plausible to think that it will do so again in the future. So

naturalists should allow for the possibility of supernatural entities.

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Naturalism, Science and the Supernatural

1. Introduction

Naturalism is the dominant philosophical movement of the contemporary English speaking

world. According to De Caro and Macarthur, ‘An overwhelming majority of contemporary

Anglo-American philosophers claim to be “naturalists” or to be offering a “naturalistic”

theory of a key philosophical concept’ (De Caro and Macarthur, 2004, 2). Naturalism is also a

broad philosophical movement. Naturalists disagree amongst themselves about seemingly

divisive issues such as whether, for example, there is room or not for mental and moral

properties in a naturalist ontology, properly understood. Perhaps the only ontological issue on

which there is overwhelming agreement amongst naturalists is that there is no room for

supernatural entities within a naturalistic ontology. According to Barry Stroud ‘… naturalism

says that there is nothing, or that nothing is so, except what holds in nature … naturalism on

any reading is opposed to supernaturalism’ (2004, 23). Philip Pettit tells us that ‘Naturalism

imposes a constraint on what there can be, stipulating that there are no nonnatural or

unnatural, praeternatural or supernatural entities.’ (1992, 245).

In naturalistic epistemology there is somewhat more agreement to be found than in

naturalistic ontology. Naturalistic epistemology is widely agreed to involve significant

methodological deference to science. In Sellar’s much-quoted words: ‘Science is the measure

of all things, of what is that it is and what is not that it is not’ (1963, 173). What is in dispute,

in disputes between naturalists, is whether epistemology should be wholly abandoned to

science, or whether naturalistic epistemology remains a distinctly philosophical enterprise that

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should be guided by the methods and findings of the sciences (Kornblith, 1985, 3-8). All

naturalists seem to concur about the importance of scientific methodology for a genuinely

naturalistic inquiry. Indeed, many see this as the core commitment of naturalism. According

to Brian Leiter, ‘Naturalism in philosophy is always first a methodological view to the effect

that philosophical theorizing should be continuous with empirical enquiry in the sciences’

(1998, 81). Michael Rea, an opponent of naturalism, concurs (Rea, 2000, 50-72). In his view

philosophical naturalism is to be understood as a research program that makes a primary

commitment to scientific methodology (Rea, 2000, 50-72).

Now because the naturalist defers to science on methodological matters, it seems that she

must also defer to science on ontological matters. If it is possible that the naturalist’s

substantive ontological claims may conflict with the results of current or future scientific

investigations, then it seems that the naturalist must withdraw those ontological claims.

According to Rea ‘… naturalism, whatever it is, must be compatible with anything science

might tell us about nature or supernature.’(Rea, 2002, 55). He continues, ‘Thus, no version of

naturalism can include any substantive thesis about the nature of nature or supernature.’(Rea,

2002, 55). If Rea (2002) is right, then it seems that even the widely accepted naturalist

stricture against positing the existence of supernatural entities is without foundation.1

While most naturalists will find Rea’s premise uncontentious, they will be unlikely to accept

the conclusion that he draws from it. They will agree that philosophical naturalism must be

compatible with whatever science tells us about nature or supernature, but will also be

inclined to the view that science can only say certain things about nature and supernature. In

particular they will be inclined to the view that science, properly understood, can never

warrant belief in supernatural entities. And if there are good reasons to think that science can
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never warrant belief in supernatural entities, then naturalists can be justified in making

ontological strictures against the supernatural.

In this paper I will argue, against the above line of reasoning, that the naturalist cannot rule

out the possibility of warrant for belief in supernatural entities (where ‘supernatural’ is

understood is Rea and Stroud’s broad, colloquial sense to refer to anything other than the

natural) on the basis of any reasonable inferences about future scientific evidence. And

because the naturalist cannot rule out the possibility of such warrant, the naturalist is not

entitled to draw up ontological strictures against the supernatural. Rea’s premise may not be

sufficient to support his conclusion, but his conclusion is warranted nevertheless, or so I aim

to show. My argument will be directed against an opponent, the ‘anti-supernaturalist

naturalist’ (hereafter ASN), whom I take to be an exponent of a mainstream naturalist

viewpoint. The ASN concedes that it is logically possible for there to be warrant for the

conclusion that supernatural entities exist. However, the ASN asserts that we have good

reason to hold that the supernatural is an explanatory category that will not be utilised by

science, and because of this naturalists – whose beliefs are guided by scientific method – are

warranted in dispensing with the possibility of warrant for the existence of supernatural

entities.

