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I Have been asked, before introducing the speakers, to take a quarter-hour to pay tribute on behalf of this Association to the memory of the great economist whose life and work are the subjects of this evening's meeting. I propose to use these few minutes to inquire very briefly into the philosophy and characteristics which made Lord Keynes so great a human being, perhaps as nearly a whole person as the twentieth century can show us.In a recent article Mr. Harrod has expressed the conviction that Keynes had a more distinguished mind than Ricardo. There is food for reflection in the fact that Ricardian thought developed along two quite different lines, one through the so-called Manchester School and the other through the Christian Socialists and Karl Marx, and that Keynesian influences are already showing a similar bifurcation. On the one hand, we find developing a stereotype labelled a "Keynesian," presumably preoccupied with unemployment, with a simple philosophy based upon the possibility of management of the economic macrocosm through monetary and fiscal means. On the other hand, we find Marxists claiming Keynes and non-Marxists repudiating him on the ground that the "philosophic implications" of his "doctrines" are Marxist in nature.With respect to the first line of development, it seems to me that Keynes's devotion was to ends rather than to means, that he viewed means always as experimental, and that it is a central conviction in his personal philosophy that we do not know how human beings will react to a change in environment. For that reason, and also because circumstances alter with the passage of time, we must be prepared always to alter economic modes, or even to "reverse a process" which has been initiated. This is not the philosophy of the Keynesian stereotype.

The function of 121 challenging behaviours displayed by 20 people with severe intellectual disabilities was assessed using informant‐based, experimental and descriptive methods. The results suggest that informant‐based, descriptive and experimental approaches to assessment vary with regards to (1) the probability of ascribing functions across a range of challenging behaviours; (2) die types and characteristics of behaviours to which functions are more likely to be ascribed; (3) the types of functions which are likely to be identified; and (4) the probability with which they identify multiple functions. The results also suggest that the level of agreement between different approaches was disappointingly poor. It is suggested that, at present, the routine clinical application of functional assessment ought to be based on the construction of an individually‐tailored multiple assessment format based on a pre‐assessment of topography, environmental and person‐related variables. Attention is also drawn to the importance of staff training to enhance the performance of informant‐based methods and the further development of non‐experimental approaches to functional assessment.