The Citizen Informant Doctrine

The key informant technique.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE This article considers the role of the key informant technique as a qualitative research method and examines the potential contribution of the approach to health care research. METHOD The principles underlying the technique and the advantages and disadvantages are considered, illustrated with examples from a range of social science studies. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION An...

The Doctrine of Signatures.

‘The Doctrine of Signatures’ started with the idea that God has marked everything he created with a sign (signature). The sign showed the purpose for the creation of the item. The ‘Doctrine of Signatures’ was promulgated by the writings of Jakob Böhme (1575–1624), a shoemaker in Görlitz, Germany, who had a profound mystical vision in which he saw a relationship between God and man that caused h...

The Real Bills Doctrine

With recession lingering and interest rates remaining high, one hears increasingly that the Fed should abandon its money growth targets and move to a policy of lowering interest rates to full employment levels. All would be well, we are told, if only the Fed would set a fixed low interest rate target consistent with full employment and then let the money stock adjust to money demand to achieve ...

Sharpening the Doctrine of God

The Doctrine of Internal Reasons

According to advocates of internalism about reasons for action, there is an interesting connection between an agent’s reasons and the agent’s present desires. On the simplest version of this view, an agent has a reason to act a certain way at some time if and only if acting that way would promote his present desires. Let us call this the sub-Humean model.1 The sub-Humean model is widely regarde...