2. Preliminaries

Before we go on, it will help to clear up some preliminary issues. First, it may be noted that, if

the problem under discussion for ontological naturalists results from acceptance of

methodological naturalism, then one option that is open to the ontological naturalist is to give
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up on methodological naturalism. This is, of course, an option. My argument is directed

against naturalism understood as a programmatic approach to philosophy, not against

ontological naturalism per se. I note, along with Rea (2002) and Leiter (1998), that

methodological considerations are usually understood to be at the heart of the naturalistic

program in philosophy and I argue that these methodological considerations preclude

ontological strictures against the supernatural. The ontological naturalist is free to respond to

this argument by abandoning methodological naturalism. If she were to do this, then the

ontological naturalist would be casting herself adrift of the naturalistic program in philosophy

entirely, which seems to be a very drastic response to the problem posed, but it is a possible

response.

Second, it might also be thought that, along with Leiter and Rea, I am being too strict in

insisting that programmatic naturalism is a view driven primarily by methodological

considerations. Many actual naturalists probably do not explicitly consider their views to be

driven by methodological considerations. Rather, they intuit that methodological and

ontological naturalisms are a ‘good fit’ and they endorse both, without explicitly considering

the relationship between them. This may be an accurate description of the reasoning of many

actual naturalists, however, it is beside the point, when the point is the understanding of

programmatic philosophical naturalism. Were such unreflective naturalists to consider the

relationship between ontological and methodological naturalism then it seems that they would

be driven to the view espoused by Rea and Leiter, because it appears to be the only view

which makes sense of the close association between methodological and ontological

naturalism.
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Third, it is often noted that the distinction between the natural and the supernatural is ill-

defined, and it might be thought that the vagueness of the distinction between the natural and

the supernatural means that discussion of the ontological commitments of naturalism must be

hopelessly speculative. A reasonably sharp distinction between the natural and the

supernatural can usually be inferred from a clear definition of the natural. David Armstrong

defines naturalism in a way that incorporates a clear definition of the natural. According to

him naturalism is ‘… the doctrine that reality consists of nothing but a single all-embracing

spatio-temporal system’ (1981, 149).2 If we understand the natural this way then we can have

a reasonably clear sense of the supernatural; namely, anything that might exist that is outside

the single all-embracing spatio-temporal system. Other definitions of the natural will lead to

somewhat different understandings of the natural-supernatural distinction.

Of course not everyone will accept Armstrong’s definition of the natural or any other

particular definition of the natural. In the absence of agreement regarding the definition of the

natural, the charge that the boundary between the natural the supernatural is ill-defined is hard

to argue against. However, for the purposes of my argument it will not be necessary to find an

exact distinction between the natural and the supernatural. We still have a working distinction

between the natural and the supernatural, even if we are unsure whether certain possible

entities belong in the category ‘natural’ or the category ‘supernatural’, provided that there are

also possible entities that clearly belong in the category ‘natural’ and possible entities that

clearly belong in the category ‘supernatural’. We may be unsure whether ghosts and goblins

are best understood as supernatural entities or as unusual natural entities. However, on any

understanding of the natural-supernatural distinction that shows at least some respect for

ordinary usage, God – an all powerful agent whose existence is unconstrained by either space
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or time – will be understood as a supernatural agent and ordinary worldly entities – tables,

chairs and the like – will be understood as natural entities.

3. The supernatural in science

Contemporary scientists hardly ever invoke the supernatural when formulating scientific

explanations. However, appeals to the supernatural were not uncommon in scientific

explanations of the past. For example, Newton argued that the stability of the planets in the

solar system is best explained by appeal to the law of gravity, together with God’s careful

initial placement of the planets relative to the sun (Meyer, 2000, 133-134).

A second example of supernatural explanation in science is provided by vitalist chemistry and

biology. Vitalists argued that living matter is imbued with a non-material ‘élan vital’ which

causes it to be living matter. The presence of the élan vital is a crucial component of the

vitalist explanation for the distinction between life and non-life. While some vitalists believed

that the élan vital was an emergent natural property, many vitalists, such as Van Helmont and

Stahl appeared to believe that it was a non-natural substance (Macdonald and Tro

forthcoming), a supernatural substance in the colloquial sense of the term ‘supernatural’ that

is in play here.

