All of us, including scientists, make judgments about what is true or false, probable or improbable. And in the process, we frequently appeal to concepts such as evidential support or explanation. Bayesian philosophers of science have given illuminating formal accounts of these concepts. This paper aims to follow in their footsteps, providing a novel formal account of various additional concepts: the likelihood-prior trade-off, successful accommodation of evidence, ad hocness, and, finally, consilience—sometimes also called “unification”. Using these accounts, I also provide (...) a new Bayesian analysis of how someone such as Charles Darwin hypothetically could have reasoned in favor of evolution over special creationism. Lastly, I explore how these accounts relate to other topics and accounts in philosophy, and I chart out some areas for further research. (shrink)

In this article I review attempts to define the term “ad hoc hypothesis,” focusing on the efforts of, among others, Karl Popper, Jarrett Leplin, and Gerald Holton. I conclude that the term is unhelpful; what is “ad hoc” seems to be a judgment made by particular scientists not on the basis of any well-established definition but rather on their individual aesthetic senses. Further, a hypothesis considered ad hoc can apparently be retroactively declared non–ad hoc on the basis of subsequent data, (...) rendering the term meaningless. (shrink)

The Report of the Ad Hoc Adivisory Group on the Operation of NHS Research Ethics Committees has resulted in a strange mixture of the timid, the revolutionary, and the bizarre.The Report of the Ad Hoc Advisory Group on the Operation of NHS Research Ethics Committees is a curious document.1 The remit of the review was focused on the workings and effectiveness of NHS research ethics committees and the multicentre committees ). The Group was primarily set up in response to a (...) series of complaints from medical researchers about the new research governance regime in the UK as a result of the Clinical Trials Directive2 and the Governance Arrangements for NHS Research Ethics Committees.3 The opportunity was also taken to consider the role of research ethics committees in a wider context, and take account of recent developments in relation to the ethics review of social care research,4 student projects,5 as well as recent legislation such as the Human Tissue Act,6 and the Mental Capacity Act.7 However, the resulting report is a strange mixture of the timid, the revolutionary, and the bizarre.A good example of the report’s timidity is its reluctance to propose fundamental change to the process of review or seriously limit the type of research that requires REC review. To its credit AHAG does suggest that some research ‘especially surveys and many studies on NHS staff, could normally be conducted safely without a requirement for REC review’ .1 This is, of course, to be welcomed. However, the report ultimately seems dismissive of the general complaint from researchers that the current process is inappropriately uniform. For example, in section 3.2, it is argued that the ‘common perception that the NHS REC system is dominated …. (shrink)

Recent work in relevance-theoretic pragmatics develops the idea that understanding verbal utterances involves processes of ad hoc concept construction. The resulting concepts may be narrower or looser than the lexical concepts which provide the input to the process. Two of the many issues that arise are considered in this paper: (a) the applicability of the idea to the understanding of metaphor, and (b) the extent to which lexical forms are appropriately thought of as encoding concepts.

Gothic cathedrals like Chartres were built in a discontinuous process by groups of masons using their own local knowledge, measures, and techniques. They had neither plans nor knowledge of structural mechanics. The success of the masons in building such large complex innovative structures lies in the use of templates, string, constructive geometry, and social organization to assemble a coherent whole from the messy heterogeneous practices of diverse groups of workers. Chartres resulted from the ad hoc accumulation of the work of (...) many men. (shrink)

Wireless ad hoc communication on the nanoscale will require thinking outside of the traditional radio spectrum. New applications will utilize new forms of wireless communication channels. For example, nanoscale communication will enable precise mechanisms for directly interacting with cells in vivo. Information may be sent to and from specific cells within the body, allowing detection and healing of diseases on the cellular scale. From a medical standpoint, the use of current wireless techniques to communicate with implants is unacceptable for many (...) reasons, including bulky size, inability to use magnetic resonance imaging after implantation, potential radiation damage, surgical invasiveness, need to recharge/replace power, post-operative pain and long recovery times, and reduced quality of life for the patient. Better, more humane in vivo implant communication is needed. Development of both biological and engineered nanomachines is progressing; such machines will need to communicate [1]. Unfortunately, networking vast collections of nanoscale sensors and robots using current techniques, including wireless techniques, is not possible without communication mechanisms that exceed nanoscale volumes. (shrink)

