We can’t represent ourselves in our deterministic models of the world. If you don’t have the ability to step back and examine the model-building process, you’ll inevitably conclude that your own behavior cannot be deterministic.
The key is to recognize that even if the world is deterministic, we will necessarily perceive uncertainties in it, because of fundamental mathematical limits on the ability of a part to represent the whole. We have no grounds for saying that we are any more or less deterministic than anything else—if we find deterministic models useful in predicting the world, we should use them, and assume that they would predict our own actions, if we could use them that way.
We can’t represent ourselves in our deterministic models of the world. If you don’t have the ability to step back and examine the model-building process, you’ll inevitably conclude that your own behavior cannot be deterministic.
The key is to recognize that even if the world is deterministic, we will necessarily perceive uncertainties in it, because of fundamental mathematical limits on the ability of a part to represent the whole. We have no grounds for saying that we are any more or less deterministic than anything else—if we find deterministic models useful in predicting the world, we should use them, and assume that they would predict our own actions, if we could use them that way.