A Comprehensive Analysis on the Healthcare Systems in Latin America

This comprehensive report summarizes and analyzes the current state of healthcare in Latin America, specifically in the countries of Mexico, Brazil, the Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras), the Andean Region (Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia) and the Rioplatense Region (Uruguay, and Argentina). Each country's healthcare system is examined in depth, in terms of health infrastructure, the healthcare providing industry, and the effects of healthcare on the countries' respective populations.Mosser, Michael W.International Relations and Global Studie

Fiscal Decentralization in China and India: Competitive, Cooperative or Market Preserving Federalism?

This paper provides a comparative assessment of fiscal decentralization in China and India, including the standard components of expenditure and revenue assignments and institutions for intergovernmental transfers, as well as the nature of subnational authorities over general economic activity. In particular, the case of China, where town and village enterprises have been very active, is contrasted with that of India, where local governments remain circumscribed in their authority, despite decentralizing reforms. The implications of differences in decentralization for fiscal outcomes and economic growth are discussed. The characterization of each country in terms of concepts of federalism, i.e., competitive, cooperative and market preserving federalism, is discussed, in attempting to abstract from the two cases to more general lessons for fiscal decentralization.cooperative federalism; competitive federalism; market-preserving federalism; decentralization; economic development

Review of Wittgenstein's Metaphilosophy by Paul Horwich 248p (2013) (review revised 2019)

Horwich gives a fine analysis of Wittgenstein (W) and is a leading W scholar, but in my view, they all fall short of a full appreciation, as I explain at length in this review and many others. If one does not understand W (and preferably Searle also) then I don't see how one could have more than a superficial understanding of philosophy and of higher order thought and thus of all complex behavior (psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, literature, society). In a nutshell, W demonstrated that when you have shown how a sentence is used in the context of interest, there is nothing more to say. I will start with a few notable quotes and then give what I think are the minimum considerations necessary to understand Wittgenstein, philosophy and human behavior. First one might note that putting “meta” in front of any word should be suspect. W remarked e.g., that metamathematics is mathematics like any other. The notion that we can step outside philosophy (i.e., the descriptive psychology of higher order thought) is itself a profound confusion. Another irritation here (and throughout academic writing for the last 4 decades) is the constant reverse linguistic sexism of “her” and “hers” and “she” or “he/she” etc., where “they” and “theirs” and “them” would do nicely. Likewise, the use of the French word 'repertoire' where the English 'repertory' will do quite well. The major deficiency is the complete failure (though very common) to employ what I see as the hugely powerful and intuitive two systems view of HOT and Searle’s framework which I have outlined above. This is especially poignant in the chapter on meaning p111 et seq. (especially in footnotes 2-7), where we swim in very muddy water without the framework of automated true only S1, propositional dispositional S2, COS etc. One can also get a better view of the inner and the outer by reading e.g., Johnston or Budd (see my reviews). Horwich however makes many incisive comments. I especially liked his summary of the import of W’s anti-theoretical stance on p65. He needs to give more emphasis to ‘On Certainty’, recently the subject of much effort by Daniele Moyal- Sharrock, Coliva and others and summarized in my recent articles. Horwich is first rate and his work well worth the effort. One hopes that he (and everyone) will study Searle and some modern psychology as well as Hutto, Read, Hutchinson, Stern, Moyal-Sharrock, Stroll, Hacker and Baker etc. to attain a broad modern view of behavior. Most of their papers are on academia dot edu and philpapers dot org , but for PMS Hacker see his papers on his Oxford page. He gives one of the most beautiful summaries of where an understanding of Wittgenstein leaves us that I have ever seen. “There must be no attempt to explain our linguistic/conceptual activity (PI 126) as in Frege’s reduction of arithmetic to logic; no attempt to give it epistemological foundations (PI 124) as in meaning based accounts of a priori knowledge; no attempt to characterize idealized forms of it (PI 130) as in sense logics; no attempt to reform it (PI 124, 132) as in Mackie’s error theory or Dummett’s intuitionism; no attempt to streamline it (PI 133) as in Quine’s account of existence; no attempt to make it more consistent (PI 132) as in Tarski’s response to the liar paradoxes; and no attempt to make it more complete (PI 133) as in the settling of questions of personal identity for bizarre hypothetical ‘teleportation’ scenarios.” Finally, let me suggest that with the perspective I have encouraged here, W is at the center of contemporary philosophy and psychology and is not obscure, difficult or irrelevant, but scintillating, profound and crystal clear and that to miss him is to miss one of the greatest intellectual adventures possible. Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019