We examine physicists’ charge of ad hocness against the Higgs mechanism in the standard model of elementary particle physics. We argue that even though this charge never rested on a clear-cut and well-entrenched definition of “ad hoc”, it is based on conceptual and methodological assumptions and principles that are well-founded elements of the scientific practice of high-energy particle physics. We further evaluate the implications of the recent discovery of a Higgs-like particle at the CERN’s Large Hadron Collider for the charge (...) of ad hocness against the Higgs mechanism. (shrink)

To date there seems to be no disciplined way of distinguishing between ad hoc hypotheses and legitimate auxiliary hypotheses. This is embarrassing not just for Popperian falsificationist scientific methodology, for the need for such a distinction seems an important part of scientific practice. Do scientists bother about ad hoc hypotheses at all? Did any towering figure in the history of science care about ad hoc hypotheses? Ironically, the answers to these questions seem to be “Yes” and “No” in both cases. (...) Inspired by Paglieri and Woods’ recent proposal for a theory of enthymeme based on the principle of parsimony, I propose to approach the problem of ad hoc hypothesis by interpreting it as a kind of enthymeme resolution. One reason for this interpretative strategy lies in its potential for understanding the pervasiveness and the longevity of the Aristotelian scientific methodology embedded in the scientific practice throughout the ages. (shrink)

Science is increasingly becoming automated. Tasks yet to be fully automated include the conjecturing, modifying, extending and testing of hypotheses. At present scientists have an array of methods to help them carry out those tasks. These range from the well-articulated, formal and unexceptional rules to the semi-articulated and variously understood rules-of-thumb and intuitive hunches. If we are to hand over at least some of the aforementioned tasks to machines, we need to clarify, refine and make formal, not to mention computable, (...) even the more obscure of the methods scientists successfully employ in their inquiries. The focus of this essay is one such less-than-transparent methodological rule. I am here referring to the rule that ad hoc hypotheses ought to be spurned. This essay begins with a brief examination of some notable conceptions of ad hoc-ness in the philosophical literature. It is pointed out that there is a general problem afflicting most such conceptions, namely the intuitive judgments that are supposed to motivate them are not universally shared. Instead of getting bogged down in what ad hoc-ness exactly means, I shift the focus of the analysis to one undesirable feature often present in alleged cases of ad hoc-ness. I call this feature the ‘monstrousness’ of a hypothesis. A fully articulated formal account of this feature is presented by specifying what it is about the internal constitution of a hypothesis that makes it monstrous. Using this account, a monstrousness measure is then proposed and somewhat sketchily compared with the minimum description length approach. (shrink)

I introduce a thin concept of ad hoc identity -- distinct from metaphysical accounts of either relative identity or absolute identity -- and an equally thin account of concepts and their content. According to the latter minimalist view of concepts, the content of a concept has behavioral consequences, and so content can be bounded if not determined by appeal to linguistic and psychological evidence. In the case of counting practices, this evidence suggests that the number concept depends on a notion (...) of identity at least as strong as ad hoc identity. In the context of nonrelativistic QM in particular, all of the counting procedures appealed to in the existing literature on nonindividuality are shown to involve ad hoc identity. I then show that Goyal Complementarity and the associated derivation of a strong symmetrization principle in QM can be understood in terms ad hoc identity. Specifically, persistence and non-persistence models of quantum processes are seen to be complementary in the sense that they involve two relations of ad hoc identity that occasionally overlap in empirically meaningful ways. Finally, I attempt to draw out consequences for theories of nonindividuality from the above conceptual analysis. The upshot is that counting and definite cardinality are incompatible with nonindividuality, and that none of the counting procedures cited for quantum phenomena offer positive support for an interpretation in terms of nonindividuals. (shrink)

