View source for Principle of Naturalistic Closure (PNC)

== The Principle of Naturalistic Closure ==

Fundamentally this principle asserts that there is nothing beyond the "natural world" - and by "natural world" we do not mean the world of Nature - of plants and animals - but everything that occurs in Nature - everything physical and non-physical. Importantly, one aspect of this principle is the doctrine of causality or determinism. That there is change in the world, that events and phenomena occur and are not mere fantasies or delusions is assumed (most people would consider this a very reasonable assumption - a very few solipsists might disagree). The PNC asserts that the cause or determination of this change, those events and phenomena originates in the natural world; and concomitantly all effects are also in the natural world. Hence the natural world is a closed system - its entire development and dynamics is intrinsic, there is nothing causally efficacious in the world that is extrinsic - that originates outside. Hence all supernatural explanations of observable phenomena are ruled out-of-bounds.