I suppose you would categorize me as a "Platonist".
My life has been filled with the "Joy of Discovery" -- and awe at the magnificence of the One proclaimed by His works that I was discovering!
YAY!!!!!!!! Welcome to the club!!!! That would place you in excellent company! [See A-G's commentary on this, here.]
Just a couple stray thoughts: (1) I gather most of the research into artificial intelligence/artificial life is being conducted by mathematical formalists. Somehow, I do not find that particularly encouraging....
(2) Ayn Rand has popularized the notion that Plato and Aristotle were somehow fundamentally opposed to each other. And finds that Plato is really the "bad guy," a socialist, maybe even a communist. Aristotle is the "good guy," because he is always guided by the Light of Reason.... And that a condition of animosity existed between them. Her argument on the basis of actual evidence is underwhelming. Nonetheless, so many people have been persuaded by it.
Yet these two guys were closely associated for some 27 years, at first in the Teacher/Student relation, and later, as close colleagues. It seems to me that the only "dispute" between them was where to locate the formal cause of the existent things in the world.
Plato located this cause in a divine Beyond, in the divine Idea — a wholly transcendent cause that does not rise in any way shape or form from material existence. It arises from beyond the Cosmos, not from within the Cosmos (a/k/a the "Universe"). In short, Plato's formal cause transcends the world of human experience.
Aristotle, on the other hand, had the idea that the formal cause of any particular entity resides within the entity itself. That is, an entity's formal cause is immanent to itself; which is to say, it rises from within the Cosmos.
Two most excellent points of view, I must say!!! And Aristotle's accomplishment has IMHO justly earned him the title of founder of the natural sciences. Yet to this day, no one has been able to show which of these two positions is necessarily correct such that it excludes the other.
To me, bottom line, these do not look so much like mutually-opposed points of view; rather, they look like astounding complementarities.
But either way you slice it, God is still in charge....
Thank you ever so much, my dear brother in Christ, for sharing your thoughts with me!