- Edited
Lorraine Ford
You appear to use the terms 'categories' and 'characteristics' in essentially the same way - so we appear to have different definitions (I do not use them the same way). So if I take your use of 'categories' to also mean 'characteristics' then when I use 'characteristics' you can also use 'categories' (although that does not work for me).
Assuming I am (mostly) correct on your use of terminology, then we appear to be saying similar things. We agree about 1) for sure. For 2) we can agree that there is a real world 'out there' that has characteristics (or your 'categories'). I would ask how 'physics has shown' anything about the real world out there? My response would say agreement with others is what has shown a real world exists 'out there'. Neither physics nor science can claim this of themselves, as I think the concept of an agreed world 'out there' significantly predates any concept of science. I would suggest that science grew out of an assumption that we can perform measurements and experiments on the world out there where different people would agree upon the results (the world out there being an assumption, not a demonstrable fact). This does not remove the abstract nature of our model of the 'world out there', nor of the mathematics we have devised to measure and experiment on this abstract model. And science does attempt to check our abstract models against our experience of the world out there. An adherence to checking model against 'out there' is part of the reason why science is a better methodology than mysticism or religion. The methodology does have limitations for singular events and internal subjective experiences.
The 'fake news' aspect comes from agreements between people that are not cross-checked against the world out there (or worse, the agreements are intentionally propagated knowing most people will not cross-check the statements). Good journalism and good science both have this cross-checking in common - 'fake news' does not or cherry picks the results to agree on. However the characteristics (or categories) are still human dependent - since they are defined by our sensory perceptions, which to date have a scale dependence on those perceptions.
I will agree that relative position implies, to a human, a distance between objects - however 'distance' implies a (human) measurement, while relative position does not. So they are not entirely equivalent concepts. Measurement requires a conscious mind and abstract model, while relative position can exist 'out there' as a characteristic.
So, while I can agree that the world out there has characteristics, the ones we measure are still human defined.
So I think I am saying that anything that we can measure and has mathematical representation (which are abstractions) presumes the abstract models we have in our minds and is not really in the world out there. With that said, in our daily lives we pretty much conflate the world out there with our abstract model of it and pay little attention to the abstractions and differences. And if most people (or most scientists) agree on an abstract model, it will be rather difficult to change that abstract model - even if with a better one.
Finally, if you are suggesting that there is "only smaller scale mass/ relative position/ charge/ etc. infrastructure that, logically conjoined, leads to the larger scale", then you have entirely bought into the abstract model and are no longer concerned with what your sensory perceptions tell you. There are articles that state 'You never actually touch anything, since atoms never actually touch' - cross-check this with your eyes touching another person or a window pane. If levels of scale fall along a distinct dimension, then both can be true - each at their own level (however this presumes a fourth spatial dimension - since different actions at different scales can occur at the same three-dimensional position). How do you explain how our scale humans created the LHC that manipulates the small scale? Does it all start with the cause at the small scale up to our scale and then back down to the small scale? How does this occur? Doesn't this also presume a dimension of scale that the cause moves up and down along?
I would go so far as to say that relative positions and actions at different scales, even appearing to be at the same position from the point of view of one scale, are characteristics of the world out there. Being able to measure the distance between these positions appears to be a limitation of our models and/or mathematics, since our mathematics is currently unable to provide a single value measurement of such a distance at this time.