A coherentist conception of ad hoc hypotheses

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

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10.1016/j.shpsa.2017.11.011

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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.
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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.

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References found in this work

The structure of empirical knowledge.Laurence BonJour - 1985 - Cambridge, Mass.: 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.

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