A third example of the supernatural figuring in scientific explanation is provided by the

design hypothesis, as promulgated by Paley and others. Most biologists, prior to Darwin,

believed that the best explanation for the functional organisation of biological organisms was

that this was intended by a supernatural designer (Ruse, 2001, 112-113). Not only was the
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activity of a supernatural designer the best scientific explanation for the functional

organisation of living organisms, prior to Darwin (Dawkins, 1986, 5), at that stage the design

hypothesis provided a far superior explanation to available alternatives. According to Michael

Ruse, ‘Before Darwin, one had no choice but to accept a designer’ (2001, 113).3

The above examples of appeal to the supernatural in science are very plausibly understood as

instances of the use of inference to the best explanation (IBE) and it is widely agreed that IBE

is a legitimate mode of inference, used extensively in science, which plays a crucial role in

scientific theory choice and in the formulation of particular theories in science (Lipton, 2004,

154-160; Psillos, 1999, 211-212). It is also widely agreed that IBE is ontologically

committing (Psillos, 1999, 211-212). So, it seems that mainstream scientists of the past have

been committed to the existence of supernatural entities.

In IBE, as it is standardly understood, we survey available explanations and accept the best of

these. In Lipton’s terminology we infer to the ‘best potential explanation’ (Lipton, 2004, 58).

It might be supposed that we should refrain from inferring to the truth or truth-aptness of an

explanation until we have identified the ‘best actual explanation’. But this sets the bar too

high to account for our actual inferential practices, because it seems always possible that we

have failed to consider some or other explanation that is actually better than any available

explanation. Most, if not all, of our currently accepted scientific explanations are the result of

inference to the best potential explanation. It is possible that these will be shown to not be the

best actual explanation of the phenomena that they are intended to explain in the future, but

this does not stop scientists from inferring to their truth-aptness and inferring that the entities

that they invoke exist.

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None of the exemplar supernatural explanations remain the best explanation of the

phenomena that they were intended to explain. Indeed, there are no clear contemporary

examples of an explanation that appeals to the supernatural constituting the best scientific

explanation of any natural phenomenon. These days, supernatural scientific explanations are

associated with minority movements at the fringe of science, such as the Intelligent Design

movement.4 However, we should not let the current fringe nature of supernatural explanation

in science prevent us from acknowledging the role that the supernatural has played in

scientific explanations, as recently as the mid-Nineteenth Century.

Because the supernatural has been repeatedly invoked in scientific explanations in the past,

we are entitled to make a ‘supernatural induction’ as follows: we have seen a number of

instances where explanations that invoked the supernatural were considered the best

explanations of a variety of natural phenomena in the history of science. Therefore, it is

reasonable to expect that explanations that invoke the supernatural will be considered to be

the best explanations of at least some natural phenomena in science in the future.

My argument for the conclusion that naturalists cannot dispense with the supernatural can

now be spelled out. [1] Philosophical naturalists are committed to accepting scientific

methodology. [2] When it comes to formulating scientific explanations, scientific

methodology crucially involves the use of IBE, which is ontologically committing. [3] IBE in

science has led us to the conclusion that supernatural entities exist and it is reasonable to

believe that it may do so again. Therefore, [4] Philosophical naturalists must allow for the

possibility of the supernatural when formulating a naturalist ontology.

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This is a striking conclusion and given the determined opposition to the supernatural

expressed by leading naturalists such as Pettit and Stroud, I expect it to be a conclusion that

will be contested by many. In what follows I attempt to head off a number of possible

objections. The objections can be divided into three categories, which will be addressed in the

next three sections of the paper, one category per section. First, it many be argued that my

examples are not genuine instances of IBE. Second, it may be conceded that they are genuine

instances of IBE, but argued that, despite appearances, the supernatural does not and will not

figure in genuine scientific explanations. Third, it may be disputed that IBE really is an

acceptable form of scientific inference. Having seen off the above lines of objection, I will

consider two further ways to try to evade the force of my conclusion.

4. Are they really instances of IBE?

Although it may be conceded that Newton, Paley and some of the vitalists considered the

aforementioned explanations that invoked the supernatural to be the best available

explanations for a variety of natural phenomena, it might be argued that these explanations

were not, in fact, accepted because of the correct application of IBE. All I have shown, it may

be objected, is that a number of authorities considered explanations of a variety of natural

phenomena that invoked the supernatural to be the best available explanations of these

phenomena. But these authorities may have been mistaken. Are there good reasons to think

that our exemplar scientific explanations that invoked the supernatural were not in fact the

best explanations that were available in their respective times? The following have been

suggested to me:
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First, it may be suspected that the assessments of scientists of the past regarding the quality of

available explanations that invoked the supernatural was distorted by the longstanding

influence of Christian thinking upon Western science. Christianity systematically distorted the

judgments of Western scientists so that explanations that invoked the supernatural appeared to

be better explanations than their purely naturalistic rivals, when in fact they were not better

explanations, or so this line of objection has it.

