A coherentist conception of ad hoc hypotheses

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 67:54-64 (2018)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

What does it mean for a hypothesis to be ad hoc? One prominent account has it that ad hoc hypotheses have no independent empirical support. Others have viewed ad hoc judgements as subjective. Here I critically review both of these views and defend my own Coherentist Conception of Ad hocness by working out its conceptual and descriptive attractions.

Categories

Keywords

Reprint years

DOI

10.1016/j.shpsa.2017.11.011

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 101,505

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

My notes

Similar books and articles

On Ad Hoc Hypotheses.J. Christopher Hunt - 2012 - Philosophy of Science 79 (1):1-14.
What is the Problem of Ad Hoc Hypotheses?Greg Bamford - 1999 - Science & Education 8 (4):375 - 86..
Moving Too Fast: The Making of an Ad Hoc Hypothesis.Sarah Scott - 2011 - Metatheoria 2 (1):37-60.
Popper's explications of ad hocness: Circularity, empirical content, and scientific practice.Greg Bamford - 1993 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (2):335-355.
Ad Hoc Hypothesis Generation as Enthymeme Resolution.Woosuk Park - 2006 - In Lorenzo Magnani & Claudia Casadio (eds.), Model Based Reasoning in Science and Technology. Logical, Epistemological, and Cognitive Issues. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.
On Not Counting the Cost: Ad Hocness and Disconfirmation.Lydia McGrew - 2014 - Acta Analytica 29 (4):491-505.
The hypothesis that saves the day: ad hoc reasoning in pseudoscience.Maarten Boudry - 2013 - Logique Et Analyse 223:245-258.
The Magic of Ad Hoc Solutions.Jeroen Smid - 2023 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (4):724-741.
Philosophical perspectives on ad hoc hypotheses and the Higgs mechanism.Simon Friederich, Robert Harlander & Koray Karaca - 2014 - Synthese 191 (16):3897-3917.
On ad hoc hypotheses.Christopher Hunt - 2012 - Philosophy of Science 79 (1):1–14.

Analytics

Added to PP
2018-02-18

Downloads
58 (#370,883)

6 months
8 (#594,873)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Samuel Schindler
Aarhus University

Citations of this work

Theoretical Virtues in Scientific Practice: An Empirical Study.Moti Mizrahi - 2022 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 73 (4):879-902.
Methodological reflections on the MOND/dark matter debate.Patrick M. Duerr & William J. Wolf - 2023 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 101 (C):1-23.
Predictivism and avoidance of ad hoc-ness: An empirical study.Samuel Schindler - 2024 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 104 (C):68-77.
The Magic of Ad Hoc Solutions.Jeroen Smid - 2023 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (4):724-741.

View all 6 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

The structure of empirical knowledge.Laurence BonJour - 1985 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
The methodology of scientific research programmes.Imre Lakatos - 1978 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
The Logic of Scientific Discovery.Karl Popper - 1959 - Studia Logica 9:262-265.
The Logic of Scientific Discovery.K. Popper - 1959 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 10 (37):55-57.

View all 41 references / Add more references