Lorraine Ford We only agree that categories, relationships, numbers, and algorithms can be used to represent physical reality but we obviously disagree with the next step, where you effectively identify the representation with the physical reality being represented.
If physical movement is something we “represent as” number movement then you have already acknowledged the exact distinction I am making. The physical change is what occurs in reality while the changing numbers are how we represent that change mathematically. It does not follow that physical movement literally is number movement.
Likewise, saying that we represent physical structure mathematically does not mean there is “no separate physical structure.” A representation necessarily represents something, otherwise we are no longer talking about a mathematical representation of physical reality but identifying physical reality itself with mathematical objects, which is precisely the move I explicitly reject.
And I don’t see anything Platonic about saying that something objectively exists independently of whether an observer recognizes or describes it. In NVM, an organized physical structure exists because of the physical state and dynamics of the nonlinear substrate and not because someone is standing outside the system recognizing a pattern.
We absolutely don’t need additional kinds of symbols, but we do need to maintain the distinction between the symbols we use to describe reality and the physical reality those symbols are intended to describe.