I concede that the longstanding influence of Christian thought may have caused Western

science to favour some supernatural explanations over purely natural ones in the past.5
1
Rea (2002) does not develop these comments. They function as stage-setting for an

ambitious argument against naturalism that turns on the alleged inability of naturalists to

discover the modal properties of the world using the methods of natural science. Assessment

of this argument is well beyond the scope of this paper.

2
Also Armstrong (1989, 3) describes naturalism as ‘… the doctrine that nothing at all exists

except the single world of space and time’.

3
See also Sober (1993, Ch. 3). In a recent paper McLaughlin (2007) takes issue with Sober’s

(1993) view that Paley’s argument from design, which was most forcefully advocated in

1802, was representative of then prevailing scientific opinion. McLaughlin’s views need not

detain us, however, as he concedes that “… the argument from design was a part of science up

to about 1730” (McLaughlin, 2007, 27). This dispute is about when the argument from design

was a part of science, not whether it was a part of science.

4
For extensive discussion of the Intelligent Design movement see Pennock (2001).
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However this line of reasoning cannot account for all of the instances where the supernatural

has been invoked in scientific explanation. When Ruse tells us that ‘Before Darwin, one had

no choice but to accept a designer’ (2001, 113), I take it that he is arguing that an unbiased

scientist would have found supernatural design to be the best explanation of the functional

organisation of living organisms, before Darwin, because this was by far and away the best

available explanation of the functional organisation of living organisms. The design

hypothesis was the best explanation of the functional organisation of living organisms

available before Darwin, not just the best explanation available from a Christian point of

view.

Second, it may be doubted that the individual scientists who provided our exemplar scientific

explanations that invoke the supernatural canvassed all available explanations, before

deciding which of these was the best. If they did not canvas all available explanations, then

they cannot be said to have conducted IBE in a proper manner.6 One way of responding to this

line of objection would be to examine the historical record in detail and see if there were

significant available explanations of the relevant phenomena that were not considered by

Newton, Van Helmont, Stahl and Paley. However, such historical examination is probably

unnecessary. Science, along with other domains of human enquiry is a community-wide

enterprise (Goldman, 1999) and it is reasonable to assume that if significant available

explanations were left unconsidered then these omissions would be noted by other scientists

working in their areas of enquiry. Furthermore, it is reasonable to assume that the exemplar
5
On the influence of Christianity on the development of Western science see Brooke (1991)

and Grant (1996).

6
Thanks to Peter Forrest for suggesting this line of objection.
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explanations attained the prominence that they did precisely because they were considered

better explanations than available alternatives by communities of scientists who were

collectively aware of all significant available explanations. An individual scientist working in

isolation might well overlook significant available explanations, but a well-functioning

community of enquiry will not.

A third possible reason for suspecting that our exemplar explanations were not, in fact, the

best explanations of the phenomena that they were intended to explain, available in their

respective times, can be developed by considering the process of selecting between competing

explanations. In order to decide which of a number of competing explanations is the best, we

consider how well these competing explanations exemplify a range of explanatory virtues.

One feature of explanations that is widely considered to be an important virtue is simplicity,

and it seems that any explanation of a natural phenomenon that invokes the supernatural

commits us to a natural-supernatural distinction, making that explanation less simple than its

purely natural rivals. Perhaps scientists of the past lost sight of the importance of simplicity in

explanations.

While it is true that a commitment to a natural-supernatural distinction results in a loss of

simplicity, it may nevertheless be that a supernatural explanation is the simplest available

explanation of a natural phenomenon, if efforts to avoid invoking the supernatural result in

even greater explanatory complexity in purely naturalistic rival explanations. Furthermore,

even if an explanation that invokes the supernatural is not the simplest available explanation

of a natural phenomenon, it may be the best explanation all things considered, because it may

have other compensating explanatory virtues. So it seems that this line of objection will not be
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sufficient to sustain the conclusion that all of our exemplar supernatural explanations were not

arrived at by the correct application of IBE.

5. Genuine scientific explanation and the supernatural

Our second form of objection involves accepting that at least some of the exemplar

supernatural explanations are indeed genuine instances of IBE, advocated by real scientists of

the past, but arguing that it does not follow that future scientific explanations could invoke the

supernatural. One way to develop this second form of objection is to argue that, although the

examples of scientific explanations that invoke the supernatural are genuine instances of IBE

formulated by real scientists, they are nevertheless not genuine scientific explanations.

