How is Resistance Possible?

How Is Epistemic Reasoning Possible?

a SPECIAL ISSUE IV, pp. 7– 20, 2009 HOW IS EPISTEMIC REASONING POSSIBLE?

How is spontaneous symmetry breaking possible?

We pose and resolve a seeming paradox about spontaneous symmetry breaking in the quantum theory of infinite systems. For a symmetry to be spontaneously broken, it must not be implementable by a unitary operator. But Wigner’s theorem guarantees that every symmetry is implemented by a unitary operator that preserves transition probabilities between pure states. We show how it is possible for a un...

How Much Coordination is Possible via Correlation?

Players in a game are said to coordinate their behavior if they jointly choose strategies. (The idea goes back to von Neumann [19, 1928] and von Neumann-Morgenstern [21, 1944].) Correlation in behavior arises if players choose their strategies independently, but the choices are conditioned on observations of correlated signals (Aumann [1, 1974]). This note establishes an impossibility result: U...

Is It Possible to Develop a Compassionate Organization?; Comment on “Why and How Is Compassion Necessary to Provide Good Quality Healthcare?”

This paper represents a commentary to Marianna Fotaki’s Editorial: ‘Why and how is compassion necessary to provide good quality healthcare?’ Within this commentary, I discuss some of the issues raised by Marianna Fotaki, and conclude that we should work towards an organizational culture which considers the important concept of compassion by focusing on the well-being and teamwork of all involved.

How is the Mother Tongue Acquired