It has been shown that the concept of ad hocness is ambiguous when applied to natural science. Here, it is established that a similar ambiguity is present also when the concept is applied in a philosophical debate. Neil Tennant’s proposal for solving Fitch’s paradox has been accused for being ad hoc several times, and he has presented several defenses. In this paper, it is established that ad hocness is never defined, although each author uses different notions of the concept. And (...) we see that no reason to adopt a certain notion is offered. (shrink)

Relevance Theory makes one of the strongest defenses of the thesis of local linguistic underdetermination. According to this thesis, the intuitive concept expressed by a lexical item in the utterance of a sentence is an ad hoc concept. Ad hoc concepts result from a linguistically free pragmatic process. The postulation of ad hoc concepts is due to the fact that the sort of cognitive organization they introduce is held as necessary to satisfy the demands that, for this Theory, imposes the (...) understanding of intuitive concepts. Here I propose that our cognitive system can satisfy these demands without tolerating propositions basically determined by ad hoc concepts. I also suggest that the information provided by ad hoc concepts is dispensable for the understanding of intuitive concepts. Finally, I propose a local lexical position according to which, the intuitive concept expressed by a lexical item is the concept lexically associated with that item. (shrink)

Karl Popper defines an ad hoc hypothesis as one that is introduced to immunize a theory from some (or all) refutation but which cannot be tested independently. He has also attempted to explicate ad hocness in terms of certain other allegedly undesirable properties of hypotheses or of the explanations they would provide, but his account is confused and mistaken. The first such property is circularity, which is undesirable; the second such property is reduction in empirical content, which need not be. (...) In the former case, I argue that non-circularity is in any event preferable to non-ad hocness as a necessary condition for a satisfactory explanation or an explanans, as the case may be, and I try to sort out various persistent errors surrounding this comparison. In the latter case, I suggest that Popper is barking up the wrong tree, that important scientific progress sometimes does consist in just such reductions in empirical content as he proscribes. This provides a further reason for not taking ad hoc hypotheses as Popper conceives them to pose the danger for science he believes they do. (shrink)

In relevance-theoretic pragmatics thelower-levelorfirst-order explicatureis a propositional form resulting from a series of inferential developments of the logical form. It amounts to the message the speaker communicates explicitly. Thehigher-levelorsecond-order explicatureis a description of the speech act that the speaker performs, her affective attitude towards what she says or her epistemic stance to the communicated information. Information about the speaker’s affective attitude or epistemic stance need not solely be represented in the latter, though. It could be included as beliefs in the (...) mental files of pragmatically adjusted conceptual representations featuring in lower-level explicatures. Those beliefs would originate as lexical pragmatic processes operate and their representation would be triggered by elements like evaluative morphemes, expressive expletives, insulting terms and evidential participles. Although they may be true or false in their own right, such beliefs would not affect the truth-conditional content of the expressed proposition. (shrink)

The Dead Past Growing Block theory of time—DPGB-theory—is the metaphysical view that the past and the present tenselessly exist, whereas the future does not, and that only the present hosts mentality, whereas the past lacks it and is, in this sense, dead. One main reason in favour of this view is that it is immune to the now-now objection or epistemic objection (which aims at undermining the certainty, within an A-theoretical universe, of being currently experiencing the objective present time). In (...) this paper, I examine the additional arguments offered by P. Forrest and G. A. Forbes to back the DPGB-theory and show that they do not work. I also examine a proposal to rescue the DPGB-theory suggested by an anonymous reviewer for this journal and argue that it does not work either. Moreover, in line with D. Braddon-Mitchell and against Forbes, I argue that the DPGB-theory is indeed committed to the existence of zombies in the past. Being ad hoc and burdened by a very odd and counterintuitive ontological commitment, the DPGB-theory turns out to be rather unpalatable. (shrink)

When a theory is confronted with a problem such as a paradox, an empirical anomaly, or a vicious regress, one may change part of the theory to solve that problem. Sometimes the proposed solution is considered ad hoc. This paper gives a new definition of ‘ad hoc solution’ as used in both philosophy and science. I argue that a solution is ad hoc if it fails to live up to the explanatory requirements of a theory because the solution is not (...) backed by an explanation or because it does not diagnose the problem. Ad hoc solutions are thus magical: they solve a problem without providing insight. This definition helps to explain both why ad hoc solutions are bad and why there may be disagreement about cases. (shrink)

