The recognition of striking regularities in the physical world plays a major role in the justification of hypotheses and the development of new theories both in the natural sciences and in philosophy. However, while scientists consider only strictly natural hypotheses as explanations for such regularities, philosophers also explore meta-natural hypotheses. One example is mathematical realism, which proposes the existence of abstract mathematical entities as an explanation for the applicability of mathematics in the sciences. Another example is theism, which offers the existence of a supernatural being as an explanation for the design-like appearance of the physical cosmos. Although all meta-natural hypotheses defy empirical testing, there is a strong intuition that some of them are more warranted than others. The goal of this paper is to sharpen this intuition into a clear criterion for the (in)admissibility of meta-natural explanations for empirical facts. Drawing on recent debates about the indispensability of mathematics and teleological arguments for the existence of God, I argue that a meta-natural explanation is admissible just in case the explanation refers to an entity that, though not itself causally efficacious, guarantees the instantiation of a causally efficacious entity that is an actual cause of the regularity.

认识到物理世界中惊人的规律性在假设的论证以及自然科学和哲学中新理论的发展中起着重要作用。但是，尽管科学家仅将严格的自然假设视为此类规律的解释，但哲学家还探索了亚自然假设。一个例子是数学现实主义，它提出了抽象数学实体的存在，以解释数学在科学中的适用性。另一个例子是有神论，它提供了超自然存在的存在，以解释物理宇宙的类似设计的外观。尽管所有亚自然假设都无视经验检验，但有一个很强的直觉，即其中一些比其他假设更有根据。本文的目的是将这种直觉加深为针对经验事实的亚自然解释的（不）可接受性的明确标准。借助最近关于数学和目的论论证对于上帝存在的不可或缺的辩论，我认为，亚超自然的解释是可以接受的，以防万一该解释所指的是一个实体，尽管它本身不是因果有效的，但可以保证一个实例的实例化。因果关系有效的实体，是规则性的实际原因。