Instead, they are explanations that go beyond the domain of science, properly understood. For

example, it may be admitted that the design hypothesis was a genuine scientific hypothesis,

and conceded that a supernatural designer is more likely than a natural designer, but it could

nevertheless be argued that the inference that the designer of nature is a supernatural agent is

not, properly speaking, a scientific inference and so explanations that appeal to a supernatural

designer are explanations that go beyond the domain of science.

This line of objection will probably not attract much support these days, as the project of

trying to demarcate the proper domain of scientific explanation from the domain of non-

scientific explanation has been out of favour for some time (Laudan, 1983). But even if we

could successfully argue that instances of IBE, which build on scientific results and which

invoke the supernatural, are not, properly speaking, ‘scientific inferences’, this would not be

sufficient for the purposes of the ASN. The problem is that this line of reasoning does nothing
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to undermine the legitimacy of instances of IBE that are based on scientific evidence, which

invoke the supernatural. All that has been achieved is a hollow rhetorical victory. If we

endorse IBE at all it is because we endorse IBE as a general form of inference. So it seems

that if we endorse IBE, we must be willing to endorse all explanations that are the result of

well-formed instances of IBE based on established scientific evidence, even if we decide that

some of these explanations are not worthy of the epithet ‘scientific’. But this may include

endorsing explanations that invoke the existence of supernatural entities, and this is not a

concession that the ASN can allow.

A second way of arguing for the conclusion that future scientific explanations will not involve

the supernatural, is to argue that inferences to the existence of the supernatural are not a part

of ‘mature science’. Immature sciences may involve all manner of explanations, but the

mature sciences only involve a restricted range of explanations, and this does not include

appeals to the supernatural, or so this line of argument has it. A huge problem for a proponent

of this line of argument is that she owes us an account of the history of science that explains

the transition of science from its immature state to maturity. In order to satisfy the needs of

the ASN, it seems that any such account must meet two criteria. First, it must explain why

mature science no longer allows inferences to the existence of the supernatural. Second, it

must show that the transition of science to maturity occurs at roughly the same time as the

time that supernatural explanations fell out of favour in the sciences, during the Nineteenth

Century. But standard accounts of the history of science do not seem to meet either of these

criteria. Standardly, the methodological maturity of science is located in the Seventeen

Century and it does not involve any obvious stipulation against the invocation of the

supernatural (Koyré, 1957; Dijksterhuis, 1961). But unless these criteria are met we, are left

with absolutely no reason to think that supernatural explanations will not reappear in a future
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science, so the appeal to ‘maturity’ as a means to exclude the supernatural from current and

future science involves a commitment to defending a revisionary history of science.

Another possible line of argument, for the conclusion that current and future science has

matured to the state where it can reasonably be expected that scientists will no longer make

appeals to the supernatural, begins with the observation that, although genuine scientific

explanations of the past have involved appeals to the supernatural, these have become

increasingly rare over the course of time. A corollary of the development of science, has been

the successive replacement of explanations that invoke the supernatural with purely

naturalistic explanations. It may be argued that, because we have seen the successive rejection

of supernatural explanations, as these have been replaced by purely naturalistic explanations,

we can induce that future mainstream scientists will not invoke supernatural explanations.

This argument might be termed the ‘naturalistic induction’ and it may seem that the ASN can

appeal to the naturalistic induction to try to convince us that the supernatural has no place in

future science. If science has matured gradually, then there need be no distinct transition-

phase in which the passage of science from immaturity to maturity takes place.

My response to this ‘naturalistic induction’ is threefold. First, it may be countered by the

‘supernatural induction’, introduced earlier. These two inductive arguments lead to opposing

conclusions, but both appear to be well-formed inductive arguments. Second, the naturalistic

induction is only an inductive argument, and while it may provide us with some reason to be

confident that supernatural explanations will no longer figure in science, it gives us no

guarantee that future scientists will not find themselves faced with evidence for which a

supernatural explanation is the best available explanation, all things considered. And because

it gives us no such guarantee, it cannot be a sufficient basis for the ASN to reject the
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supernatural in science. Third, it appears that we can conceive of clear examples of possible

circumstances for which, if the right sort of evidence were to come along, then the best

explanation of that evidence would involve appeal to the supernatural. To see this, consider

the following example, due to Bill Dembski. Suppose that we find the words ‘Made By

Yahweh’ inscribed in tiny letters on each and every living cell that we examine (Dembski,

2000, 256). If we did discover reliable evidence of this highly unlikely state of affairs, then it

seems clear enough that the best explanation for the presence of the inscription on cells is that

a supernatural being, ‘Yahweh’ wishes it to be known that He is the creator of all living

organisms.7

6. Objections to IBE in science

In arguing that explanations that invoke the supernatural can be scientific explanations I have

assumed that IBE is a legitimate form of scientific inference. It is widely accepted,

particularly by scientific realists, that IBE is a legitimate form of scientific inference.

