1 Naturalism, Explanation, and Identity Thomas W. Polger and Robert A. Skipper, Jr. Department of Philosophy University of Cincinnati 8 9 May 2005 Body Word Count 4077 (-554 cut for SPP) = 3523 Abstract. Some people believe that there is an “explanatory gap” between the facts of physics and certain other facts about the world—for example, facts about consciousness. The gap is presented as a challenge to any thoroughgoing naturalism or physicalism. We believe that advocates of the explanatory gap have some reasonable expectations that cannot be merely dismissed. We also believe that naturalistic thinkers have the resources to close the explanatory gap, but that they have not adequately explained how and why these resources work. In this paper we isolate the legitimate explanatory demands in the gap reasoning, as it is defended by Chalmers and Jackson (2001). We then argue that these demands can be met. Our solution involves a novel proposal for understanding the relationship between theories, explanations, and scientific identities. 1. Introduction Some people believe that there is a so-called explanatory gap between the facts of physics and certain other facts about the world—for example, facts about consciousness, in the most familiar version. Some thinkers take the explanatory gap very seriously. But many naturalistically minded thinkers view the explanatory gap as a “metaphysical” problem in the pejorative sense of the word. Practicing scientists tend to see the gap worries as the result of skepticism or ignorance concerning the empirical data. And philosophers of science diagnose the gap worries as symptoms of long since abandoned ideas about explanation.