The theological virtues are three: faith, hope, and charity. The scientistic virtues are two: faith and hope. The scientistic types, pinning their hopes on future science, are full of faith in things unseen, things that are incomprehensible now but will, they hope, become comprehensible in the fullness of time. They thirst less for justice and righteousness than for the final slaying of the dragon of the Hard Problem that stands between them and the paradise of naturalism. (Of course they fool themselves in thinking that the problem of qualia is the only hard problem in the philosophy of mind.)
What is strange here is the quasi-religious talk of "pinning hopes on future science" as if -- quite absurdly -- knowing more and more about the meat within our skulls will finally resolve the outstanding questions in the philosophy of mind. And what, pray tell, does science have to do with hope? To speak of hope in this context shows that one has abandoned science for scientism. There is also something exceedingly curious about hoping that one turn out to be just a material system, a bit of dust in the wind."I was so hoping to be proved to be nothing more than a clever land mammal slated for destruction in a few years, but, dammit all, there are reasons to think that we are more than animals and have a higher destiny. That sucks! Life would then have a meaning beyond the four 'F's: fighting, fleeing, feeding, and reproducing!"
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