nonnaturalistic

Nonnaturalistic is an adjective used chiefly in philosophy to describe theories or claims that resist reduction to naturalistic explanations or to natural properties. In contrast to naturalistic accounts that analyze phenomena in terms of the natural sciences, nonnaturalistic positions treat certain facts as nonnatural in kind and not fully capturable by empirical description.

In metaethics, nonnaturalistic theories are most prominent. Nonnaturalist moral realism holds that moral properties—such as goodness, rightness, or obligation—are objective features of the world that are not natural properties. These theories often posit that moral truths cannot be reduced to or fully explained by physical, psychological, or biological descriptions. Knowledge of moral facts, within nonnaturalism, may rely on non-empirical methods such as intuition, rational argument, or a priori considerations. A historically influential challenge to naturalism in this domain is Moore’s critique of the idea that “good” can be defined or analyzed purely in terms of natural properties, sometimes referred to in discussions of the naturalistic fallacy.

Beyond ethics, nonnaturalistic approaches appear in debates about value, aesthetics, meaning, and certain aspects of the philosophy of mind, where some philosophers argue that these phenomena exhibit properties that cannot be entirely explained by natural science. Critics of nonnaturalism raise questions about how nonnatural properties are known, how they are distinguished from hypothetical or linguistic constructs, and how they interact with empirical inquiry.