More on Hawking

It is worth commenting further on Hawking's approach to reality. I would like to describe it as "reductionistic" and reference an interesting review article of the work of another mathematician describing this approach and why it is erroneous. The mathematician is Gian Carlo-Rota, and his book is called Indiscrete Thoughts. The review article is by Robert Sokolowski. Here is what Sokolowski writes:

"Another theme developed by Rota is that of 'Fundierung.' He shows that throughout our experience we encounter things that exist only as founded upon other things: a checkmate is founded upon moving certain peices of chess, which in turn are founded upon certain peices of wood or plastic. An insult is founded upon certain words being spoken, an act of generosity is founded upon something's being handed over. In perception, for example, the evidence that occurs to us goes beyond the physical impact on our sensory organs even though it is founded upon it; what we see is far more than meets the eye.

"Rota gives striking examples to bring out this relationship of founding, which he takes as a logical relationship, containing all the force of logical necessity. His point is strongly anti-reductionist. Reductionism is the inclination to see as 'real' only the foundation, the substrate of things (the piece of wood in chess, the physical exchange in a social phenomenon, and especially the brain as founding the mind) and to deny the true existence of that which is founded.

"Rota's arguments against reductionism, along with his colorful examples, are a marvelous philosophical therapy for the debilitating illness of reductionism that so pervades our culture and our educational systems, leading us to deny things we all know to be true, such as the reality of choice, or intelligence, or emotive insight, and spiritual understanding. He shows that ontological reductionism and the prejudice for axiomatic systems are both escapes from reality, attempts to substitute something automatic, manageable, and packaged, something coercive, in place of the human situation, which we all acknowledge by the way we live, even as we deny it in our theories."

Certainly, as Hawking points out, our life is built upon a foundation of our body, which includes our brain. But as Sokolowski explains, reductionism is the inclination to see as "real" only the foundation, the substrate of things, and to deny the true existence of that which is founded. Hawking seems to be doing exactly that when he claims that our minds are simply a function of our machine-like brain. Luckily, reality is much fuller, and more mysterious, than Hawking will admit. And the philosophical analysis provided by Carlo-Roti, as explained by Sokolowski, should give us some assurance that Hawking's views are much too constricted to be accepted as true.