Energy, matter, and light are doo-dads. The speed of light, I’m not so sure. Could go either way on that one. But e=mc2 is just a way of talking about those three or four things.

To tell you the truth, I find your Law-Things no less spooky than the Platonic Chair (not to mention the Comfy Chair!).

Describing gravity (for example) as nothing but our regular observance that things fall seems to stretch “regular” beyond reason.

So it seems to me we can postulate some thing — gravity — that causes stuff to fall, or we can postulate a somewhat extreme sense of “regular” to avoid extra doo-dads.

There’s “regular” like “I’ll have my regular today,” but when “regular” becomes “I can predict this with mathematical certainty,” it seems like you’re in other territory.

But I’m dead certain there’s an example that works, I just can’t come up with one.

I know you don’t like nothing-buttery, but what is even worse is the unnecessary multiplication of Dood-Dads (see Occam’s Razor).

In the case of e=mc2, we’re saying that mass and energy must act according to this rule. It’s not that we’ve defined mass a certain way. This is some sort of reality that governs the way mass and energy relate. It’s a rule that exists independent of our definitions, which imposes itself upon reality.

But is “the redness of Mr. Lincoln roses” really a “thing?” Or is it just a way of talking about the relationship between the type of rose, and the color of red?

To some extent you can do that with “I’m tired.” E.g., if it’s true that you’re tired, it’s also true that you want to rest, and so on.

But Einstein didn’t discover this relationship by converting matter into energy. He discovered it by following a web of interconnected relationships that all fit together very precisely. That seems like more than just a relationship between things, but I’m not sure I can express exactly why I think that.

I guess another thing to ask is why this relationship always works. Unless you accept David Hume’s analysis, it does seem that these things are rules. What exactly does that mean? What is a rule? Is it a real thing?

Isn’t e=mc2 more like “I’m tired’ than like a rock? No one claims “I’m tired” exists, but it describes the relationship between my physical body and my mental state (my body lacks energy and my mind senses it.)

As a phenomenologist, I am of course happy to say that I experience my own consciousness, and there ain’t no materialist or scientist who is gonna tell me otherwise. If, however, someone is less secure in what he experiences, I recommend reading “What’s it like to be a Bat?” by Thomas Nagel.

Platonism is no consolation for me. I want it to be established 1) that there are minds, 2) that we know things through them, and 3) that we can know things about them.

… mathematics might occupy some middle ground between metaphysics — the philosophical principles of the nature of being — and physical reality.

ISTM that math pretty much rules out pure materialism — if you take “materialism” to mean that the only things that exist are matter and energy. E=mc2 exists, and it’s not mass or energy. How it exists, and what kind of a thing it is, is quite a mystery.

Math seems to point us towards something like Realism, with one great big exception. It’s subject to verification.

The idea that e=mc2 “exists” in some ideal realm is at least a testable hypothesis, while the idea that there is an ideal form of a chair in some ideal realm is not. (In addition to the fact that it seems hopelessly weird.)

I suspect that working on a philosophy of math would be a good middle ground between spooky Platonism and reductionist materialism.

I have often been intrigued about the fact that mathematics applies to the world of experience. If I could explain that, I should be on television.

And on Robin’s penultimate paragraph, it’s always a mild source of irritation to me when people start talking about God “creating the laws of of physics.” Physical laws aren’t “things,” they’re descriptions of other things. To believe that God created everything in detail does not entail believing that He engaged in a separate creative act for each “law” that describes what all those other things do. Yet if you get into a discussion on certain topics, you’ll find out that some people really do argue from the standpoint that the laws are “things” with independent existence, which puts an unnecessary complication into understanding how things work, and frequently leads in the wrong direction.

I don’t understand why “idealism” has to involve a mind. Why can’t there be a kind of mathematical idealism, where “reality” is the laws in some advanced math book?