If I’m reading this correctly, if A is true and the evidence available to you for A is false, you wish to believe that A is false? Or am I missing something?
Note that this statement only makes sense if you already subscribe to physical realism, as it presumes the territory separate from any maps.
If you don’t make this assumption, this statement means that “at some point I will acquire evidence confirming the model based on A with very high confidence”. The currently available evidence may be against A, however. It happens quite often in physics, though not it trivial ways.
For example, light was believed to be composed of particles, until the Poisson’s spot was discovered. There was plenty of experimental evidence for it, too. Afterwards, light was believed to be waves, and there was overwhelming evidence for this, as well. Then the UV catastrophe was deduced and the photoelectric effect was discovered, demonstrating that the question “is light a wave or a particle” has a different answer, depending on the manner of asking. The story is far from over at present.
I wish to believe that I will update my beliefs based on available evidence (a bit meta here).
The correct answer to “is light a wave or a particle” is “No, it is not the case that there exists ‘light’ that is a wave or a particle. Electromagnetism behaves according to these equations, which closely approximate wavelike behavior in these areas and closely approximate billiard balls in these areas.”
If I’m reading this correctly, if A is true and the evidence available to you for A is false, you wish to believe that A is false? Or am I missing something?
Note that this statement only makes sense if you already subscribe to physical realism, as it presumes the territory separate from any maps.
If you don’t make this assumption, this statement means that “at some point I will acquire evidence confirming the model based on A with very high confidence”. The currently available evidence may be against A, however. It happens quite often in physics, though not it trivial ways.
For example, light was believed to be composed of particles, until the Poisson’s spot was discovered. There was plenty of experimental evidence for it, too. Afterwards, light was believed to be waves, and there was overwhelming evidence for this, as well. Then the UV catastrophe was deduced and the photoelectric effect was discovered, demonstrating that the question “is light a wave or a particle” has a different answer, depending on the manner of asking. The story is far from over at present.
I wish to believe that I will update my beliefs based on available evidence (a bit meta here).
The correct answer to “is light a wave or a particle” is “No, it is not the case that there exists ‘light’ that is a wave or a particle. Electromagnetism behaves according to these equations, which closely approximate wavelike behavior in these areas and closely approximate billiard balls in these areas.”