Fiscal Policy in the Slovak Republic

On 1st January 1993, the independent Slovak Republic (SR) began to exist. During 1993 a democratic political system was created. It is a parliamentary democracy with a president at its head. The functions of the president were created and instituted, the Constitutional Court and Supreme Supervision Office were established. They began to create the relations determined by the constitution between the parliament (the National Council of the SR), government, president and judicial power. The functioning of the new state began to be confirmed by the issuing of new legislative norms and laws. Starting the incorporation of the SR into international structures was an important factor in the political life of the SR. The SR became a regular member of the Council of Europe, and signed a treaty on the SR becoming an associate member of the European Union. The specific factors of internal political development did not adversely affect the tendency to continue with the transformation process in the economy and society. The SR fully succeeded in maintaining the high level of liberalization of prices and economic relations, already achieved in the former Czecho - Slovak Federal Republic. The liberalization of foreign trade and the associated internal convertibility of the Slovak currency were maintained. In the context of the adopted conception of privatization, standard methods of privatization, justified by the specific characteristics of the Slovak economy, began to be implemented. This led to a slowing down of the progress of privatization of large and medium sized companies. The main role of macro-economic regulation was maintenance of internal and external balance. During 1993, the neutral monetary policy of the central bank, and the restrictive budgetary policy of the government, worked in favour of macro-economic stability. The absence of wage regulation, abolished under the influence of the trade unions, during this year, interfered with the stabilizing macro-economic tendencies. Problems and complications appeared in the progress of the transformation process, but the political groups did not take this as a reason to interrupt the process.Slovakia, fiscal policy

4. Social Darwinism

The singular impact of Darwin in fields other than biology can be attributed largely to one man, Herbert Spencer (1820- 1903). It was Spencer, not Darwin, who coined the expression survival of the fittest. Although neglected today except by historians of the nineteenth century thought, Spencer\u27s influence on his own time was so great that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was able to wonder if any writer of English except Darwin has done so much to affect our whole way of thinking about the universe. Herbert Spencer was born into a traditionally nonconformist English family of modest means. He refused a university education and trained for a career as a civil engineer. He was employed first as an engineer and later as an editor of the Economist, a publication advocating free trade. By 1853 his major ideas were fixed and he spent his remaining years systematizing and propounding them. [excerpt

Endless Incoherence— A Review of Shoemaker's Physical Realization (2009)(review revised 2019)

Over 40 years ago I read a small grey book with metaphysics in the title which began with the words “Metaphysics is dead. Wittgenstein has killed it.” I am one of many who agree but sadly the rest of the world has not gotten the message. Shoemaker’s work is nonsense on stilts but is unusual only in that it never deviates into sense from the first paragraph to the last. At least with Dennett, Carruthers, Churchland etc. one gets a breath of fresh air when they discuss cognitive science (imagining they are still doing philosophy). As W showed so beautifully, the confusions that lead to metaphysics are universal and nearly inescapable aspects of our psychology. They occur not only in all thinking on behavior but throughout science as well. It’s easy to find examples in Hawking, Weinberg, Penrose, Green, who of course have no idea they have left science and entered metaphysics, that the statement they just made is not a matter of fact at all but a matter of conceptual (linguistic) confusion. “Law, event, space, time, force, matter, proof, connection, cause, follows, physical”, etc., all have clear uses in certain technical contexts, but these blend insensibly into quite different uses that have little in common but the spelling. Since it is pointless to waste time deconstructing Shoemaker line by line, showing the same errors over and over, I will describe some facts about how our psychology (language) works and with this outline and the references I give it is quite straightforward to give a meaningful description of the world in place of the metaphysical fantasies. If I were to debate Shoemaker we would never get beyond the title. Horwich gives one of the most beautiful summaries of where an understanding of Wittgenstein leaves us that I have ever seen. “There must be no attempt to explain our linguistic/conceptual activity (PI 126) as in Frege’s reduction of arithmetic to logic; no attempt to give it epistemological foundations (PI 124) as in meaning based accounts of a priori knowledge; no attempt to characterize idealized forms of it (PI 130) as in sense logics; no attempt to reform it (PI 124, 132) as in Mackie’s error theory or Dummett’s intuitionism; no attempt to streamline it (PI 133) as in Quine’s account of existence; no attempt to make it more consistent (PI 132) as in Tarski’s response to the liar paradoxes; and no attempt to make it more complete (PI 133) as in the settling of questions of personal identity for bizarre hypothetical ‘teleportation’ scenarios.” Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019) and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019)

Reallocating Water: An Application of Sequent

We present an axiomatic approach to the reallocation of water rights among economic sectors. Reallocation may be appropriate when the current schedule of water allocation is considered unfair. Our proposed approach is based on the combination of initial water rights, sectors' claims to water, and an exogenous ordering of these sectors. We apply sharing rules, based on bankruptcy rules, to reallocate water, which complements other approaches to the reallocation of water rights, including those based on water markets. Our approach is illustrated using an application to water reallocation in Cyprus, where reallocation of water rights has been recognised as an essential step towards good water governance and one of the main challenges for current water policies.Water Reallocation, Sequential Sharing Rule, Water Scarcity, Axiomatic Approach, Cyprus

Contemporary Social Historical Perspectives on Mental Health Reform

The argument presented in this article is that a new role has been developing in law which can and should be used as a strategy in the provision of services. It will be further argued that there is an important place for the law in setting limits on established psychiatric measures relating, for example, to compulsory admission and treatment, and even to particularly hazardous measures taken with the consent of the patient. The final role of law is to ensure the civil status of those who are the consumers of psychiatric services. One must accept the fact that pernicious legal and social consequences sometimes are secondary features of the receipt of psychiatric services. Here the law can make a distinctive contribution to uphold a person\u27s personal status and dignity. This approach does not pretend to offer a solution to the more collective problems relating to deficiency in services, but the more individualistic approach of the law has its own legitimacy in upholding the integrity of people who have felt dehumanized by institutions, by the opprobrium of society and by the discriminatory character of legislation