With this week’s release of the new Inception and Philosophy book, let’s take a look at some of those beguiling questions that make Inception worth watching over and over again.

Kyle Johnson has an excellent article for Psychology Today (“Inception and Philosophy: Did the Spinning Top Fall?“). It’s tempting to fixate on those closing seconds of the film — did Cobb’s top keep spinning, or didn’t it? — but perhaps that’s a bit of clever misdirection on director Christopher Nolan’s part to keep us guessing on one detail while ignoring some other clues. In fact, Kyle wants you to think about it this way: it doesn’t matter whether the top does fall or not.

There’s a great discussion in the PT article on the role of totems (“an elegant solution for keeping track of reality”  as Ariadne calls them) –

“As the film reveals, you are never supposed to let anyone else touch your totem. Why? Because they might figure out how it works—how it is weighted, or how it is supposed to behave in the real world. And if they do, the totem will not be able to tell you whether or not you are in their dream.” 

Yes, the totems serve as a way for the characters to keep track of what they think is reality within dreams– but how do they really know what they think they know?

What certainly makes Inception a fitting source of philosophical reflection is that there’s ample evidence to support multiple interpretations of the film –

“So, more than likely, the top did fall at the end of the film. Who would dream otherwise? But that tells us nothing about whether or not Cobb is dreaming. He could be in his, Ariadne’s, Mal’s…or anyone’s dream for that matter. Cobb’s totem is not reliable. And, truth be told, neither is Cobb.” 

And, check out a sneak preview of Inception and Philosophy on Google Books!

I will be giving a talk this Friday, June 4 on digital books and issues of copyright at the Oxford English Postgraduate Conference. (Click on the image below to go to the Oxford English Department’s website announcement).

[Update: the full conference schedule and program is available. Click here to check it out].

Oxford English Postgraduate Conference

Phillip Pullman will also be taking part in a discussion during the latter part of the conference, which promises to be a very interesting event. You can click on the image below to visit the conference website with a bit more information:

Mis/Appropriation Conference

My talk will be at 2:10pm and at 3:10pm I will be chairing a panel of speakers, on the interesting topics of the ethics and experience of time and space in reading (link goes to the full schedule online):

Conference Schedule

Will post some excerpts from the conference later!

On Thursday, May 20 I’ll be speaking on the topic of digital books and the experience of reading at the Merton History of the Book Group at Oxford. There will be free sandwiches. (Click on the picture for a larger image).

Merton History of the Book Group Talk

"eBooks, Google Books, (and Printed Books): Reading in the Age of Digital Reproduction."

One of my photos is in the new Schmap Oxford Guide. Cool. Click here for the full website.

The photo is from “The Real Alice” exhibit at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

In celebration of The Simpsons reaching 450 episodes, KCBS had a feature on the show this morning, where I was invited to speak along with Paul Cantor, Professor of English at University of Virginia. By the way — be sure to check out this Sunday’s The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special: In 3-D! On Ice hosted by Morgan Spurlock (of Super Size Me fame). While you’re waiting for Sunday, you might also enjoy this article or this blog post on the upcoming event.

Teaching a college course on The Simpsons? Anytime I get to mention Foucault and a Simpsons episode in the same sentence, it’s a pretty good day. Click on the image below for the full podcast of the show!

Paul Cantor is brilliant, and certainly a highly-regarded figure in American popular culture studies (check out his book, Gilligan Unbound) – so this was quite a thrill for me! I particularly enjoyed his comparison of The Simpsons and Charles Dickens during the interview. You can check out an excerpt from one of Cantor’s essays on The Simpsons here.

Interview on The Simpsons

This talk was given at Google in Mountain View, CA on August 28.

Is that really what I look like and sound like? Well, anyways — some of the things that I discuss are: what is it specifically that makes “Heroes” philosophically interesting? What can we learn from a book about “Heroes” and philosophy? How does a show about heroes and villains give us a chance to reflect on questions of good and evil, right and wrong?

In my chapter on Nietzsche, time, and meaning I explore the ways in which specific examples from the show prompt us to examine our relation to time from both a philosophical standpoint and also what this means to us in our everyday lives as living, thinking beings.

I’m only about 708,000 views behind Ron Paul’s YouTube video, so feel free to rate it if you like it!!

For those that are interested, here’s a link to the video on YouTube. Authors@Google is one of my favorite things in the entire world – check out the rest of this wonderful video series. It’s one of the things that makes Google so cool.

Here’s a link to the actual book:  Heroes and Philosophy: Buy the Book. Save the World

Hello Internet! Please excuse the apparent lack of activity while I figure out what to post and how.