We can never try to confirm a theory, only test it.
While I think I understand the point Eliezer makes in the link, it’s still possible to try to confirm a theory. One may “fail” and disconfirm it, but still—you did something that would confirm it if it was true. So you tried to confirm it.
(Where confirm means “raise your confidence that it’s true” rather than “prove absolutely certain”.)
The word confirm, in the context of philosophy of science, usually means establish as true with absolute certainty. If that’s the case, you would never try to confirm a theory, because you know it’s not possible.
Indeed, the Theorem’s central insight—that a hypothesis is confirmed by any body of data that its truth renders probable—is the cornerstone of all subjectivist methodology.
I meant usually descriptively rather than proscriptively. Having just read the link for the first time though, confirmation in the traditional sense is a red herring, because Eliezer obviously doesn’t mean confirm in the traditional sense. My apologies for side-tracking the discussion.
To get back to your original point though, what I take Eliezer to be saying in that linked post is that an experiment is necessarily just as much an attempt to disconfirm the theory as to confirm it. If, then, what you are actually doing is trying to “confirm or disconfirm the theory”, and there’s no way to set up an experiment that might confirm but couldn’t disconfirm, then it’s more accurate to say that you are trying to “test the theory”.
While I think I understand the point Eliezer makes in the link, it’s still possible to try to confirm a theory. One may “fail” and disconfirm it, but still—you did something that would confirm it if it was true. So you tried to confirm it.
(Where confirm means “raise your confidence that it’s true” rather than “prove absolutely certain”.)
The word confirm, in the context of philosophy of science, usually means establish as true with absolute certainty. If that’s the case, you would never try to confirm a theory, because you know it’s not possible.
Well, I’m not sure “confirm” has to mean that.
Indeed, the Theorem’s central insight—that a hypothesis is confirmed by any body of data that its truth renders probable—is the cornerstone of all subjectivist methodology.
-- Bayes’ Theorem, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
I meant usually descriptively rather than proscriptively. Having just read the link for the first time though, confirmation in the traditional sense is a red herring, because Eliezer obviously doesn’t mean confirm in the traditional sense. My apologies for side-tracking the discussion.
To get back to your original point though, what I take Eliezer to be saying in that linked post is that an experiment is necessarily just as much an attempt to disconfirm the theory as to confirm it. If, then, what you are actually doing is trying to “confirm or disconfirm the theory”, and there’s no way to set up an experiment that might confirm but couldn’t disconfirm, then it’s more accurate to say that you are trying to “test the theory”.