However, IBE is not without its critics. Some criticisms of IBE are best understood as

components of larger, more general criticisms of science. For example, Richard Rorty argues

that the choice of an explanation as ‘the best’ only indicates that it is in the interests of

particular scientists to promulgate that explanation. He writes:

From a Wittgensteinian or Davidsonian or Deweyan angle, there is no such thing as ‘the best explanation’; of

anything; there is just the explanation which best suits the purpose of some given explainer. (Rorty, 1988, 69)

7
A second example of a possible scenario that would be best explained by appeal to the

existence of the supernatural can be found in Clarke (1997).

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Rorty’s overall attitude to science is that it has no privileged access to the way the world is.

This is because be holds that the project of trying to represent the way the world is, is deeply

misguided (Rorty 1980). Although Rorty is a self-described naturalist (2000, 189), he is

completely out of step with mainstream contemporary naturalists who hold that science does

have privileged access to the way the world is. Rorty’s criticisms of IBE are of no assistance

to the ASN because, if they were successful, they would accomplish too much. They might

undermine warrant for believing in the supernatural that may be derived by use of IBE, but if

they do so then they do so by undermining the case for the privileging of scientific method,

and they thereby undermine the case for mainstream naturalism.

If there are lines of criticism of IBE that are of use to the ASN then these must be ones that

undermine warrant for belief in the supernatural, but do not also undermine the naturalist case

for privileging scientific method. We will examine two lines of criticism of IBE that appear to

fill this role. These are due to Nancy Cartwright (1999) and Bas van Fraassen (1980). Both

are critics of IBE, but they are not critics of all ampliative inferences in science and they are

not opponents of the privileging of scientific method. My argumentative strategy will be to

show that the case for there being warrant for belief in the supernatural can survive the

criticisms of IBE due to Cartwright and van Fraassen, even if these are accepted. This is

because, I will argue, we can be warranted in believing in supernatural entities even if we are

only allowed to employ the restricted ranges of ampliative inferences that are endorsed by

Cartwright and Van Fraassen respectively.

Most of the philosophers who oppose IBE, including Cartwright and van Fraassen, do so for

the purposes of opposing scientific realism. This is because IBE plays a crucial role in
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contemporary arguments for scientific realism. Indeed, acceptance of the legitimacy of IBE is

sometimes considered to be the defining feature of scientific realists, separating them from

their opponents, who only consider more restrictive forms of inference to be legitimate

(McMullin, 1994). In recent times debates about the acceptability or otherwise of scientific

realism have focussed increasingly on the status of IBE, mostly because of the influential ‘no-

miracles argument’, which was first articulated by Hilary Putnam (1975, 73).

The no-miracles argument has it that scientific realism is the metaphysical stance that best

explains the success of science, because it is the only metaphysical stance that explains the

success of science without making that success appear to be miraculous. The no-miracles

argument appeals to IBE and appears itself to be an instance of IBE. Because most

contemporary naturalists accept the authority of science and because scientific realism is the

metaphysical stance that makes most immediate sense of the authority of science, most

naturalists are, implicitly or explicitly, committed to scientific realism (Koons, 2000, 49). For

the purposes of this paper I will avoid the temptation to enter debates about scientific realism

and will focus on criticisms of IBE, due to opponents of scientific realism, which might

advance the cause of the ASN.

Cartwright (1983) is an opponent of scientific realism and an opponent of IBE, but not an

opponent of all forms of ampliative inference. She argues that our assessment of which of a

class of competing explanations is the best often involves appeal to ‘pragmatic virtues’, such

as simplicity and elegance in explanation and she argues that these are reflections of our

explanatory preferences, having no obvious relationship to the truth (Clarke, 2001, 705-710).

Because appeals to pragmatic virtues have no obvious connection to the truth, we are not

entitled to infer that, if an explanation is judged by us to be the best available, then it is likely
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to be true, or so she argues. However, Cartwright is willing to endorse causal ampliative

inferences on the grounds that these feature in causal explanations, which we identify as the

best available causal explanation without consideration of pragmatic explanatory virtues. An

explanation is the best causal explanation just because the cause it identifies is the most likely

to exist, according to Cartwright. Although IBE is not a generally legitimate form of

inference, ‘inference to the most probable cause’ (IPC) is a legitimate form of inference,

according to her.

