There are marked differences between countries with regard to reimbursement decision-making, yet few studies have tried to understand this process and its consequences by a detailed analysis of the local context and decision-making structure. This article describes reimbursement decision-making and subsequent prescribing patterns of new pharmaceuticals by means of a case study on glitazones in treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus patients in Denmark. The study shows that institutional arrangements, providing the context in which evidence is used, are highly important (...) for understanding the reimbursement decision-making process. In particular the Danish Medicines Agency (DMA) has shaped the decision to reimburse glitazones on the basis of physician-mediated requests of individual patients. Relatively few patients have been prescribed glitazones since their introduction in 2000, suggesting that individual reimbursement may be an effective instrument in controlling overall expenditure of selected pharmaceuticals, although in the case of glitazones this has likely been achieved at the expense of equality in access to the products. The discussion focuses on the generalizability of the findings to both other pharmaceuticals in the individual reimbursement scheme in Denmark, and to other countries that are trying to balance the need to control overall pharmaceutical care expenditure with the need to secure equality in access to new drugs with therapeutic added value. (shrink)

Imperatives cannot be true, but they can be obeyed or binding: `Surrender!' is obeyed if you surrender and is binding if you have a reason to surrender. A pure declarative argument — whose premisses and conclusion are declaratives — is valid exactly if, necessarily, its conclusion is true if the conjunction of its premisses is true; similarly, I suggest, a pure imperative argument — whose premisses and conclusion are imperatives — is obedience-valid (alternatively: bindingness-valid) exactly if, necessarily, its conclusion is (...) obeyed (alternatively: binding) if the conjunction of its premisses is. I argue that there are two kinds of bindingness, and that a vacillation between two corresponding variants of bindingness-validity largely explains conflicting intuitions concerning the validity of some pure imperative arguments. I prove that for each of those two variants of bindingness-validity there is an equivalent variant of obedience-validity. Finally, I address alternative accounts of pure imperative inference. (shrink)

The book deals with the notion of Downward Causation from a wide array of perspectives, including physics, biology, psychology, social science, communication studies, text theory, and philosophy. The book includes proponents as well as opponents discussing the validity of the notion.

Originally published in 1969. This book explains what is wrong with the traditional methodology of "inductive" reasoning and shows that the alternative scheme of reasoning associated with Whewell, Pierce and Popper can give the scientist a useful insight into the way he thinks.

Originally published in 1969. This book explains what is wrong with the traditional methodology of "inductive" reasoning and shows that the alternative scheme of reasoning associated with Whewell, Pierce and Popper can give the scientist a useful insight into the way he thinks.

Social and political scientists, historians and others, have put forward a number of widely differing views concerning the ‘character’ of Islamic millenarian and/or Mahdist movements in Africa. The same is true of course with regard to the opinions ofscholars concerning the transformative capacity of Islam as an ideology. In this paper I want to look at one aspect only of Islamic millenarianism in the West African context, viz. its allegedly revolutionary character.

Central to Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society was the description and justification of the method adopted and advocated by the Fellows of the Society, for it was thought that it was their method which distinguished them from ancients, dogmatists, sceptics, and contemporary natural philosophers such as Descartes. The Fellows saw themselves as furthering primarily a novel method, rather than a system, of philosophy, and the History gave expression to this corporate self-perception. However, the History's description of their method (...) was not necessarily accurate. Rather, as will be argued below, by a combination of subtle misrepresentation and selective exposition, Sprat portrayed a method which would further the aims of social and ecclesiastical stability and material prosperity, essential for the Royal Society since its continued existence depended upon the creation of a social basis for the institutionalized pursuit of natural philosophy. Some link had to be forged between the activities of the Society and the intellectual and social aspirations of the Restoration. To understand the intent and meaning of Sprat's History and the method there portrayed, we must therefore look to the institutional needs which it fulfilled. (shrink)

Originally published in 1957, The Uniqueness of the Individual is a collection of 9 essays published from the ten years preceding publication. The essays deal with some of the central problems of biology. These are among the questions put and answered from the standpoint of modern experimental biology. What is ageing and how is it measured? What theories have been held to account for it, and with what success? Did ageing evolve, and if so how? Is Lamarckism and adequate explanation (...) of evolutionary process? Does evolution sometimes go wrong? Do human beings evolve in a way peculiar to themselves? Other essays touch upon the problems of scientific method and of growth and transformation. This book will be of interest to natural historians, evolutionists and anthropologists. (shrink)

P. B. Downing; VII.—Subjunctive Conditionals, Time Order, and Causation, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 59, Issue 1, 1 June 1959, Pages 125–140.

First published in 1972, The Hope of Progress presents collection of essays and lectures dealing with the history of scientific ideas and the impact of science on society. The principle piece in this volume is the author's 1969 presidential address to the British Association 'On The Effecting of All Things Possible', an argument for believing in the ability of science to solve the problems it has itself created, and which too many of us believe insoluble. It contains author's Romanes Lecture (...) on 'Science and Literature' and a well known critique of J.D. Watson's notorious account of the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA, The Double Helix. Other chapters discuss the possibility of the control and domination by science of the body and mind of Man- though the author concludes in 'The Genetic Improvement of Man' 'I think that, in the main, for many centuries to come, we shall have to put up with human beings as they are at present constituted'. This book will be useful for scholars and researchers of history of science, philosophy of science, natural science, and philosophy in general. (shrink)

In those twenty or so pages of section xi of Part Two of the Philosophical Investigations in which Wittgenstein discusses the concept of noticing an aspect and its place among the concepts of experience, there are three passages which are explicitly concerned with the relations between seeing and interpreting in the experience of noticing an aspect.

This article, written by a former justice of the Supreme Court of India and chairman of the Press Council of India, describes the media accountability system in India and argues for the global necessity for such systems. It declares the need for free press systems for the survival of democratic institutions and claims that society has an obligation to monitor media systems so they remain free. The alternative will be government regulation, which will suspend the vital characteristics of a free (...) press. A press council, on the other hand, can work more cooperatively with the press to assure responsibility. Global forces make it important for the mass media to explore the virtues inherent in media accountability systems, such as press councils. This article suggests why those systems are increasingly important, proposes structures and functions for such councils, and uses the Press Council of India as an example of a working organization. (shrink)

Dit boek is een inleiding in het denken over recht en staat met een zwaar accent op de vraag hoe de staat om moet gaan met religie. 0Paul Cliteur en Afshin Ellian zijn hoogleraar encyclopedie van de rechtswetenschap aan de universiteit van Leiden.