The quantum mechanical foundations of philosophy

Abstract

Many of the most familiar features of our everyday environment, and some of our basic notions about it, stem from Relativistic Quantum Field Theory (RQFT). We argue in particular that the origin of common names, verbs, adjectives such as full and empty, the concepts of identity, similarity, Plato's Universals, natural numbers, and existence versus non-existence can be traced to the space-time and gauge symmetries and quantum properties embodied in RQFT. These basic tools of human thought cannot arise in a universe strictly described by classical Physics based on Planck's constant being exactly equal to zero.