An explanation has a boundary
A practical way to notice when a successful model is being asked to answer a different question.
An explanation earns trust by doing a particular job. Trouble begins when that success is silently transferred to another job.
Imagine a model that reliably predicts which choices a person will make. Its accuracy would be impressive. It would not, by itself, tell us whether those choices are accompanied by experience, what that experience feels like, or whether the person could have acted otherwise in a philosophically relevant sense. Those questions require additional arguments.
The reverse mistake is possible too. If a model does not answer a question about experience, that omission does not establish that its predictions are wrong, or that a preferred metaphysical alternative is true.
The boundary test
For any explanation, write down three things: what it describes, what it predicts, and what further conclusion you want to draw from it. Then identify the premise that connects the first two to the third.
If that premise is missing, you have found a gap in the argument. You have not yet found a gap in nature.
This distinction is especially useful when moving between neuroscience and philosophy. Evidence about mechanisms can constrain a theory of mind. It need not settle every question about what minds are. Equally, dissatisfaction with an account of mind cannot substitute for evidence against the mechanisms it describes.
A reason to keep boundaries visible
The most productive disagreement may concern the connecting premise rather than the observation itself. Two people can agree on a finding and disagree about its implications without either being indifferent to evidence.
An archive of big questions should make those transitions inspectable. Readers deserve to know when an essay moves from a result to an interpretation, and from an interpretation to a claim about reality as a whole.