The idea that two objects can coincide—by sharing all their proper parts, or matter—yet be non-identical, results in the “Problem of Coincident Objects”: in what relation do objects stand if they are not identical but share all their proper parts? One solution is to introduce material constitution. In this paper, I argue that this is ad hoc since, first, this solution cannot be generalized to solve similar problems, and, second, there are pseudo cases of coincidence that should not trigger the (...) introduction of material constitution and these cannot be distinguished in any principled way from the allegedly real cases of coincidence. (shrink)

Hume argues that whenever we seem to be motivated by reason, there are unnoticed calm passions that play this role instead, a move that is often criticised as ad hoc. In response, some commentators propose a conceptual rather than empirical reading of Hume’s conativist thesis, either as a departure from Hume, or as an interpretation or rational reconstruction. I argue that conceptual accounts face a dilemma: either they render the conativist thesis trivial, or they violate Hume’s thesis that ‘a priori, (...) any thing may produce any thing’. I defend an empirical construal of Hume’s conativist thesis. I provide two theoretical frameworks within which Hume’s appeal to the calm passions may be justified: first, by the framework of theoretical virtues, and secondly, by lights of his own “rules by which to judge of causes and effects”. (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag werden einige wissenschaftstheoretische Thesen u.a. von Paul K. Feyerabend hinsichtlich ad-hoc-Hypothesen untersucht. Es wird dabei gezeigt, dass Feyerabends Empfehlungen dafür, ad-hoc-Hypothesen zu akzeptieren oder abzulehnen, vom Einfluss dieser Hypothesen auf die Entwicklung von Technik abhängen. In einem weiteren Schritt wird angedeutet, dass eine derartige Relativierung auch in gängigen Bestätigungstheorien nahegelegt wird, dass man also gängigen Bestätigungstheorien und Feyerabend zufolge ad-hoc-Hypothesen nur hinsichtlich ihres Einflusses auf die Technikentwicklung akzeptieren oder ablehnen sollte.

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.

This paper examines flexibility in ad hoc networks and suggests that, even with cross-layer design as a mechanism to improve adaptation, a fundamental limitation exists in the ability of a single optimization function, defined a priori, to adapt the network to meet all quality-of-service requirements. Thus, code implementing multiple algorithms will have to be positioned within the network. Active networking and programmable networking enable unprecedented autonomy and flexibility for ad hoc communication networks. However, in order to best leverage the results (...) of active and programmable networking, metrics that indicate the nature and location of required flexibility need to be developed. The primary contribution of this paper is to propose a metric that couples network topological rate of change with the ability of a generic service to move itself to an optimal location in concert with the changing network. This metric points to a fundamental tradeoff among adaptation (changing service location), performance (sophistication or estimated minimum code size of the service), and the network’s ability to tune itself to a changing ad hoc network topology. (shrink)

Hume argues that whenever we seem to be motivated by reason, there are unnoticed calm passions that play this role instead, a move is that is often criticised as ad hoc (e.g. Stroud 1977 and Cohon 2008). In response, some commentators propose a conceptual rather than empirical reading of Hume’s conativist thesis, either as a departure from Hume (Stroud 1977), or as an interpretation or rational reconstruction (Bricke 1996). -/- I argue that conceptual accounts face a dilemma: either they render (...) the conativist thesis trivial, or they violate Hume's thesis that 'a priori, any thing may produce any thing'. I defend an empirical construal of Hume’s conativist thesis. I provide two theoretical frameworks within which Hume’s appeal to the calm passions may be justified: first, by the framework of theoretical virtues, and secondly, by lights of his own ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ (THN 1.3.15). (shrink)

Horizonte Nominata of ad hoc evaluators 2016.

