Kitcher's unificationist account shows that reductive explanations gain their epistemic force by subsuming phenomena under general argument patterns, not by identifying causal parts.

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Epistemic force(as used in epistemology): The power or strength of an argument or claim to convince us that something is true or worth believing.
Kitcher(the philosopher being referenced as making a distinction between types of naturalism): Philip Kitcher is a prominent philosopher of science who studies how science works and what makes scientific explanations valuable.
causal parts(as the alternative explanation method being rejected): The physical components or pieces that make something work by directly causing it to function; the idea that you can understand something just by knowing what it's made of.
reductive explanations(as the type of explanation being evaluated): An explanation that breaks something complex down into simpler parts or basic building blocks to show how the complex thing works.

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