The Asymptote of the Natural: Inductive Density and the A Posteriori Justification of Methodological Naturalism
A Bayesian defense of methodological naturalism as a historically earned confidence pattern rather than a dogmatic rule.
Source Paper
This page is a simplified guide to the paper. The source document is linked below; the guide here keeps the main idea accessible and tied back to the site’s model.
Open on Academia.eduLow-Register Abstract
This paper asks why science usually sticks to natural explanations. The answer offered is not “because the supernatural is impossible by definition.” The answer is that natural explanations have built a long record of successful, testable, projectible results.
Methodological naturalism becomes a practical confidence strategy. The more one kind of explanation keeps working and another keeps failing to produce reliable predictions, the more confidence shifts toward the working kind.
How It Fits Credencing
This paper connects methodological naturalism to Bayesian updating. It treats the history of inquiry as evidence that changes priors and expectations.
It also fits the site’s emphasis on inductive density: explanations earn credibility by becoming predictively dense, constrained, and repeatably useful.
How to Read It
Read this as a model for method-level credencing. Instead of asking whether a rule is sacred, ask what track record justifies relying on it.
Adjacent References
These are starting points rather than exhaustive citations. They connect this page to nearby work in probability, calibration, cognitive bias, and social epistemology.
- |Thomas Bayes, "An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances" (1763).
- |E. T. Jaynes, Probability Theory: The Logic of Science (2003).