I propose that an account of metaphor understanding which covers the full range of cases has to allow for two routes or modes of processing. One is a process of rapid, local, on-line concept construction that applies quite generally to the recovery of word meaning in utterance comprehension. The other requires a greater focus on the literal meaning of sentences or texts, which is metarepresented as a whole and subjected to more global, reflective pragmatic inference. The questions whether metaphors convey (...) a propositional content and what role imagistic representation plays receive somewhat different answers depending on the processing route. (shrink)

Recently, Casasanto and Lupyan (2015) have proposed an appealing and daring thesis: there are no context-independent concepts—that is, all concepts are ad hoc concepts. They argue that the seeming stability of concepts is merely due to commonalities across their different instantiations but that, in fact, there is nothing invariant in them. In their view, concepts only exist when they are instantiated for categorizing, communicating, drawing inferences, etc., and those instantiations are produced on the fly from a set of contextual cues. (...) However, the main weakness of Casasanto and Lupyan’s framework is that it lacks a proposal for articulating it within a theory on the structure of concepts. My aim is to show that the ad hoc cognition framework can be characterized by means of a prototype theory of concepts developed in terms of a conceptual similarity space. (shrink)

I offer an account of ad hocness that explains why the adoption of an ad hoc auxiliary is accompanied by the disconfirmation of a hypothesis H. H must be conjoined with an auxiliary a′, which is improbable antecedently given H, while ~H does not have this disability. This account renders it unnecessary to require, for identifying ad hocness, that either a′ or H have a posterior probability less than or equal to 0.5; there are also other reasons for abandoning that (...) condition. I distinguish between formal ad hocness, which is bad in the probabilistic sense that it results in disconfirmation of H, and argumentative ad hocness, which actually involves bad reasoning on the part of a subject. The latter is what I call “not counting the cost.” This distinction allows us to see why the 0.5 condition appeared attractive in the first place. The concept of not counting the cost also has implications for other areas of research, including both a Bayesian concept of unfalsifiability and the classic epistemological question of the problem of the external world. (shrink)

What is wrong with ad hoc hypotheses? Ever since Popper’s falsificationist account of adhocness, there has been a lively philosophical discussion about what constitutes adhocness in scientific explanation, and what, if anything, distinguishes legitimate auxiliary hypotheses from illicit ad hoc ones. This paper draws upon distinct examples from pseudoscience to provide us with a clearer view as to what is troubling about ad hoc hypotheses. In contrast with other philosophical proposals, our approach retains the colloquial, derogative meaning of adhocness, and (...) calls attention to the way in which the context of a theoretical move bears on the charge of adhocness. We also discuss the role of motivations implicit in the concept of adhocness, and the way ad hoc moves draw on theory-internal rationalizations. (shrink)

Situation theorists such as Jon Barwise, John Etchemendy, and John Perry have advanced the hypothesis that linguistic and mental representations are ‘situated' in the sense that they are true or false only relative to partial situations. François Recanati has done an important task in reviving and in many respects deepening situation theory. In this chapter, I explore some aspects of Recanati's own account. I focus on situated mental representations, and stress the connection between them and ad hoc or temporary concepts.

This article examines a series of Schelling-like models of residential segregation, in which agents prefer to be in the minority. We demonstrate that as long as agents care about the characteristics of their wider community, they tend to end up in a segregated state. We then investigate the process that causes this and conclude that the result hinges on the similarity of informational states among agents of the same type. This is quite different from Schelling-like behavior and suggests that segregation (...) is an instance of macrobehavior that can arise from a wide variety of micromotives. (shrink)

Ad hoc concepts are highly-context dependent representations humans construct to deal with novel or uncommon situations and to interpret linguistic stimuli in communication. In the last decades, such concepts have been investigated both in experimental cognitive psychology and within pragmatics by proponents of so-called relevance theory. These two research lines have however proceeded in parallel, proposing two unconnected strategies to account for the construction and use of ad hoc concepts. The present work explores the relations between these two approaches and (...) the possibility of merging them into a unique account of the internal structure of ad hoc representations and of the key processes involved in their constructions. To this purpose, we first present an integrated two-level account of the construction of ad hoc representations from lexical concepts; then, we show how our account can be embedded in a conceptual space framework that allows for a natural, geometrical interpretation of the main steps in such a construction process. After discussing in detail two main examples of the construction of ad hoc concepts within conceptual spaces, we conclude with some remarks on possible extensions of our approach. (shrink)

