You can say things like, “In the domain of physics, X,” “Assuming the scientific method, X,” or “Assuming the premises of logic, X.”
But “computation is a fundamental aspect of the universe”, in the way it's being understood in this thread (as opposed to the article) does not remain within any of those frameworks. It makes a claim about reality as a whole.
Once you make that kind of universal claim, all the assumptions built into “computation” - about identity, distinct states, lawful transitions, causation, logic, etc. - become part of the claim. You cannot use those assumptions silently and then present the conclusion as framework-independent.
And those frameworks come with consequences. Using the language of computation, they come with "lossiness" wrt modelling "reality".
(see Aristotle Metaphysics -> Kant CoPR -> later Wittgenstein)
The Church-Turing thesis (the fact that all models of computation we've been able to come up with are equivalent) gives the necessary weight to that claim.
The Church-Turing thesis is a statement about symoblic processes, and symbolism is simply not fundamental to the universe. It is fundamental to how humans understand the universe. That's the distinction.
But “computation is a fundamental aspect of the universe”, in the way it's being understood in this thread (as opposed to the article) does not remain within any of those frameworks. It makes a claim about reality as a whole.
Once you make that kind of universal claim, all the assumptions built into “computation” - about identity, distinct states, lawful transitions, causation, logic, etc. - become part of the claim. You cannot use those assumptions silently and then present the conclusion as framework-independent.
And those frameworks come with consequences. Using the language of computation, they come with "lossiness" wrt modelling "reality".
(see Aristotle Metaphysics -> Kant CoPR -> later Wittgenstein)