Add to ORKGThis paper is a brief formulation of a radical thesis. We start with the formalist doctrine that mathematical objects have no meanings; we have marks and rules governing how these marks can be combined. That’s all. Then I go further by arguing that the signs of a formal system of mathe-matics should be considered as physical objects, and the formal operations as physical processes. The rules of the formal operations are or can be ex-pressed in terms of the laws of physics governing these processes. In accor-dance with the physicalist understanding of mind, this is true even if the operations in question are executed in the head. A truth obtained through (mathematical) reasoning is, therefore, an observed outcome of a neuro-physiological (or...