Samuel Schindler publishes "A coherentist conception of ad hoc hypotheses"
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 67, February 2018, pp. 54-64
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 stemming from a lack of unifiedness of the amended theory. Still others view them as merely subjective. Here I critically review these views and defend my own Coherentist Conception of Ad hocness by working out its conceptual and descriptive attractions.