TY  - BOOK
AU  - Harris,Henry
TI  - Identity: essays based on Herbert Spencer lectures given in the University of Oxford 
T2  - Herbert Spencer lectures. 1993
SN  - 0198235259 (alk. paper)
AV  - BF697 .I345 1995
U1  - ARCH YNDC 126 H313I  20
PY  - 1995///
CY  - New York 
PB  - Clarendon Press. Oxford 
KW  - Identity (Psychology)
KW  - Gender identity
KW  - Group identity
KW  - Identité (Psychologie)
KW  - Identité collective
KW  - Identité sexuelle
KW  - Identity
KW  - Aufsatzsammlung
N1  - Includes bibliographical references (p. 155-164) and index; 1. Identity and Identities / Bernard Williams -- 2. The Unimportance of Identity / Derek Parfit -- 3. An Experimentalist Looks at Identity / Henry Harris -- 4. Sexual Identity: Reality or Construction? / Michael Ruse -- 5. Fictional Identities / Terence Cave -- 6. The Formation of National Identity / Anthony D. Smith
N2  - The essays that follow offer perspectives from outside philosophy: Michael Ruse considers homosexual identity and to what extent it is reasonable to claim that homosexuality is a social construct. Terence Cave looks at personal identity through the eye of literature and fiction, and portrays identity as generated through the narratives that one weaves about oneself or about other people. Finally, Anthony D. Smith looks at national identities and how they are formed, analysing how this process is shaped by the interplay of cultural inheritance, political expediency, and myth; Identity contains essays by six internationally famous contributors, focusing on different facets of identity from the viewpoints of their various disciplines. Two philosophers, Bernard Williams and Derek Parfit, discuss, respectively, numerical identity (when can we say that two phenomena observed at different times are one and the same thing?) and personal identity (how far can the concept of 'I' be stretched, and does it always matter whether we can say if that would still be me?). Henry Harris looks at philosophical discussions of identity from the perspective of an experimentalist, and discusses whether philosophical thought-experiments have any basis in scientific reality
ER  -