many things cannot be determined rationally. We can look at an argument, see coherence, see logic, but not be sure what filters, semantic confusions, false dilemmas and other such mythologization may be in what seem like tough minded, science based reasoning. So these things peck at us. It is unpleasant, though i can’t say I get that bothered by the idea of determinism so much anymore. I mean, if I was in the process of being convinced it was the case, I would find that unpleasant, but that isn’t happening.
I had a long period where the non-existence of the self - especially over time - really, really bothered me. And then it didn’t so much. Not because I can defeat a materialist argument there, I just find it has less hooks for me.
Perhaps something else is really going on that allows us to get hooked and tortured by such arguments. I think this is the case for me. It was a kind of impossible worry. Nothing I could do about it, while there were many pressing down to earth issues I might possibly have been able to deal with and I really did not want to look at those for fear I couldn’t.
I am not saying this is the case with you, just that I think it is possible with humans to fixate on an issue they have no control over and this becomes a focal point, when, in fact other more concrete things are banging on the door and we don’t want to focus on them.
I mean, if determinism turns out to be the case, YOU have not failed. You have not shamed yourself. A fact would now be clearly a fact as it was all along. But there are many issues that at the very least it feels like it would be shameful, guilt producing, ridiculous if we could not change, fix or deal with them, so we focus on something that is in this way, and perhap this way alone, safe. It’s bad enough being damned, but being damned by what seems like one’s own hand, that is really aweful.
You could see if, at the edges of your consciousness, there are things that you are afraid to look at and begin taking steps to deal with, likely things other people, at least some of them, seem to have an easy(er) time with.
I think a big factor is team identification. Once you decide you are the enemy of ____________, then you take on the team’s philosophy on issues, here disidentifying with the irrational ones who have been terrible by ____________ and ______________. This does not mean other logical and rational factors were not involved in team choice and position belief, but I think this team identification is huge. I notice that irrationality produced by members of one’s own team are generally not attacked. FJ’s burden of proof thread OP a nice exception. This holds for all teams, though irrational may not be the enemy code word for other teams.
Often I have encountered ‘if the natural laws break down then there is no point in science’ and other similar statements that it seems to me indicate underlying fears of having to depend on intuition, openly.