Heutzutage sind die Theorien über ad-hoc-Hypothesen problematisch. Sie sind entweder zu streng und verbieten zu viel, oder sie sind relativ leer. Um eine Erklärung dafür zu entwickeln, werden die Wurzeln der wissenschaftstheoretischen Probleme der ad-hoc-Hypothesen dargestellt. Die in diesem Jahrhundert vorgeschlagenen Theorien über ihre Anwendung werden kritisiert. Ihre Unzulänglichkeit wird auf ihre allzu hohen positivistischen Ansprüche zurückgeführt: Keine Theorie über ad-hoc-Hypothesen kann sie unabhängig von Analysen ihrer Kontexte identifizieren, und keine solche Theorie kann als einziger Maßstab für die wissenschaftlichen Theorien (...) dienen. Die neuen Versuche müssen dem Zusammenhang zwischen verschiedenen Maßstäben für die wissenschaftlichen Theorien einerseits und der erhofften Vermeidung von ad-hoc-Hypothesen andererseits Rechnung tragen. Die neuen Theorien der Problemauswahl bieten gute Möglichkeiten, dieses Ziel zu erreichen, wenn der Entdeckung von neuen Problemen Priorität gegeben wird. (shrink)

Our utterances are typically if not always "situated," in the sense that they are true or false relative to unarticulated parameters of the extra-linguistic context. The problem is to explain how these parameters are determined, given that nothing in the uttered sentences indicates them. It is tempting to claim that they must be determined at the level of thought or intention. However, as many philosophers have observed, thoughts themselves are no less situated than utterances. Unarticulated parameters need not be mentally (...) represented. In this paper, I try to make precise the notion of representation at stake here. In one sense of 'representation', something is represented if it is inferentially relevant. In another, less demanding sense, something is represented if it is relevant to the construction of a context-sensitive, ad hoc concept. Ad hoc concepts act as "proxies" for cognitively more demanding representations. They "imitate" the latter's epistemic and pragmatic roles while being inferentially less sophisticated. Thus, there are two senses in which a thought can be said to be situated: (1) its truth-value is relative to a non-represented contextual parameter, (2) its truth-value is not itself relative, but it involves a context-sensitive, ad hoc concept. (shrink)

Although there is no consensus about what kinds are, there is a common understanding that kinds can be regarded as collections of objects that share certain properties. What these properties exactly are is often left unspecified. This paper explores the semantics of ad hoc kind-referring terms, where the determination of the relevant set of shared properties does not rely on “natural” properties or world knowledge. Rather, information provided by a nominal modifier, typically a relative clause, is used to impute the (...) required regular behavior on the kind-referring NP. Building on Carlson’s disjointness condition, I show that we can not only account for the ubiquity of these expressions, but we can also extend the analysis to other constructions that have traditionally not been taken to be kind referring, such as Amount and Degree Relative constructions. (shrink)

Although there is no consensus about what kinds are, there is a common understanding that kinds can be regarded as collections of objects that share certain properties. What these properties exactly are is often left unspecified. This paper explores the semantics of ad hoc kind-referring terms, where the determination of the relevant set of shared properties does not rely on “natural” properties or world knowledge. Rather, information provided by a nominal modifier, typically a relative clause, is used to impute the (...) required regular behavior on the kind-referring NP. Building on Carlson’s disjointness condition, I show that we can not only account for the ubiquity of these expressions, but we can also extend the analysis to other constructions that have traditionally not been taken to be kind referring, such as Amount and Degree Relative constructions. (shrink)

Although there is no consensus about what kinds are, there is a common understanding that kinds can be regarded as collections of objects that share certain properties. What these properties exactly are is often left unspecified. This paper explores the semantics of ad hoc kind-referring terms, where the determination of the relevant set of shared properties does not rely on “natural” properties or world knowledge. Rather, information provided by a nominal modifier, typically a relative clause, is used to impute the (...) required regular behavior on the kind-referring NP. Building on Carlson’s disjointness condition, I show that we can not only account for the ubiquity of these expressions, but we can also extend the analysis to other constructions that have traditionally not been taken to be kind referring, such as Amount and Degree Relative constructions. (shrink)