Inception
Event date:
Fri, 27/08/2010 This event, sponsored by the Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute, explored the psychology of lucid dreaming, business ethics and intellectual property, representations of urban environments, and the ownership of mental states.
Articles on this film:
Inception: Corporate Ethics in Mind
Professor Ken Peattie
Spying for Queen and Country in movies, and the spy as a stock movie character, has a long tradition dating back nearly 100 years to silent movies produced during the First World War. Spy movie milestones since then include Fritz Lang’s 1928 film Spies, several Hitchcock Cold War spy movies, decades from the JB Franchises (Messrs Bond and Bourne) and no shortage of spy spoofs from Get Smart to Austin Powers.
Some Questions of Lucid Dreaming and Inception
Professor Mark Blagrove
What is a lucid dream? It is a dream in which you realise that you are dreaming.How often do they occur? In about 1 in every 200 dreams.How do we know people are really asleep when they have a lucid dream, they could be just half awake and drowsy? You can signal with your eyes from a lucid dream, and monitoring of sleep shows that sleep at this point is in the stage called Rapid Eye Movement sleep. However, there is recent debate about this.
Thought Insertion, Agency and the Ownership of Thoughts
Professor Alessandra Tanesini
Compare the question: ‘Someone left the oven on. I wonder whether it was me’ with the question: ‘Someone in this room is thinking about making tea. I wonder whether it is me’ (or the question ‘Someone in this room is in pain. I wonder whether it is me’). The first question makes perfectly good sense, but the second does not. It is often said that the reason why the second question is absurd is that although one might be mistaken about what one is thinking, one cannot be mistaken whether it is oneself that does the thinking.
The Architecture of Urban Reality
Dr Robin Smith
My research is, in a broad sense, concerned with the city and the ways in which people navigate, interpret, and make sense of the urban environment.