It might be thought that ASNs could find reasons to rule explanations that invoke the

supernatural to be illegitimate by accepting Cartwright’s criticisms of IBE. Indeed, this would

be a way of ruling purely theoretical explanations that invoke the supernatural to be

illegitimate. However, it seems that we can justify belief in supernatural entities using IPC,

which Cartwright does accept. If the most probable cause of the parting of the Red Sea is the

activity of a supernatural agent, then IPC allows us to infer to the existence of that

supernatural agent. Because Cartwright’s criticisms do not extend to causal explanations and

because some explanations that invoke the supernatural are causal explanations, arrived at by

utilising IPC, Cartwright’s criticisms of IBE are insufficient to satisfy the purposes of the

ASN.

Our second opponent of scientific realism, Bas van Fraassen, is perhaps best known for his

advocacy of ‘constructive empiricism’. According to van Fraassen (1980), the use of IBE to

infer to the existence of unobservables involves taking an epistemic risk that we can and

should avoid. Constructive empiricists adopt an agnostic stance regarding the existence of

unobservables. We can allow that the existence of theoretical entities such as electrons and

positrons may best explain a variety of phenomena that require explaining, without also
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committing ourselves to the existence (or non-existence) of actual electrons and positrons. It

may seem that we could argue similarly, in the case of supernatural entities, allowing that the

existence of the élan vital, for example, would best explain this or that phenomenon, but

resisting the inference that we are, therefore, warranted in inferring that instantiations of the

élan vital actually exist. Adopting constructive empiricism would allow the ASN to find

reasons to render some explanations that invoke the supernatural to be illegitimate. However,

it would not do enough to render all explanations that invoke the supernatural illegitimate,

because supernatural entities need not be unobservable entities. For example, the Old

Testament God, was regularly observed, if we are to believe what we are told in the Bible,

and therefore counts as an observable.

Because the focus of his constructive empiricist objections to IBE were restricted to the realm

of unobservables and because van Fraassen (1980) appeared to endorse instances of IBE in

the case of some observables, van Fraassen’s scientific realist opponents have often taken him

to accept the legitimacy of IBE, in the case of observables.8 More recently, however, van

Fraassen (and coauthors) has insisted that he does not accept IBE in any context (Ladyman et.

al, 1997). Rather, he accepts what Psillos refers to as ‘as-if IBE’ (Psillos, 1997, 371), a form

of ampliative reasoning that is empirically indistinguishable from IBE, but only licences

conclusions about the empirical adequacy of claims about unobservables and unobserved

observables, rather than conclusions of truth-aptness. Nevertheless, it seems that van Fraassen

does at least accept the legitimacy of claims about the truth-aptness of well-formed ampliative

inferences about observed observables, and it seems that this is enough to licence inferences

about the supernatural, as supernatural entities may be observed observables.

8
Psillos (1999, 212-213) explains why Van Fraassen has often been read this way.
 22

7. Two more attempts to blunt the force of the conclusion

Before concluding, I will consider two more potential lines of defence of naturalistic

opposition to the supernatural. The first of these is the ‘but science studies the natural’

defence, the second I call the ‘it’s only a bet’ defence.

But science studies the natural

A possible way to try to evade the conclusion that naturalists should abandon opposition to

the supernatural is to insist that ‘the natural’ just is whatever it is that science studies. If future

science invokes God or some other apparently supernatural entity in a well-formed scientific

explanation, then this acceptance just shows that God must actually be a natural, rather than a

supernatural entity, or so the line of objection has it. If a narrow sense of the term ‘study’ is

intended then this line of objection seems misconceived, because scientists who have invoked

God in scientific explanations did not experiment on or take measurements of God, instead

they sought to explain observed effects by inferring to the existence of God. But presumably

most of those who push this line of objection have in mind a broad sense of the term ‘study’,

which encompasses entities that we come to believe to exist, as a result of inferences from

empirical evidence.

One way of heading off this line of objection would be to accuse its proponents of rendering

the term ‘natural’ completely vacuous. If, as seems reasonable to believe, science can study

anything and everything, then the ‘natural’, on this understanding of the term, encompasses
 23

anything and everything, and there is no possibility of the supernatural existing, because there

is no conceptual space left for the supernatural. However, it may be possible to pursue a form

of the line of objection under discussion, while still allowing for the bare possibility of the

supernatural and without concomitantly rendering the term ‘natural’ vacuous. To do this we

might stipulate that the natural is to be equated with everything that has causal efficacy in the

world. If God has had an effect on any part of the world, then God is causally connected to

the world and is therefore natural, or so this line of reasoning goes.9 This way of

understanding the natural allows for the bare possibility of the supernatural existing, but

disallows the possibility of the supernatural causally interacting with the natural. If we accept

the not obviously unreasonable hypothesis that only factors that have some causal connection

to a subject can have explanatory relevance for that subject, then we will have ruled the

supernatural out of the proper domain of scientific explanation without ruling out the bare

possibility of the supernatural and without the rendering the term ‘natural’ entirely vacuous.

