The question I ask is "what influence do I have on events happening in the world?"
On the one hand my everyday experience shows that when I decide to do something (such as pick up the coffee mug from the table) I see the effect. When I decide not to ( and leave the coffee mug on the table) then indeed the previous effect does not (usually) happen. The only relevant factor in many things happening around me seems to be my own decisions.
On the other hand, the scientific point of view tells us that everything around us can be reduced to the interactions of the fundamental particles which make up the universe. The classic approach tells us that the interactions are deterministic in nature. Knowing the initial conditions, we can predict everything that is going to happen in the future. The modern quantum approach, if I understand correctly, says the interactions are non-deterministic and the predictions can only be made approximately. Both ways "I" does not have a say in anything that happens.
How do we resolve this apparent paradox?
The compatibilist approach says there is no contradiction. If both approaches coexist then they are compatible. OK, fair enough, but how so?
If the world is deterministic then all I need to do is lay back and enjoy the show. No worries. No aspirations. Everything will just happen on it's own. But wait... isn't that a decision I just made?
There seems to be something very paradoxical when switching from the point of view of the individual to that of the objective observer... this makes me wonder about the meaning of describing things from a "point of view". In one perspective the viewer is a passive observer. In the other the viewer is an active agent.
In the active agent point of view there is an inherent paradox: An agent wishing to model the world around it has to include itself in the model. Doesn't this lead to infinite regress? If we believe the regress stops at a certain point (and I do believe this is the case) then there is an inherent limitation to our ability to model the world(It is analogous to the halting problem).
The passive observer view has it's limitations too. It seems that a passive observer can indeed model everything outside it. But it is missing a description of itself.(Perhaps this is God, just a passive observer, knows everything but can do nothing about it...)
So is the scientific point of view a fictitious one? Maybe there is no objective description of reality.
Another question which comes to mind is the following:
We saw that any one point of view is limited. Do we improve anything by adding more observers? Can many observers reach a more coherent description of reality than any one alone?
In the active agent point of view there is an inherent paradox: An agent wishing to model the world around it has to include itself in the model. Doesn't this lead to infinite regress? If we believe the regress stops at a certain point (and I do believe this is the case) then there is an inherent limitation to our ability to model the world(It is analogous to the halting problem).
The passive observer view has it's limitations too. It seems that a passive observer can indeed model everything outside it. But it is missing a description of itself.(Perhaps this is God, just a passive observer, knows everything but can do nothing about it...)
So is the scientific point of view a fictitious one? Maybe there is no objective description of reality.
Another question which comes to mind is the following:
We saw that any one point of view is limited. Do we improve anything by adding more observers? Can many observers reach a more coherent description of reality than any one alone?
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