If Rs result from gapless chains of natural causal processes, there will be a full natural causal account for them at the immediate level, and design will play no immediate mechanistic explanatory role.
The function something serves in explaining *how* something works through step-by-step physical processes, like gears turning in a machine.
Natural causal account(as used to contrast with design-based explanations)
An explanation of why something happened based entirely on natural forces and physical processes, without needing to appeal to design or intention.
Rs(as used in formal philosophical analysis)
A placeholder variable (the 'R' stands for something specific) used in philosophical writing to represent a concept being discussed without naming it directly.
design(Contrasted with natural or intrinsic necessity in the passage)
Human involvement or intention directing the form or function of a thing
However, if Rs result from gapless chains of natural causal processes, the evidential impact of those Rs again threatens to become problematic and ambiguous, since there will a fortiori be at the immediate level a full natural causal account for them.[12] Design will, in such cases, play no immediate mechanistic explanatory role, suggesting its superfluousness. But even if such conceptions were explanatorily and scientifically superfluous at that level, that does not entail that they are conceptually, alethically, inferential, or otherwise superfluous in general. The role of mind might be in...