My response to this now considerably nuanced line of objection is that it offends against the

primacy of scientific method, so it is not a line of objection that is of use to naturalists.

Because naturalists are philosophically guided by scientific method, it seems that they must

follow scientific practice in the use of explanatory categories in science, at least to a

substantial degree. Scientists might have considered everything that is causally efficacious in

the world to be natural, in which case the line of objection suggested would be of use to the

naturalist. But as it happens scientists have not considered everything that is causally

efficacious in the world to be natural. Overwhelmingly, they have followed ordinary usage

and considered God to be a supernatural entity, on occasions when God has been invoked in

scientific explanations. So it seems that naturalists, by their own lights, should follow actual

scientific explanatory practice and construe God as a supernatural entity.

9
Kim (2003, 92) considers an argument along these lines.
 24

It’s only a bet

I’ve argued that naturalists lack a firm basis for opposition to the supernatural. But it might be

considered that I have misconstrued the nature of naturalists’ opposition to the supernatural.

Naturalists who are opposed to the supernatural are not seeking to make grand claims about

naturalistic ontology, they are simply betting that science will not invoke the supernatural in

the future, or so a line of objection goes. They are entitled to do because current science does

not invoke the supernatural. Future science might revive the supernatural, of course, but all

this shows is that naturalistic opposition to the supernatural is fallible, or so it may be argued.

I have three responses to this line of objection.

The first response to this objection is that it doesn’t seem to explain why naturalists

persistently single out the supernatural as an object of opposition. If naturalists are entitled to

bet against any and every concept and category that current science does not endorse then

they are entitled to bet against phlogiston, cold fusion, the ether, and a vast array of other

concepts that are not accepted in contemporary science, so it is mysterious that naturalists

single out the supernatural for special attention. Given that naturalists do single out the

supernatural for special attention, it seems more plausible to interpret naturalists as doing

more than merely betting against the supernatural. It seems more plausible to suppose that

naturalists are trying to identify an ontological stance that is distinctive of naturalism.

The second response to the ‘bet objection’, is that, as bets go it seems to be a riskier one to

make than many other bets that might be made on the basis of current science. Current science

gives us very strong reason to believe that particular entities exist, namely those which we can
 25

experiment on and which figure in our best explanatory theories. It also gives us strong reason

to believe that particular theories approximate to the truth. If naturalists were to seek to

identify their position with the bet that hydrogen exists or the bet that the theory of evolution

is approximately true, then they would be making a bet that is strongly grounded in the

findings of current science. By comparison, a bet against the supernatural is much less

strongly grounded in the findings of current science. It is true that current science does not

invoke the supernatural, but currently acceptable scientific theories are not incompatible with

the existence of the supernatural. If the naturalist’s opposition to the supernatural is only a

bet, then it is particularly mysterious why naturalists such as Pettit and Stroud single out the

supernatural to bet against, when there are many safer bets that they might seek to be

identified with.

My third response to this line of objection is to point out that the naturalist’s commitment is

not to current science as such but to scientific method. The naturalist is only indirectly

committed to the findings of current science, in that she (presumably) takes these to be based

on the proper application of scientific method. It is true that current science does not invoke

the supernatural, but more important for the naturalist is the question of whether or not

scientific method issues forth any substantial reason to warrant opposition to the supernatural,

and this is the nub of the disagreement between me and the ASN. The ASN supposes that

scientific method does provides substantial reasons for the naturalist to oppose the

supernatural, but I argue that scientific method does not provide substantial reasons to oppose

the supernatural. How could it? Scientific method has often provided substantial reasons to

endorse the existence of specific types of supernatural entity. Because scientific method does

not provide substantial reason to oppose the supernatural, the naturalist should not be opposed

to the supernatural.
 26

8. Concluding remarks

We have seen that there is a strong argument for the conclusion that the supernatural cannot

be excluded from science. Because the supernatural cannot be excluded from science, and

because the naturalist must defer to science about ontological as well as methodological

matters, the naturalist has no grounds for stipulating against the supernatural in her ontology.

Ten different possible lines of objection to this conclusion have been considered and all have

been shown to fall short of their mark. Naturalists should respond to this state of affairs by

abandoning opposition to the supernatural.

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Notes